Hi everyone! I’m Jonathan from Boise State University (Boise, ID USA). I’m currently looking for advice and best practices on transitioning our department's budget reporting process into Smartsheet.
Current Workflow & Challenges:
- Data Scale: We pull data from four different Excel documents, using Power Query and Power Pivots to generate 15 separate budget reports for our department's budget managers.
- Performance Limits: After just the first three months of the fiscal year, our Excel files quickly scale to 10,000–30,000+ rows, pushing performance limits.
- Data Shuttle Hurdles: We attempted to use Data Shuttle, but due to the volume and the specific filtering required to stay within workflow limits, we hit the maximum number of allowable Data Shuttle workflows without fully covering all department budgets.
Our Goal:
While our current Excel workflow functions fine, it requires manually emailing out 15 separate reports. We want to move this into Smartsheet so budget managers can view live data and drill down into the details online at any time, completely eliminating the manual distribution process.
If anyone has tackled a similar high-volume financial reporting or data consolidation challenge in Smartsheet, I would love to hear your architectural recommendations or insights on how you approached it!
