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Ask HN: Multi Dimensional Spreadsheet to visualize data about your business?

4 points by paolomaffei ↗ HN
Our startup accounting sucks, I have no idea where money is going to and coming from (and don't let me start about time...). Accounting is just an example, this can be applied to many problems.

So today I was playing with Excel trying to understand something in my business... but boy was it a mess, took me 10 minutes to understand I wasn't going to have something that made sense on it.

Yes Excel/OpenOffice calc etc can be used as multidimensional with pages but seeing data spread accross pages really becomes a mess.

I have four main dimensions:

1) The date in which a passage of money happened

2) Which client or provider the income/expense is relative to

3) Where will the money go/be taken (paypal, bank account, credit card...)

4) How much taxes (VAT or work related ones for example) applies to that amount (optionally this one can go with the third dimension)

Those are "full" dimensions as I call them because I will need to do calculations on all of them.

I was hoping in not having to use a database and a programming language for this but if there was some piece of software similar to a multidimensional spreadsheet that did the trick. What are business analysts using these days?

I have no formal math training so I'm not looking for an enterprise solution that I think will come in handy for really a lot of things for us "metric visualization" nerds

I also know there might but since i'm a metric visualization nerd I want to learn to use a multidimensional spreadsheet (and you should too) since it will be often useful for startups and gaining insight into how a business works.

6 comments

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rmah
Two words: pivot tables
jaxn
I second pivot tables. But there are also calculations like VLOOKUP and SUMIF that help.
fractallyte
Dump Excel, it's useless for this kind of analysis.

A TRUE multi-dimensional spreadsheet was Lotus Improv (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv). Brilliant software, easy to use, but killed by corporate stupidity - Lotus was afraid that it might interfere with their sales of 1-2-3...

Quantrix Modeler (http://www.quantrix.com/) is the modern replacement, definitely deserves wider recognition.

Incidentally, Improv came with a demonstration animation explaining its concept and advantages; you get one of those rare 'aha!' moments while watching it! It really was a revolutionary, next-generation product.

Contact me if you're not sure where to obtain Improv... ;-)

flgb
Excel is probably the right answer because it is cheap, universal, and good enough. You certainly can do multidimenional analysis.

Another tool to consider, although I haven't used it personally is Tableau Desktop (http://www.tableausoftware.com/). It is especially good at helping you understand your data if you are more of a visual person.

ryszard99
back in the day i used something called Essbase to do financial modelling for $megacorp it was/is a multidimensional solution, and would seem to fit your needs.

i'm not sure what the current status of it is, but it could be a good starting point to research some more modern options.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essbase