Power BI dashboards that everyone reads the same numbers from.
Our Power BI dashboard development work starts with the data model, because a dashboard is only as trustworthy as the tables underneath it. We connect your accounting, CRM, ERP and spreadsheets into one model that refreshes on its own, build the reports your team uses on top of it, and plan the licenses so the bill doesn't grow faster than the audience.
On this page
What we build
- A data model that pulls from QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Salesforce, HubSpot, Shopify, SQL databases and the spreadsheets finance keeps, and joins them on shared keys.
- One definition of each measure (revenue, margin, pipeline, utilization), written once in the model so every report calculates it the same way.
- Reports and dashboards for each audience: an owner's weekly view, a sales manager's pipeline, an operations board on a screen in the warehouse.
- Row-level security, so a regional manager sees their region and a client sees only their own data.
- Scheduled refresh, including an on-premises data gateway for databases that sit inside your network.
- Embedded reports in your own portal or app, for customers who shouldn't need a Power BI login.
Why dashboards stop being trusted
When a company stops trusting its dashboards, the cause is usually the same: a dozen reports built by different people, each with its own copy of the data and its own formula for revenue, refreshed by someone exporting a file on Monday morning. Two reports disagree, nobody can say which is right, and the meeting goes back to a spreadsheet.
We fix it in the model. We build one shared semantic model per subject area, with its measures defined in one place, and point the reports at it. Reports become cheap to add and change, and the numbers in them agree because they come from the same place.
What the licenses cost
Microsoft's list prices, paid yearly, as shown on its pricing page on 25 September 2026:
| License | Published price | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Power BI Pro | $14 per user per month | Publishing, sharing and viewing shared content |
| Power BI Premium Per User | $24 per user per month | Premium features, for people who all have the same license |
| Fabric capacity (F SKUs) | Billed per capacity unit per hour | A pool of compute for the whole organization |
Microsoft's licensing rules decide who needs what. On shared capacity, only Pro users can view content other Pro users publish, so every viewer needs a license. When the workspace is on a Fabric F64 or larger capacity, Pro and Premium Per User users can share content with colleagues on free licenses.
That makes the break-even easy to work out. An F64 capacity is 64 capacity units. At Microsoft's East US pay-as-you-go rate of $0.18 per capacity unit per hour, running it for a whole month (730 hours) costs about $8,410. The same money buys about 600 Pro licenses at $14. Below a few hundred viewers, Pro licenses are usually cheaper. Above that, or when reports go to people outside your company, capacity starts to make sense. Microsoft sells reserved capacity at lower prices, so check the current figures for your region before you decide.
Refresh limits
On shared capacity, Power BI allows eight scheduled refreshes a day for each semantic model. On Premium Per User, Premium or Fabric capacity, the limit is 48. Eight is plenty for a finance dashboard that is read once a day. It isn't enough for an operations board that people expect to be current. When a report needs fresher data than the schedule allows, we use incremental refresh or a direct connection to the source, and we tell you which reports need it before you pay for capacity.
When a dashboard should be an app
A dashboard is for reading. If people read a number and then go to another system to act on it, such as approving a credit limit, reassigning a delivery or chasing an invoice, the next step is often a small app or an automation that acts on the same data. Power Apps can do this inside Microsoft 365, and our Power Automate and Power Platform page covers it. For work that outgrows the platform, we build it as code on the same data model.
If the reporting currently lives in a spreadsheet that only one person understands, start with our Excel automation page.
Data work we have done
For a distributor running 500 routes across twelve states, we put routing, stock and demand on one data model, where they had been planned in separate spreadsheets. Read the case study. For a retailer with 500 products, we built the analytics layer that answered which product to promote next from data the business already had. Read the case study.
What it costs
A model and a handful of reports on two or three sources is a small project. A model across several systems with row-level security, embedded reports and a gateway to on-premises databases is a larger one. We fix the price after the audit, once the sources, measures and audiences are written down. For market figures, see what custom software development costs.
The Automation Audit
One workflow you name, mapped end to end, with the arithmetic done before anyone writes code.
- Scope
- One workflow you choose, traced end to end, including the steps nobody documented.
- Duration
- Two weeks, fixed.
- Fee
- Fixed, and quoted in full before we start. No hourly drift.
- You get
- A written map: what can be automated, what it would save in hours, what building it would cost, and what we would leave alone.
- You keep it
- The map is yours whether or not you hire us to build anything.
And if the audit shows the automation will not pay for itself inside twelve months, we will tell you, and we will not quote the build.
Questions we get asked about Power BI
Can you fix reports someone else built?
Yes. We start with an inventory of the reports, the datasets behind them and the measures each one defines. Usually the reports can stay; they get repointed at a shared model, and the duplicates are retired.
Do our viewers need Pro licenses?
On shared capacity, yes, every viewer does. On a Fabric F64 or larger capacity, viewers can use free licenses. We work out which is cheaper for your audience before we build.
Can Power BI report on data from QuickBooks or Salesforce?
Yes. Salesforce has a Microsoft-supported connector. For QuickBooks, Xero and other systems with no connector that suits you, we load the data into a database on a schedule and point the model at that, which also gives you history the source system doesn't keep.
Can customers see reports inside our own portal?
Yes, through Power BI Embedded, with row-level security so each customer sees only their own data. Embedding runs on capacity, so we include that in the cost comparison.
Sources
Prices as published on 25 September 2026. Microsoft notes that pricing can vary by region and agreement.
