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ctelya
Frequent Visitor

QuickBooks Online (QBO) Connection - How to Access Service DAX on PBI Desktop

Hello,

 

I've connected a QBO company to PBI Service and Desktop. The Service has several pre-created measures and a report. I'm trying to replicate the DAX on Desktop to replicate the report and add new content. I prefer to work in Desktop.

 

Is there a way to see the formula bar (and so essentially see the expressions/formulas) for these pre-created measures in Service?

 

Also, to confirm: is it impossible to export a Service dataset/report to Desktop? I know you can go Desktop to Service by publishing, but is there really no way to go Service to Desktop? 

 

Thank you!

10 REPLIES 10
v-huizhn-msft
Employee
Employee

Hi @ctelya,

We can create measures in Power BI service, so somebody must publish it from Power Bi desktop. And we can not see the formula measure used. But you can select the Dateset->Download .pbix file(please see the screenshot shown), you will get pbix file with detailed information, you will see the specifc formula.

 

1.PNG

Best Regards,
Angelia

Hi @v-huizhn-msft

 

Thanks for your response! I don't have the option to download a .pbix file. The report was not created in Desktop or by me - it is a pre-prepared one by Power BI. When you connect a QuickBooks Online company to the PBI service, the report/dashboard is automatically generated and has several pre-created measures. I want to access those measures in PBI Desktop.

 

Best,

Christina

 

PBI Dataset Option.PNG

Hi @ctelya,

Even you can connect QuickBooks Online, you can see the measure there. There are some limitations for export .pbix file, please see the Considerations part in this article

Best Regards,
Angelia

Hi Angelia,

 

I don't believe that article is relevant to what I'm asking.

 

I just want to be able to view the formulas used for the measures in the QBO content pack on PBI online. As I mentioned before, these are pre-created by Power BI, but I want to use them in Power BI Desktop. When I connect my QBO company to Desktop, the measures are not available.

 

Best,

Christina

 

 

@ctelya @KiranShah 

 

There is no way to edit content packs. If you need the full Power BI Desktop functionality you might want to look at https://www.acterys.com/quickbooks.  As opposed to direct access via an API that has a variety of problems (API call limitations, single entity access/ no consolidation, performance, limited refresh) Acterys creates (and automatically refreshes) a proper Azure SQL data model with all relationships and dimension tables as well as financial DAX calculations that is fully editable, supports Direct Query and write back for forecasting and planning requirements.

 

Contact me if you have further questions.

 

Martin

 

Planning with Power BI - > www.acterys.com

Hi,

 

I did end up working out how to access Quickbooks uisng Power BI Desktop.  I did not experience any of the problems you have listed below.  It is my experience, you do not need to transfer the data to SQL data model.  What you are suggesting is creating another unnecessary loop and cost. I am working directly from the Quickbooks connection in the Get data Quickbooks  and I have consolidated many Quickbooks file. One of many Power BI desktop functions, is to create a data model in PBI dekstop from many different sources.  In this case consolidate many Quickbooks company files.  Small to medium size business do not need an SQL database.  Large business do since they have millions of line of data in the data model.  Small and medium size business normally do not have more than 10,000,0000 milllion lines of data per year.  Using the direct query in Power BI desktop you can also unload previous years of data, which improves the speed.  The previous data in already in the data model hence there is no need to refresh previous years since data that is 2 years old will not change.  Once a sale order is sent and processed in the system, there is no need to go back two year later.   I hope this helps.

 

Elizabeth Tachjian CPA

Analytics Realtime

Elizabeth Tachjian

Elizabeth,

 

In the interest of time I will just point the audience to:

 

 https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Connecting-to-Xero-data-from-Desktop-application/m-p/600521...

 

where we have already gone through what the differences of a proper data warehouse methodology and using the connector only are. 

 

Otherwise the reviews of actual users to your suggested approach is all that is necessary to mention here:  https://apps.intuit.com/app/apps/appdetails?shortName=powerbi&locale=en-US

 

Martin

I am also wanting to do this.  Did you ever find a solution?  It seems like the formulas for all of the calculations from the quickbooks content pack should be available somewhere so we can easily recreate in the desktop version.

Hi,

 

How did you connect to the particular QBO file.  For example when I get data while in Power BI Desktop, I am not given the option to select the QBO.

 

Thanks in advance.

Elizabeth Tachjan

Elizabeth Tachjian

Hi

 

I am having the same issue... i need to see the measures.. did you ever get this resolved?

 

Kiran

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