

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

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.<p>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.<p>Yes Excel/OpenOffice calc etc can be used as multidimensional with pages but seeing data spread accross pages really becomes a mess.<p>I have four main dimensions:<p>1) The date in which a passage of money happened<p>2) Which client or provider the income/expense is relative to<p>3) Where will the money go/be taken (paypal, bank account, credit card...)<p>4) How much taxes (VAT or work related ones for example) applies to that amount (optionally this one can go with the third dimension)<p>Those are "full" dimensions as I call them because I will need to do calculations on all of them.<p>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?<p>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<p>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.
======
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... ;-)

~~~
paolomaffei
How exactly do I contact you?

------
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>

------
jaxn
I second pivot tables. But there are also calculations like VLOOKUP and SUMIF
that help.

------
rmah
Two words: pivot tables

