Using advanced Google Sheets functionality: ArrayFormula

Since Blink Reports is built on top of Google App Engine, Google Apps Script, and Google Sheets, you can leverage the power and functionality of all three products to work with your financial data in ways you may not have thought was possible before.

The ARRAYFORMULA function, in conjunction with OFFSET and MATCH, can help you manage dynamic data sets by allowing you to search for a specific piece of information and then manipulating that data elsewhere. In our template, for example, we use an ARRAYFORMULA on the Operating Expenses Extract sheet to pull data from the XeroPL sheet, which (by default) shows the profit and loss report for a single month.

The old-fashioned way to do this would be to use hard-coded lookups on each individual row in the Operating Expenses Extract worksheet. While this does work, it makes any changes difficult to manage and can increase the amount of time you spend finessing the spreadsheet instead of focusing on the work you need to do.

Instead, by using the ARRAYFORMULA, we are able to pick any worksheet as a source, with any date range, and generate the report you see below.



This chart will now be automatically updated when any changes to the source data occur. Even if a hundred new line items appear in your P&L report, you'll see them in the Operating Expenses Extract right away, without any additional work needed on your end.

Blink Reports now supports Xero budgeting!

We've had many requests over the last few months to build in support for Xero's Budget Manager, and we're happy to announce that we've now completed development on this new feature and it's available for all Blink Reports users right now!

From here, you can now manipulate your budget numbers, compare them directly to your account balances and transactions, and make any changes as necessary to get the results you're looking for.

This feature is now available to all new and existing Blink Reports users, and highlights the massive productivity improvements you can get by using the reporting engine on Google Sheets. Interested in taking Blink Reports for a spin? Click here to sign up for a free two-week trial and you'll be able to see this brand new functionality right away!

As ever, we make lots of behind-the-scenes improvements to make your Blink Reports experience better, so keep checking back to see if anything else you're looking for has been implemented.

Have a suggestion, feature request, or question? Email us at feedback@blinkreports.com.

New Google Sheets functionality upgrades Blink Reports automatically

One of the biggest benefits of taking advantage of Google's massive infrastructure and the resulting improvements in services, user interfaces, and more, is that we're able to bring those improvements directly to your reports without any work on your end. Google rolls out some new functionality, and you've got that same functionality right away.

In mid-June this year, Google introduced a number of enhancements directly related to data manipulation and charting. You can now add data labels to display the exact value of data points in a number of charts; we've integrated this into our standard template now, which you can see in the image below.

New data point value display thanks to a Google Sheets upgrade.

Since Blink Reports uses a fairly large number of formulae to return your data in an easily-readable format, Google's new in-line formula preview makes adjusting our formulae to work with your data easier than ever, as you can now see exactly what your formula will return while you're writing it.

Updated permissions for protecting cells or ranges have now also been integrated into our templates, to ensure that our formulae can keep looking at the correct data.

It's thanks to the ever-evolving nature of Google's products that we're able to bring you such a powerful reporting engine and constant updates without you needing to lift a finger. Google ships it, and you've got it right away.

Happy New Year from Blink Reports!

Here are a few facts:

• Blink Reports continually gets better because we built it on the Google Sheets and Google App Engine platform. 100% of our Blink Reports code runs inside the Google Cloud Platform meaning it will automatically scale to match customer demand without us having to manage server instances or configure load balancers. Google does it all for us.

• Blink Reports data is secured by the massive resources and security team of Google. If you'd like to further secure your Blink Reports data from hackers or malicious websites that might figure out your password simply enable 2-step Verification on your Google Account... Sony should have had this.
• Google is constantly improving the speed and features of Google Sheets on your web browser and on your Android Tablet or iPad. Blink Reports is accessible anywhere and on any device.

If you feel that Blink Reports is missing something please Contact Us. We're always open to doing custom development on our Blink Reports platform to meet your needs.