The Google Sheets' QUERY formula is a powerful way to analyze your Xero Accounting data with SQL like commands

Google Sheets has a fantastic built in SQL-like Query function that, when combined with Blink Reports, can instantly answer questions like; what are my total sales by Customer?

The syntax is:

QUERY(data, query, [headers])

The documentation is available at: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093343

You can see live examples by opening our Blink Reports Template and clicking on the "XeroInv Query" tab/sheet.

A simple example that calculates total sales by Contact (Customer) based on the output of the Blink Reports custom formula XeroInv() is:

=query(XeroInv!$A$11:$AF$999,"select B, sum(I) group by B",-1)

or expand it to exclude blank rows and use your own column labels:

=query(XeroInv!$A$11:$AF$999,"select B, sum(I) where B != '' group by B label B 'Customer', sum(I) 'Total Sales'",-1)

• XeroInv!$A$11:$AF$999 is the location of the data in the spreadsheet which in this case is the results of the XeroInv() formula on the sheet named XeroInv
• "select B, sum(I) where B != '' group by B label B 'Customer', sum(I) 'Total Sales'" is the actual query using Google Visualization API Query Language which is similar to SQL.
• In this example it outputs the Contact from column B and then calculates the sum by Contact of column I.
• where B != ''  filters out blank contact records
• label B 'Customer', sum(I) 'Total Sales' provides more friendly column names
• -1 means output 1 or more rows of headers depending on the source data

This formula will produce the output:

Customer	Total Sales
Bank West	1299
Basket Case	914.55
Bayside Club	234
Boom FM	1623.75
City Agency	593.23
City Limousines	1191.83
DIISR - Small Business Services	1077.14
Hamilton Smith Ltd	2173.75
Marine Systems	396
Petrie McLoud Watson & Associates	1407.25
Port & Philip Freight	1082.5
Rex Media Group	1632.5
Ridgeway University	12375
Young Bros Transport	1082.5

You can also produce pivot tables such as total Sales by customer but split by invoice status across the columns:

=query(XeroInv!$A$11:$AF$999,"select B,sum(I) where B != '' group by B pivot E label B 'Customer',sum(I) 'Total Sales' ",-1)

Which produces a pivot table:

Customer	AUTHORISED Total Sales	PAID Total Sales
Bank West		1299
Basket Case	914.55
Bayside Club	234
Boom FM		1623.75
City Agency		593.23
City Limousines	1191.83
DIISR - Small Business Services	838.94	238.2
Hamilton Smith Ltd	550	1623.75
Marine Systems	396
Petrie McLoud Watson & Associates		1407.25
Port & Philip Freight		1082.5
Rex Media Group	550	1082.5
Ridgeway University	6187.5	6187.5
Young Bros Transport		1082.5

Unlike Microsoft Excel, this query formula is built in so there are no software plugins or addons to install and keep up to date. Google Sheets make sharing and collaborating on these reports with your team as simple as sending them a web page link since they only need a web browser to view them.

The query formula combined with Blink Reports offers endless possibilities for slicing and dicing your sales or purchase transaction data from your Xero Accounting Software.

Sign up today for a Blink Report free trial at http://www.blinkreports.com/

Xero integrates Google mail - A Potent Mix

Since Blink Reports for Xero users are also Google Apps users, this may be of great relevance to you. Here is a recent update from Xero that is too good not to share.

It's often difficult to get a clear picture of where you stand with a particular customer. It's no surprise that our favourite tool to keep track of this is Xero. With over half a million global subscribers and counting, Xero provides online accounting, bank reconciliation, invoicing services, and integrates with a wide range of powerful software solutions and add-ons. Now, with the integration of Google's Gmail, it's more powerful than ever.

Just before the end of 2015, Xero pushed their final major update of the year: Contacts were updated and Google's Gmail service was integrated into the contacts screens. Essentially, this gives Xero users complete visibility of the business they've done with their customers or suppliers, making it much easier to make decisions and develop opportunities. This vital update makes Contacts a hub for customer communication and demonstrates how cloud accounting has opened the doors of opportunity for innovation and efficiency.

Features in this update enable you to:

• Connect your Gmail account to view emails with contacts directly in Xero. This saves emails to a contacts activity tab, adds email to a new invoice, quote, or bill, and allows you to download attachments to the contact record.
• View emails between you and your customers in real time.
• View emails from the email account that you've connected to Xero while they remain invisible to other users in your organization.
• Share an email with other users in your organization by simply adding it to the contact's activity tab

You can see here email messages have been pulled from Blair's account using the contact's email address or emails including the words "GotoMeeting.com"

Connecting Xero to your Google account is simple, here's how:

1. From the Contacts menu, select All Contacts.
2. Select a contact.
3. Under the bar graph, click Email, then click Connect to Gmail.
   
4. Sign in to your Google account.
5. On the permissions screen, select Allow.

You can find further details on Xero's Business Help Centre page and Xero's blog.

If you're already using Google apps and are looking for a great accounting solution to bridge the gap between you and your customers, Xero with Gmail is a robust and ideal solution. We at InterlockIT are proud Xero and Google Apps advocates and are more than happy to help make your business's IT solutions a breeze. Be sure to contact us to learn how we can assist you.

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.

By popular request, we're rolling out yet another new function!

The feedback on our Xero reporting engine continues to be overwhelmingly positive and filled with enhancements and feature requests.

One that we found to be particularly ingenious is the ability to pull sales and purchase invoice details directly out of Xero to populate into a sheet, which you can then use to create powerful invoice-based reports using pivot tables.

Now you can see all your invoices from Xero and have the details show up in one single view! Need to see authorised accounts receivables for the past year? Choose your date range, accounts receivable, and your invoice status. Done.

Interested in giving it a shot? Sign up for a free trial and you'll be able to see this powerful new functionality right away!

We're constantly updating Blink Reports, so keep checking back to see if anything else you're looking for has arrived.

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

Multi-company financial consolidations and consolidated dashboards are now available!

The team at Interlockit.com is thrilled to announce that Blink Reports can now connect one spreadsheet to multiple Xero organizations, making the creation and publishing of multi-company financial consolidations and consolidated dashboards a breeze!

Thanks to valuable feedback from our users we've also freshened the user interface. For example, we've used the conditional formatting feature of Google Spreadsheets to dynamically apply shading to lines such as Total Income or Net Profit, so that you can see at a glance what's most important. You can see screenshots of the improvements on our Blink Reports overview page.

Some of our behind-the-scenes work has made authorizing against Xero organizations simpler and provides more informative error messages.

If you'd like to check out our new multi-company functionality please sign up for a free trial!

Blink Reports for Xero – The Official Release!

The power of…

Google Spreadsheets + Xero Accounting

Blink Reports is a powerful Google Spreadsheets Add-on that allows you to take control of your Xero data to build financial reports, charts, and dashboards with a series of simple formulas. The best part? It's all connected live!  No more exporting of static reports that become quickly out of date.

Leverage all the flexibility and security, plus easy sharing and collaboration of Google Spreadsheets for your Xero reporting needs.

We're always happy to hear feedback from people like you and the platform is constantly improving. You can reach us any time at feedback@blinkreports.com.

Check it out today at www.blinkreports.com!