Understanding when to use specific financial reporting tools, such as Solver or Microsoft Power BI, is critical for finance teams. In a recent webinar, Financial Reports in Solver & Power BI: Which Is Best?, professionals from Forvis Mazars shared how both solutions can present data and visual insights, but the tools vary in their approaches.
Each platform supports distinct reporting needs, from structured financial statements to interactive dashboards, and helps organizations evaluate which option best aligns with their goals. This article provides more context on the key differences between Solver and Power BI for financial reporting and can help finance teams determine the most helpful solution for their organization.
How Can Solver & Power BI Serve Different Reporting Needs?
Solver and Power BI can be viewed as complementary tools, designed for distinct reporting objectives rather than direct replacements for one another. Solver can be thought of as an extended financial planning and analysis (FP&A) solution designed to support structured financial reporting, including income statements, consolidations, and dimensional reporting across entities. Its design approach reflects traditional financial statement logic, where rows and columns expand automatically as new accounts or entities are added, reducing ongoing maintenance.
Power BI, by contrast, is more of a visualization platform intended to support interactive analysis and broad distribution of information. It emphasizes dashboards, matrices, slicers, and visuals that allow users to explore data across periods, scenarios, and entities. While Power BI can present the same underlying financial data as Solver, its strength lies in visual exploration rather than producing formatted, presentation-ready financial statements.
As a result, organizations may choose one or both tools depending on whether their primary need is structured reporting, interactive analysis, or a combination of the two.
Solver for Structured Financial Statements; Power BI Requires More Setup
When it comes to creating, Solver is generally easier to use for building structured financial statements. Reports are designed in Excel using an add-in connected to a centralized data warehouse. Users define categories, groupings, formulas, and formatting in a way that closely mirrors how financial professionals already work in Excel. A key benefit of Solver is that a report template may contain far fewer rows than the final output because the solution dynamically expands rows and columns based on accounts, categories, and entities. Once built, reports can be shared, scheduled, archived, exported to Excel or a PDF, and reused with minimal rework.
On the other hand, Power BI requires more upfront configuration. To recreate a comparable income statement, users must define individual measures using data analysis expressions (DAX) for nearly every line item, including subtotals and calculated results such as gross margin and net income. Report layout often depends on an external grouping table, commonly created in Excel, to control spacing, ordering, and presentation. Additional effort is also required to design drill-through pages, since drill-down functionality is not automatically available in the same way as in Solver. Although Power BI can achieve similar results, doing so involves more modeling, measure creation, and formatting decisions compared to Solver.
Key Differentiators: Automation, Security, & Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Automation, security, and AI-driven analysis emerge as meaningful points of variation between these tools. Solver supports automated report distribution through publishing and archiving, allowing results to be shared via the portal or email while preserving historical versions for comparison. Security is applied centrally, limiting access by entity so users see only the data aligned with their permissions. Built-in drill-downs allow users to move from summary results to transaction-level detail without additional configuration.
Solver also includes an embedded AI capability, referred to as Copilot, that allows users to ask questions directly against report results, such as identifying expense trends or areas of concern. This capability is positioned as a way to support deeper understanding without exporting data to external tools.
Power BI offers automation and security through subscriptions, Power Automate, and row-level security, and it can support AI analysis through Microsoft Fabric and Copilot when licensed. However, these capabilities typically require more setup and licensing decisions.
How Forvis Mazars Can Help
When considering Solver or Power BI, the priority for finance teams should be what best serves the organization’s goals. Tool selection ultimately comes down to alignment with reporting goals, audience needs, and the desired balance between structured output and interactive insight.
For more information on insights and automation solutions, please reach out to a professional at Forvis Mazars.