Power BI report development and design for small, focused projects

Why small Power BI projects get overlooked

Plenty of consultancies will only talk to you if there is a large budget and a long roadmap. That leaves a gap for the business that simply wants its weekly sales spreadsheet turned into something reliable, or the finance manager who has three half working reports and needs someone to sort them out. Those jobs are where we spend a lot of our time, and we enjoy them, because the difference you notice on day one is usually huge.

A small Power BI project is not a lesser project. The same care goes into the data model, the measures and the layout. It is just scoped tightly enough that you can see exactly what you are paying for and have it working in weeks rather than quarters.

What a typical Power BI project looks like

Single report or dashboard build

You tell us the question you want answered every Monday morning. We connect to the sources that hold the answer, often Excel, Xero, Sage, a CRM or a SQL database, and build a report that refreshes itself. This is the most common starting point and the one we recommend if you are new to Power BI.

Power BI report design and redesign

Many businesses already have reports that technically work but nobody trusts or enjoys using. Power BI report design is about more than colours. We rework the page structure so the most important number is obvious, remove visuals that add noise, and make filtering behave the way people expect. If the visual side is your main concern, our dashboard design page goes into more detail.

First Power BI implementation

For a business setting up Power BI for the first time, a small implementation covers the basics properly: a sensible workspace structure, the right licences, a scheduled refresh through a gateway if your data sits on premises, and one or two reports that prove the value. Getting these foundations right early saves a painful rebuild later.

Fixes and performance tuning

A report that takes forty seconds to load, a refresh that fails every Tuesday, a total that does not match the accounts. These are short, well defined jobs. If you want a full picture of what else might be lurking, a fixed price Power BI audit is a good companion piece.

How we run Power BI report development

Every project follows the same simple rhythm, whatever the size.

• A short call to agree the question, the audience and the data sources.
• A written fixed price quote with a clear list of what is and is not included.
• A first draft within days, built on your real data, so you can react to something concrete.
• One or two rounds of changes based on how your team actually uses it.
• Handover, including a short recorded walkthrough and notes on how the measures work.

Showing a working draft early matters more than any specification document. People rarely know exactly what they want from a report until they see one with their own numbers in it, and catching that in week one is far cheaper than in week six.

What it costs

Most single report builds sit between £1,500 and £4,500. A redesign of an existing report is often less. A first implementation with two or three reports and the setup work around them typically lands between £4,000 and £9,000. The main variable is not the number of charts, it is how tidy your source data is. If your figures live in a dozen hand edited spreadsheets, some of the budget goes on making them dependable, and that is money well spent.

For a broader view of rates and what drives them, our guide to Power BI consulting costs in the UK sets out typical day rates and project sizes.

Who this is for

Owner managed businesses, finance and operations leads in mid sized firms, and teams inside larger organisations who need something built without going through a major procurement. We work with every industry and deliver remotely across the UK, with on site visits available in the North of England. If you are not sure whether Power BI is right for a business your size, read our honest take on Power BI for small business, or browse Power BI dashboard examples to see the kind of thing we build.

After the project

You own everything we build. Some clients take it from there with a little Power BI training. Others keep us on a light support arrangement for changes and new reports as the business grows. There is no lock in either way.

Frequently asked questions