Why Are We Still Paying for Power BI? I Tested Claude Dashboards on a Real Excel Report, by Ani Björkström | AI for Finance professionals on YouTube. 14 min 28 s.
- Video length
- 14 min 28 s
- Time to do it
- 20 minutes
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Steps
- 9
What you need
Steps
Open your Excel report and check the tabs. You need monthly revenue, budget, cost lines and region columns in a consistent layout before uploading anything.
Confirm your Claude plan includes Dashboards. Free and paid tiers differ, and Enterprise may need an admin to switch the feature on for your workspace.
Create a new project in Claude and give it a clear name, such as Monthly Finance Dashboard, so the files and chats stay together.
Upload the Excel file into the project. Keep the data made up or anonymised until your company approves real figures.
Paste your dashboard prompt. Ask for revenue against budget per month and revenue center, profit per center, cost lines above budget, and revenue by region, with filters for center and month.
Review the live dashboard Claude builds. Click the filters to test by revenue center and by month, and check the charts match your four requests.
Open the share link and send it to colleagues. Set the access so only the people who need the dashboard can view it.
Click any number to see its source and formula. Confirm each figure traces back to the right Excel cell before you trust the report.
Ask Claude in plain English to change charts, for example swap a bar chart for a line chart or add a cost breakdown.
Tips and common mistakes
Never upload real company data to an AI tool until your data protection rules allow it.
Check the source and formula behind a few key numbers before sharing the dashboard.
Keep your Excel columns consistent each month so the dashboard does not break on refresh.
For audited or regulated reports, keep your existing BI tool as the official source.
Questions
Is Claude Dashboards free?
It depends on your Claude plan. Some tiers include it and Enterprise workspaces may need an admin to enable it, so check your plan before starting.
Can I connect Claude to Snowflake or BigQuery instead of Excel?
Yes. Claude can connect to Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift and Databricks, so you can build dashboards from a warehouse rather than a spreadsheet.
Do I still need Power BI?
For small teams and quick internal reports, Claude Dashboards can replace it. Regulated companies with audited reports often still need Power BI.
This guide was drafted from the video's details and general task knowledge. It has not been checked against the full video. Check the video and relevant product instructions before following a procedure. Report a correction.
