Fathom vs Power BI

October 22, 2024

This article provides a detailed, objective Fathom vs Power BI comparison, focusing on the financial analysis and reporting capabilities of these two leading platforms.

By the end, you’ll have a clear understanding of which solution best fits your business’s needs.

Fathom vs Power BI: Quick Summary

See how Fathom compares as a Power BI alternative.

Power BI
Cash flow forecasting
Management reporting
Consolidated reporting
Financial analysis
Out-of-the-box financial management capabilities
KPI and reporting templates
Automated data syncs

Fathom vs Power BI Comparison: Introduction

Are you looking for a financial analysis and reporting platform that balances ease of use with powerful insights? Fathom and Power BI are two leading platforms that can help.

Fathom is purpose-built for financial reporting, analysis and forecasting, making it a go-to solution for accountants and business owners.

Meanwhile, Power BI is one of the world’s most popular business intelligence and data visualisation solutions. The platform can be used to gain insights into any kind of business data, and is particularly powerful for financial reporting, analysis and forecasting.

In this Fathom vs Power BI comparison, we explore how each platform handles financial management, breaking down their features and customer support.

What is Fathom?

Fathom is a cloud-based platform designed to simplify complex financial processes for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), accountants and multi-entity organisations.

As a Power BI comparison, Fathom compares favourably for its tools specifically designed for financial management. It enables consolidated reporting for multiple entities, pre-built reports and KPIs, and cash flow projections you can create in minutes.

Trusted by over 80,000 organisations worldwide, Fathom’s key strength lies in its visual reports and dashboards, intuitive design, advanced customisation and comprehensive customer support.

What is Power BI?

Power BI is a business intelligence and data visualisation platform developed by Microsoft. It enables users to connect to various data sources, transform raw data into meaningful insights and create interactive reports and dashboards.

While not exclusively designed for financial management, Power BI offers robust tools that can be tailored for financial reporting, forecasting and analysis. The platform is used by over 100,000 organisations worldwide.

Fathom vs Power BI Comparison: Key Features

Fathom and Power BI both offer compelling visualisations of financial data, customisable reporting and scenario-based projections, but they differ in important ways. Let’s look at how their features compare:

Fathom

As a Power BI alternative, Fathom stands out for its purpose-built financial management features you can quickly utilise out-of-the-box. Here, we explore its key capabilities:

  • Management reporting

    Fathom’s management reporting offers a fast, flexible way to create financial reports with beautiful visuals that combine data, commentary and charts.

    The platform offers customisable templates and unlimited reporting outputs, with the ability to schedule the delivery of reports to your inbox with a single click.

  • Consolidated reporting

    Fathom allows businesses to consolidate up to 300 entities supporting multi-currency transactions and inter-company eliminations. This feature enables you to automate manual processes and simplify consolidations for complex financial structures.

  • Cash flow forecasting

    Fathom excels in cash flow forecasting , offering a three-way forecasting model that supports unlimited scenarios.

    Its business roadmap feature brings forecasts to life with visual planning, while Fathom’s microforecasts make it easy to gauge the financial impact of new initiatives, like hiring staff or buying an asset, for instance.

  • Financial analysis

    As a Power BI alternative, Fathom compares favourably for its intuitive dashboards that are specifically designed to track financial metrics. Analysis is easy with over 50 out-of-the-box metrics, or you can create your own with the formula builder. You can also track non-financial KPIs.

  • Integrations

    Fathom integrates smoothly with Xero, QuickBooks, MYOB, Sage, Access Financials, Excel and Google Sheets, allowing for automatic data synchronisation.

Power BI

At its core, Power BI enables you to connect, model and visualise data from various sources.

When it comes to financial management, the platform’s strengths lie in its ability to automate mundane tasks and provide real-time financial reporting, forecasting and analysis.

Let’s break down its primary capabilities:

  • Reports and dashboards

    With Power BI, you can create highly interactive and customisable visual reports and dashboards that help stakeholders or clients quickly grasp complex financial data.

    The drag-and-drop interface allows for quick report building, with the ability to add a range of visualisations including charts, graphs and maps.

    As Power BI isn’t designed for financial reporting specifically, it doesn’t come with reporting templates. However, you can easily import your own templates from Excel.

  • Tracking KPIs

    Power BI enables you to flexibly define formulas and calculations to create financial metrics, including growth rates, profitability ratios and more.

    You, your team or clients can track KPIs in real-time and receive instant alerts about changes to financial data. The platform leverages Microsoft’s AI capabilities to generate automatic insights.

  • Financial projections

    Power BI enables you to create financial projections like cash flow forecasts, with the ability to model and visualise different scenarios using the platform’s what-if analysis tools.

    You can also use Power BI’s time intelligence feature to apply dimensions and parameters to historical data, allowing you to identify trends and patterns.

  • Data integration

    Power BI stands out for its ability to integrate financial and non-financial data from a wide variety of sources, including Excel, Google Analytics, Salesforce, Microsoft Azure, ERP solutions and external databases.

  • Collaboration

    You can easily share reports and dashboards across teams and collaborate in real time, ensuring everyone is aligned on the same financial data.

Fathom vs Power BI: Customer Support

Any Fathom vs Power BI comparison needs to discuss the setup and ongoing support offered by the two solutions. Let’s look at how they compare:

Fathom

To help you get started with the platform or resolve any issues, Fathom provides dedicated phone and email support via its Australia-based customer service team.

You can also access hundreds of step-by-step guides, FAQs, webinars and articles in its extensive Help Centre. Meanwhile, Fathom’s Advisable platform offers accountants a wealth of insights into business advisory.

Power BI

You can request support from Microsoft online via the Power BI admin centre within the platform.

Users are encouraged to first seek help via the comprehensive Power BI online help centre, which includes a range of troubleshooting and how-to guides, in addition to Microsoft’s extensive community forums.

Fathom vs Power BI Comparison: Key Takeaways

As a Power BI alternative, Fathom stands out as a purpose-built financial management tool, designed specifically for accountants, SMEs and franchisors.

This means you can start using its reporting, consolidation and forecasting capabilities right away, without significant setup or a steep learning curve.

Fathom offers advanced out-of-the-box functionality that specifically caters to the needs of finance teams and accountants, who can save considerable time with a wealth of templates and automation features.  You can also rely on phone support via an Australia-based team.

On the other hand, Power BI offers powerful features you can customise for financial reporting, analysis and forecasting.

The platform is very flexible and enables you to generate highly interactive and visual reports. It also helps automate many manual tasks and is easy to adopt for those familiar with spreadsheets.

However, given Power BI isn’t exclusively designed for financial reporting, you’ll need to invest time in setting it up for that purpose.

To learn more about how Fathom fares as a Power BI alternative, you can start by visiting our dedicated product page or reading our customer testimonials.

You can also try Fathom free for 14 days and access even more insights on our blog.

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