By using this website, you agree to our Terms of Use (click here)
For those who haven't seen the new Velixo formulas for Acumatica Generic Inquiries, I definitely recommend checking them out. I'm using them at a client and they work great.
Prior to these new formulas, Velixo could only work with General Ledger and Project Ledger data. Now Velixo can work with ANY Acumatica data since you can now connect Velixo to ANY Acumatica Generic Inquiry.
I'm a big fan of the Power Query functionality which is part of the Power BI functionality that is now available natively in Excel. However, these new Velixo formulas force me to consider when it makes sense to use Power Query / Power BI and when to use these new Velixo formulas instead. There are pros and cons.
One thing that Velixo does very well is refresh with their Caching and Smart Refresh technology. The Velixo team is not only geeky smart, but they do a great job of explaining their technology in ways you can understand. Take this video for example on Caching and Smart Refresh:
There are also a number of help articles on these new Generic Inquiry formulas:
https://support.velixo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043275251-Introduction-to-Generic-Inquiries
https://support.velixo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360039836672
https://support.velixo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043984151
https://support.velixo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043452092-GIFILTER-function
https://support.velixo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041105412
https://support.velixo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041540891-GILOOKUPF-function
These new Generic Inquiry formulas are especially powerful because of the new Dynamic Array formulas which are the biggest change to the Excel calculation engine since PowerPivot in Excel 2010. For more on Dynamic Array formulas, checkout this post:
https://exceljet.net/dynamic-array-formulas-in-excel
Actually, these new Generic Inquiry formulas ARE dynamic array formulas. That means you can wrap them in regular Excel formulas like SUM. It's not that exciting to just dump a table from Acumatica into Excel (Power BI does that better in my opinion). What is exciting is to then DO SOMETHING to that table. If you create a Velixo GI formula that returns one column, then wrap it in the SUM formula, you'll get a total. Or wrap it in something other than SUM or combine with multiple formulas for even more interesting results.
What's nice is that these new Velixo formulas give you the flexibility of cell-by-cell spreadsheet calculations (which are important in financial reports) together with the speed and simplicity of Velixo Caching and Refresh. Combine that with the fact that you're living in Excel, a tool that most Accountants are already familiar with, and you have a new compelling way to consume ANY data in Acumatica.
