Q360 Live Data is great. It's not Power BI.
Q360's built-in Live Data and Dashboards are solid for operational reporting — open quote value, AR aging, inventory counts, project margin snapshots. The people who live in Q360 every day use them constantly, and they work. But when the CFO, the CEO, or the board asks for something that requires cross-source data, deeper slicing, or a genuinely interactive visualization, Live Data hits its limits fast.
Power BI and Tableau exist because non-trivial BI needs a purpose-built tool. The good news: Q360 exposes enough data that we can build exactly the dashboards your executives need, against the data that's already in your ERP.
Live Data excels at operational reporting within Q360. For cross-database analysis combining Q360 with accounting and CRM data, time-series comparisons across periods, interactive multi-dimension drill-downs, and executive-grade dashboard presentations, a dedicated BI platform provides greater flexibility.
Our Q360 BI practice.
We build custom Power BI or Tableau solutions specifically for Q360 shops, with the integration layer that pulls data out of Q360 and the dashboards on top that turn it into decisions.
Your data is already in Q360. We give you the dashboards that make it visible, interactive, and trustworthy — for the people who aren't in Q360 every day.
Our preferred tools.
Our five-phase engagement.
- Discovery. We sit with your leadership to map what you're tracking today (and not tracking), what decisions are being made with incomplete data, and what KPIs would actually change behavior if they were visible. Honest assessment, not a feature wishlist.
- Piloting. We pick 1-2 target KPIs and build a data pipeline from Q360 (via database access or API) to a minimal Power BI report. Proves the plumbing works end-to-end before we scale.
- Development. Full dashboard build against the agreed KPI set — project margin, AR aging, sales velocity, inventory turns, labor utilization, whatever your leadership actually looks at. Testing and refinement cycles.
- Training. We train your team to use the dashboards, understand the underlying data, and trust the numbers. Executives who don't trust their BI just ignore it.
- Ongoing optimization. Business priorities shift. New data sources come online. New KPIs matter. We stay engaged for tune-ups and new-dashboard builds as your needs evolve.
Dashboards we've built for Q360 shops.
- Project margin tracker — actual vs budgeted margin per project, with drill-down to labor hours, parts cost, change orders, and subcontractor spend
- AR aging and collections forecast — current aging bucket by customer, predicted cash-in for the next 30/60/90 days, collection-action status
- Sales velocity dashboard — pipeline value, close rate by stage, win/loss by salesperson, average time-to-close, and forecast by month
- Inventory turns and obsolescence — stock value by warehouse, days-on-shelf, items that haven't moved in 90+ days, and suggested reorder quantities
- Labor utilization — billable hours by tech, project vs service mix, utilization against target, and unplanned time
- Executive summary — one-page snapshot combining revenue, margin, pipeline, cash, and headcount for board and investor meetings
Frequently asked questions.
No — only for the users who consume the reports interactively. Most shops end up with Pro licenses for executives and department heads, and publish the same content to everyone else as exported PDFs or embedded dashboards.
No. We run the BI pipeline against a replica or read-replica of your Q360 database (or via the Q360 API), so dashboard refreshes don't compete with operational queries.
Yes — and this is where BI really earns its keep. We commonly join Q360 with accounting (QuickBooks, NetSuite), CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce), HRIS (ADP, BambooHR), and operational tools to produce cross-cut dashboards nothing else can.
Pilot phase is usually 2-3 weeks. Full dashboard build phase is 6-10 weeks depending on number of dashboards and data-source complexity. Most clients see initial value within the first month.