Special program in Excel

[jimrup04]

Hello guys, want to know if this project is doable. I am a dealership with a important software that gives me live data from our current market to which I can see our sold vehicles in the past 14, 30 and 60 days. However, the application is fairly limited to what I can do with my data. There is an option to export to excel either by creating manually, or creating an automation to receive a report via email OR through an FTP server. 

Would it be possible to create a feed that would update my Excel spreadsheet with fresh data, updating the current vehicles and adding the new ones, and then run formulas so that when I open the excel spreadsheet in the morning, everything is in place and I can get a clear view of where i'm going ?

Yes some softwares exist for what I can do, but we are talking about 10,000$ yearly of additional overhead simply to have a excel like view of my data showed through Graphics and columns.  

Thanks in advance. 

[#2]

You mention some automation to export a report - what formats are available? .csv by any chance?

Your limitation is how you can get the data out of this application, so excel (or powerbi) can read it.

If this is an in-house application, you may even be able to query the database directly. You could also use a webquery if the application has a friendly web front-end.

[#3]

@wsantos I can only send the file .xls or plain text seperated by commas, and my only methods would be via FTP server or email. It is not a in-house application, we pay for the service as they source their data from 3rd party advertising websites, which would cost us a fortune to get. 

[#4]

@jimrup04 If you can attach the file to an email, you could use power automate to extract it to a folder somewhere. Using .xls or .csv as a data source for a query is trivial. Your excel spreadsheet can use it and refresh results automatically when you open it (powerbi may still be a better solution). There are other options, like setting up an ftp server if you have that capability - check with your IT/hosting company . A consultant should be able to build you something for a lot less than $10K, depending on what your report requirements are - the devil is in the details, as always, and until someone can review your actual final report(s), it's all speculation.