Guide · ~6 min
Data cleaning before dashboards
Odoo data cleaning before BI dashboards
Dashboards on duplicate partners, wrong analytic tags, and opening balances nobody trusts are worse than spreadsheets, they look official while being wrong.
Short answer: run a structured clean-up, dedupe masters, fix chart of accounts and opening balances, validate imports on staging, reconcile stock and AR/AP, then build BI on top with clear KPI definitions.
The cleaning sequence
- Partner & product deduplication: merge without breaking open documents
- Chart of accounts rationalization: retire unused accounts, fix mis-postings
- Opening balances: tie to bank and donor reports
- Import hygiene: dry-run CSV/Excel loads with validation rules
- Analytic tags & dimensions: align projects, outlets, donors
Then BI, not before
Executive dashboards, outlet scorecards, and donor burn-rate views only work when dimensions are consistent. Define KPIs in writing before building pivots. “Revenue” must mean the same thing in every shop.
Signs you need cleaning first
- Two finance teams maintain parallel Excel “truth”
- POS session totals do not match accounting entries
- Donor reports require manual adjustments every quarter