A company's finance function generates dozens of reports: P&L, cash-flow, budget vs actual, forecasts, commercial KPIs. Apache Superset is an open source alternative to proprietary tools (Tableau, Power BI) to drive this activity. This guide details essential dashboards and data architecture for 2026.
1. Why Superset for finance?
CFOs spend on average 30-40% of their time on reporting production. A performant and flexible BI platform reduces this ratio to 10-15%. Apache Superset offers this capability, free, with native connection to modern ERPs (Oracle, SAP, NetSuite via their replications, Quickbooks API).
If you want to start quickly, TVL Managed Superset deploys an instance in less than 3 minutes, GDPR-compliant and hosted in France.
2. Recommended finance data architecture
- Sources: ERP (SAP, Oracle, NetSuite), accounting (Xero, QuickBooks), banking (Open Banking), Stripe, payroll (Payfit, ADP);
- Ingestion via Fivetran or Airbyte to a warehouse (BigQuery, Snowflake, Postgres);
- dbt modeling in layers: staging → marts → finance metrics;
- Superset connected to marts for CFO and operational dashboards.
3. Dashboard 1 — CFO dashboard
- Revenue (current month, quarter, year);
- Gross margin and net margin;
- EBITDA;
- Cash position and burn rate;
- Runway (months remaining);
- Top 5 charges per line.
4. Dashboard 2 — Monthly P&L
Detailed view:
- Revenue (by product, segment, geography);
- COGS;
- OPEX by category (salaries, marketing, IT, premises);
- Margin at each line;
- Budget vs actual comparison.
5. Dashboard 3 — Cash-flow and treasury
- Daily cash inflows;
- Outflows (suppliers, salaries, taxes);
- Cash balance;
- 30, 60, 90-day forecasts;
- DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) and DPO (Days Payable Outstanding).
6. Dashboard 4 — Management control
- Budget vs actual per cost center;
- Variance analysis (significant gaps flagged);
- FTEs per team and average cost;
- Productivity per employee (revenue / FTE);
- ROI of major investments.
This configuration is applied by default on TVL Managed Superset, which follows community best practices.
7. Dashboard 5 — Sales reporting
- Pipeline (open, qualified, won, lost);
- Win rate per segment and per sales rep;
- Average sales cycle;
- Weighted forecast;
- Quota attainment per sales rep.
8. Dashboard 6 — Accounts receivable and payable
- AR aging (pending invoices by tranche);
- AP aging;
- Top 10 late customers;
- DSO per segment;
- Bad debt risk.
9. Financial KPIs to track
| KPI | Formula | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Gross margin | (Revenue − COGS) / Revenue | Daily |
| EBITDA | Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization | Monthly |
| Burn rate | OPEX − Revenue | Monthly |
| Runway | Cash / Burn rate | Monthly |
| DSO | (AR / Revenue) × period days | Monthly |
| Working capital | Current assets − Current liabilities | Monthly |
10. Security and confidentiality
Financial data is sensitive. Specific measures:
- Row Level Security per cost center: each manager only sees their team;
- Mandatory SSO with MFA;
- Audit log kept 5 years (accounting obligation);
- EU hosting GDPR compliant (cf. our GDPR guide).
11. Limits to know
- Superset is not a consolidation tool (no automatic intercompany eliminations);
- No integrated approval workflow (combine with a dedicated tool);
- No data entry: Superset is read-only by design;
- No advanced simulation (use Causal, Pigment, or Cube as complement).
12. Conclusion
Apache Superset covers 80% of the financial reporting needs of a modern SME or mid-market, at near-zero cost. For more advanced functions (consolidation, planning), it integrates as a visualization layer above a dedicated EPM.
Want the benefits of Apache Superset without the friction of installation and maintenance? Deploy your instance in 3 clicks with TVL Managed Superset, hosted in Europe (OVHcloud, Roubaix, France).
For more: SaaS metrics, Apache Superset for startups, GDPR compliance.