Business reporting built into your operations — not licensed as a separate BI tool.

We replace. We build. We optimize.

Every line of code we write is yours at cutover. No license. No annual increase. No lock-in.

How much does business reporting software cost in the Philippines?

Off-the-shelf BI tools run ₱800–8,000 per user per month. An Orkids reporting build is one fee that covers every user, every branch, and every report type — the code is yours, with no per-seat charge. Your exact scope and price are confirmed on the first call.

A ten-seat team on Tableau Creator at ₱5,000/user/month pays ₱600K a year before the first report is built — and still needs a data engineer to set up the pipeline. Optional Orkids ops support is ₱50K–250K/month with no lock-in.

What is the difference between Tableau, Power BI, and a custom reporting system?

Tableau and Power BI are generic BI tools that need a data pipeline configured before they can show you anything. A custom system reads directly from your operational database — no pipeline, no export, no ETL.

The practical difference is time-to-insight: a branch manager on a custom system sees last night's close when they open their phone at 8am. On a Tableau deployment with a nightly batch, they wait for the data engineer to confirm the pipeline ran clean. With Excel, they wait until Thursday.

Can reports connect directly to our POS, payroll, and inventory data?

Yes. The reporting layer reads from the same operational database as the POS, payroll, and inventory modules — there is no ETL step, no data warehouse to maintain, and no lag between a sale and its appearance in the P&L.

This is the structural advantage of building reporting into the operation rather than bolting it on. When a cashier posts a sale, a payroll run processes, or a purchase receipt is entered, the change propagates to the reporting layer in the same transaction. Nothing is stale.

Does it generate BIR-required reports automatically?

Yes. The 2550M, 2550Q, 1601-C, SAWT, alphalist, and BIR-format journal entries are generated from live transaction data — your bookkeeper does not remap the trial balance to a BIR form every quarter.

The mapping from ledger entries to BIR form fields is part of the data model, not a post-processing step. If the BIR changes a form, we update the template; you are not rebuilding the export logic in Excel again. For large taxpayers, EIS transmission under RR 11-2025 is built into the same pipeline.

How do we see branch-level P&L?

Branch P&L is a standard view — revenue, cost of goods, labour, and overhead attributed to each branch by the data model. The operations director sees every store from one screen; the branch manager sees only their store.

Branch attribution is built into every transaction, not reconstructed at reporting time. A multi-entity group with separate legal entities and shared overhead gets consolidation views at the group level alongside individual branch statements — without the manual allocation spreadsheet.

Can board members see dashboards without needing software licences?

Yes. Read-only board views are built into the system — executives see the dashboards assigned to their role without requiring a paid analyst seat or a separate BI tool login.

Role-based access means the board sees what the CFO wants them to see, the operations director sees branch details, and the branch manager sees their location. Nobody gets access to a spreadsheet with all branches visible. Access is revoked when someone leaves the organisation without a system administrator rebuilding permission sets.

How is data updated — real-time or in batches?

Real-time for operational data (sales, inventory, payroll journals). Daily scheduled jobs handle reports that aggregate across periods — daily close, weekly summary, and month-end statements run on a schedule you configure.

The branch manager sees their hourly sales performance in real time. The CFO's daily close report runs at 6am and covers the prior business day — no one waits for an analyst to pull it. Monthly statutory reports run on the first working day of the month and are ready before the accounting team starts work.

Can it replace Excel for monthly close?

Yes. The monthly close is a report run, not a reconciliation exercise — the system closes each period by locking transactions and generating the period-end statements from the same data the daily reports read from.

Variance analysis, accrual posting, and intercompany eliminations are part of the close workflow, not a separate spreadsheet. The three-to-five-day close cycle a multi-branch operator typically runs in Excel is reduced to a half-day confirmation that the automated run is correct.

Do we need a data engineer to operate the reporting system?

No. Operational reports — branch P&L, sales summary, payroll cost, inventory valuation — run on a schedule without any manual intervention. Custom report requests are handled by the Orkids ops team if you are on support.

The system is designed for operations managers and finance staff, not data engineers. Adding a new KPI to a dashboard is a configuration change, not a pipeline rewrite. If your team wants to build their own reports, the query layer is standard SQL on a Postgres database — any analyst can work with it.

How long does reporting setup take?

Reporting ships as part of the full build — it is not a separate phase. The first branch P&L and daily close reports are live on cutover day, because the data model was designed for them from the start.

BIR statutory reports follow the same timeline as the compliance module — typically within the first two weeks. Custom KPI dashboards for specific operator needs are scoped and built in the first sprint alongside the operational modules.

What about reports for banks or external auditors?

Yes. The system generates a full auditable trail — general ledger, subsidiary ledgers, journal entries with source document references — in formats acceptable to Philippine banks and the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

When a bank requests six months of financials for a credit facility, the export is a report run, not a reconstruction exercise. When an external auditor requests a transaction listing for a test of controls, the system produces it by account, period, and transaction type in under a minute.

Can we set alerts when KPIs go out of range?

Yes. Threshold alerts send a notification to the operations manager when a KPI — daily sales, inventory reorder level, cash position, or payroll cost — crosses a configured ceiling or floor.

Alerts can route to email, SMS, or the internal notification feed. A branch that has not posted a daily close by 9pm triggers an alert to the area manager automatically — the operations director does not need to chase each branch individually.

Does it work on mobile?

Yes. The reporting interface is built mobile-first. A branch manager checking their daily sales on a mid-range Android phone at 390px sees the same data as the CFO on a desktop, formatted for the screen.

Critical operational dashboards — branch sales, cash position, and inventory alerts — are designed to fit above the fold at 390px so the manager sees the key number without scrolling. Detailed drill-downs are accessible with a tap.

Can different users see different data based on their role?

Yes. Role-based access is part of the data model — the branch manager queries only their branch, the area director sees their cluster, the CFO sees the group. No configuration step is needed after onboarding.

Access is attribute-based, not permission-list-based. When a manager is reassigned to a different branch or cluster, their access updates with the assignment — the system administrator does not rebuild a permission set. A terminated employee's access is revoked at offboarding.

What happens to our data if we stop using the system?

The data is yours. You receive a full export in standard formats (CSV, JSON, or database dump) at any time. The source code is already yours — you can run the system on your own infrastructure indefinitely.

There is no vendor lock-in, no data-hostage clause, and no migration fee. If you move to a different reporting tool in five years, the data export is a routine operation. The contract is written this way intentionally.

Does it integrate with accounting software we already use?

Yes. The system can write journal entries to QuickBooks, Xero, or SAP in real time or on a scheduled sync — so the accounting tool your bookkeeper already knows continues working while the operational reporting runs on the new system.

Most Philippine mid-market operators find that after six months on the integrated system, the separate accounting tool becomes redundant — but there is no mandate to replace it. The integration is bidirectional: chart-of-accounts changes in the accounting tool propagate to the reporting layer automatically.

Can reports be exported to PDF or Excel?

Yes. Any report in the system exports to PDF for filing or to Excel for further analysis with one click — no special export tool, no API call, no data analyst in the loop.

PDF exports are formatted for printing and filing — the BIR alphalist, for example, exports in the exact layout the BIR submission portal accepts. Excel exports include the raw data with all columns visible so the finance team can do their own analysis without rebuilding the report from source.