Picture this: You're in a meeting with your CFO when they ask, 'What's our current cash position by region?' Or, they want a view of Q4 expenses by cost center within the hour.
If you're stuck with manual reporting, questions like these can throw off your entire day. By the time you’ve pulled the data and built the report, the decision’s already been made without your input. Research from the FP&A Trends Group shows that just 35% of FP&A teams’ time is spent generating insights to support decision-making, with too much time going to data collection and validation.
With fluctuating inflation and interest rates creating a need for faster, more agile financial analysis, this labor-intensive approach to reporting isn’t sustainable or scalable.
Vena’s Ad Hoc Reporting capabilities help solve this by making it faster and easier to produce the exact report you need, right when you need it. This way, the FP&A function goes from being order-takers to strategic partners who guide decisions.
In this article, you'll learn how Vena Ad Hoc Reporting works, learn how real customers are putting it into action, and discover how you can make the shift from reactive reporting to strategic analysis.
Vena Ad Hoc Reporting is a drag-and-drop tool that pulls live data from your Vena database into any Excel file on demand, whether you're working in an existing Vena report or a standalone Excel file. It is the fastest way to pull data from your Vena models into Excel and see your numbers in real time.
This enables you to build and share the exact view you need in minutes, whether you're in a board meeting or responding to a budget owner's request.
The tool uses Vena CubeFlex—our multidimensional OLAP database technology—to access live data from your data models, so you can explore specific data slices, isolate relevant details, and drop them into Excel where you can apply native Excel functionality such as formulas, charts and formatting.
Ad hoc reporting helps FP&A teams respond to leadership questions quickly and guide business decisions without spending hours pulling data, cleaning it up, and rebuilding reports from scratch. As a result, their time is freed up to focus on what actually moves the business forward.
In our 2025 State of Strategic Finance report, we learned that the top challenge inhibiting finance teams’ planning efforts was accessing data from multiple source systems (cited by 36%), while another 15% pointed to the time drain of manipulating data into a usable format. This leaves FP&A teams in data wrangling mode when they should be analyzing trends, stress-testing scenarios, and advising leadership.
The stakes are even higher now because economic conditions keep changing, which means executive leaders are leaning harder on FP&A for real-time insights.
As Vena CFO Melissa Howatson noted in a recent interview with CFO Leadership, "Uncertainty is the new certainty, and we need to run businesses that are more agile than ever because the pace of change in the world around us is just quicker than it used to be."
That shift—from static annual planning to continuous scenario modeling—requires speed. When you're constantly playing catch-up to ad hoc data requests, it's nearly impossible to fulfill that strategic role. This is where ad hoc reporting tools like Vena help.
Instead of waiting on IT, or building custom reports from scratch every time a new question comes up, you can quickly create the exact view leaders need and pull useful insights that explain what changed, why it happened, and what actions the business should take next.
Vena Ad Hoc Reporting works directly in Excel, so you don't need to learn a new interface or switch platforms. It integrates with Excel's native features, including formatting, formulas, pivot-table workflows, and modern tools like the Analyze Data feature and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Because it's built natively right into Excel, you can run variance analysis, build trend reports, and pull exactly what you need without waiting for IT or other analysts to build custom views.
With the drag-and-drop interface, you can quickly adjust your report view by adding or removing dimensions such as entities, departments, cost centers, or financial statement line items. For instance, if you need Q4 expenses by cost center or want to drill from summary numbers into specific sub-entities, you can drag the fields you need and build that view in seconds.
You're pulling only the exact slice of data you need from your Vena models—not exporting entire datasets. And if you need to add context, you can combine that data with external datasets (like market data or assumptions from another system) in the same spreadsheet.
Vena Ad Hoc Reporting is also the underlying engine behind Vena Copilot's Reporting Agent. When Vena Copilot generates a report, it opens directly in Excel with Ad Hoc enabled, so you can immediately slice, filter, and drill into the results.
You can start with a new sheet or use an existing one, and Vena Ad Hoc gives you real-time control over how your report is structured.
On the right side of your screen, you'll see all available dimensions from your data models—entities, departments, accounts, time periods, scenarios, etc. Drag the dimensions you need into the Column and Row areas to build your report layout. As you drag them in, you'll see a preview on the grid showing how the report will look once populated. For example, if you want to break down revenue accounts by location, drag “Entity” into the Rows area.
Once your dimensions are in place, specify which members you want to include (the accounts you want to see data for). You can choose them manually from the dimension hierarchies or set them dynamically.
For instance, if you want the most granular detail, you can select "Bottom Level" from the Entity hierarchy to see all individual locations.
Once you've selected your members, click Refresh to run the report and populate it with live data from your Vena models.
If you need to compare actuals against budget or add variance columns, simply drag the Scenario dimension into Columns, check off “Budget” and “Variance”, and refresh. The report instantly updates with the new columns.
If you want to break down expenses by department, drag “Department” into the Row area. The report will expand to show each account broken down by department.
When you need more detail on a specific value, use the drill-down feature to navigate through your dimensional hierarchies. Click on any value in your report to drill from high-level summaries into specific sub-entities, departments, or line items.
From here, you can use native Excel features—formulas, conditional formatting, charts—to refine your report. You can also use modern Excel tools like the “Analyze Data” feature (which automatically identifies trends, patterns, and outliers in your data) or Microsoft 365 Copilot for AI-driven insights.
Add dimensions to your page filters to create dropdown menus on the grid. This lets you toggle through different slices of your dataset—switching between entities, time periods, or scenarios for instance—without rebuilding the report. When you select different options, the report refreshes instantly, and your formatting and formulas will remain intact.
Once your report is ready, save it locally or to a shared drive. You can send it to colleagues or share it for simultaneous collaboration. If someone else opens the file, they can pick up where you left off, refine the selections, or expand on the analysis.
Before Vena, Oakworth Capital Bank's finance team was spending 5–7 days on month-end reporting, with multiple team members manually consolidating data from various sources. "Our team was relying on large, cumbersome reports that had to be manually maintained and updated anytime we had a month rollover or wanted to do a scenario analysis," says Gus Arndt, Associate Managing Director and Performance Reporting Manager at Oakworth.
With Vena Ad Hoc Reporting, they cut that process down to just 2 days. The team can now build reports in one-fifth of the time, pulling exactly what they need directly into Excel with live data, instead of gathering information from multiple sources.
This speed also enabled them to respond to business challenges in real time. For instance, when interest rates shifted, Oakworth used Vena's scenario modeling capabilities to quickly analyze how rate changes would impact different products, which allowed them to adjust their product recommendations to customers accordingly.
"I honestly don’t know how we operated before Vena. It has transformed how we handle financial reporting, giving us back hundreds of hours per year and significantly improving the accuracy of our financial insights. It’s an essential tool for any modern finance team.”
Gus Arndt, Associate Managing Director, Performance Reporting Manager, Oakworth Capital Bank
When you can build reports in minutes, you spend less time on data consolidation and more time on analysis. FP&A teams can focus on uncovering trends, modeling scenarios, and advising leadership rather than being stuck in spreadsheets validating data. Vena Ad Hoc Reporting removes the manual reporting bottleneck, which gives FP&A teams the bandwidth to shift from answering data requests to surfacing the insights that inform business decisions.
Ready to speed up your financial reporting? Learn more about Vena's financial reporting and analysis solutions.
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Get StartedNicole Diceman is Director, Product Marketing at Vena. With a proven track record of driving product strategy and direction, she is heavily involved in driving new product ideas and development efforts and is closely aligned with customer needs and requirements. With her extensive knowledge and experience in product marketing, FP&A and the Vena platform itself, Nicole is a regular contributor to the Vena blog and often speaks at virtual and in-person events to share her ideas. A powerful advocate for product marketing innovation, Nicole is always on the lookout for creative new ways to bring additional value to Vena customers.
