A cube-connected workbook is just an Excel file with a live connection to your data in Catalyst — and at its heart, it's a pivot table. This guide is for new and beginner users who want to confidently open, refresh, navigate, and build reports from a cube file, with finance-friendly tips for structuring clean, reliable workbooks along the way.
Before You Begin: Requirements
A cube-connected file pulls live data from your Catalyst instance through an external data connection. Before that connection can work, two things need to be in place on your machine. Take a minute to confirm both — it saves a lot of troubleshooting later.
1. The EBM Excel Add-In must be installed. This add-in (the EBM Office Bridge) connects Excel to your cubes. Without it, the file can't talk to your data and you'll see broken or empty pivot tables. It appears as an EBM Office Bridge tab in the Excel ribbon once installed. See Installing the EBM Excel Add-In.
2. You'll likely need a Trusted Location set up. Because these files carry an external data connection, Excel blocks them by default until you tell it the file's folder is safe. This one-time, ~2-minute setup prevents the most common errors new users hit. See Setting Up Trusted Locations for EBM Excel Files.
Heads up — files are now .xlsx. Cube files used to ship as macro-enabled .xlsm workbooks. We've since moved to modern tabular cubes, so the files you download today are standard .xlsx workbooks that connect through the add-in rather than macros. If you have older .xlsm files lingering, plan to transition them.
What Is a Cube-Connected File?
When you download a report from Catalyst, you get an Excel workbook (a .xlsx file, often with EBMOfficeBridge in the filename). Inside that workbook is a pivot table wired to a cube in your Catalyst environment. The pivot table is your window into the data — you arrange fields to summarize, total, and slice numbers without writing a single formula.
A key point worth internalizing early: the pivot table connects to your data as it lives in Catalyst — not to your ERP or source systems. Catalyst ingests data from those source systems, cleans it, transforms it into something meaningful, puts it in order, and applies attribution (scenarios, hierarchies, and more). What you see in Excel is that finished, structured result — the same data you could also explore through Power BI visualizations or query at a granular level elsewhere in Catalyst.
Why a pivot table? Pivot tables are built to summarize large datasets and rearrange them on the fly. Because the cube can hold a great deal of data across many dimensions, the pivot table gives finance and accounting users a fast, drag-and-drop way to build statements, trended views, and ad-hoc analysis — all refreshable on demand.
Cube Types: Different Data, Different Cubes
There can be any number of cube "types," and each corresponds to the kind of data that lives inside it. Most cubes hold summarized or consolidated views of your data. The two you'll encounter most often:
Financial cubes
General ledger and trial balance data — journal entries, income statement, and balance sheet figures. These power your P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow reporting.
Profitability cubes
Transaction-level operational data — invoices, sales, COGS, and revenue by customer, item, or SKU. Ideal for margin and profitability analysis.
Beyond those, imagine any dataset sliced however you need: data from a single ERP or source system, a recent acquisition, invoice detail, journal-entry detail, and so on. Because most cubes are summarized, when you need to get down to the actual granular, line-level records, you'll reach for the Query Builder tool in Catalyst or a Smartload detail cube.
A little background. EBM cubes are built on Microsoft technology — specifically Azure Analysis Services (AAS) tabular models hosted in Azure. "Tabular" means the data is organized in a relational, spreadsheet-like model that's fast to query and familiar to anyone who works in Excel. You don't need to manage any of this; it runs in the background and is simply what makes your live, refreshable connection possible.
Logging In
Cube files authenticate through your Microsoft 365 Single Sign-On (SSO) — the same work account you use for Outlook and Teams. There's no separate password to remember.
When you open a cube file and start working (or click Refresh), the add-in will prompt you to sign in if it doesn't already have a valid session. Sign in with your Microsoft work credentials, approve any multi-factor authentication (MFA) request, and the prompt disappears. If you're already signed into Microsoft 365 elsewhere, you often won't be prompted at all.
Tip: If you're seeing a login window asking for a "Pre-Windows 2000 user ID," that's the outdated Excel login — not your EBM credentials. The fix is almost always a Trusted Location and enabling content. See OLAP and Enable Content Errors.
The EBM Office Bridge: Your Toolbar
Once the add-in is installed, you'll see an EBM Office Bridge tab in the ribbon whenever a cube file is open. This is your control panel for everything cube-related.
Refresh All Cube(s)
Pulls the latest data from Catalyst into every cube in the workbook. This is your go-to button — and the first fix to try whenever something looks off.
Insert Cube(s)
Drops a fresh, blank cube into the workbook so you can start a brand-new pivot table from scratch — handy for building a report tab beyond what came in the download.
The faster way: right-click refresh
You don't always need the ribbon. To update a single pivot table, just right-click anywhere inside it and choose Refresh. Use Refresh All Cube(s) from the ribbon when you want to update the entire workbook at once; use right-click Refresh when you only need one table.
Quick fix rule of thumb: Most odd behavior — stale numbers, an "invalid PivotTable report" message, or N/A in a formula — is resolved by running Refresh All Cube(s). Try that first before anything else. See Hierarchy Structure Changes.
Working with the PivotTable Fields Pane
The PivotTable Fields pane is where you build and reshape your report. Click anywhere inside a pivot table to open it. If you don't see it, right-click the pivot table and choose Show Field List, or use the Field List button on the PivotTable Analyze tab.
Where do these fields come from?
Everything in the field list is populated directly from your Catalyst instance — it's a live reflection of how your data was structured and attributed when it landed in Catalyst. You'll typically see:
MEASURES & CALCULATIONS
The numeric values you analyze — base measures like Activity and Ending Balance, plus any calculations and measures defined on the cube.
SCENARIOS
Actuals, Budget, Forecast, Pro Forma, and any other scenarios set up in Catalyst — usually a filter so you can swap views across the whole report. Learn more.
HIERARCHIES
The dimensions you slice by — Account, Company, Item, Customer, Location, Department, Profitability Account, and more — each with their levels (A1, A2, A3…) for drilling. Learn more.
SMARTLOAD FIELDS
Any fact tables and attribute tables built through Smartload also surface here as available fields. Learn more about Smartload.
The layout section at the bottom of the pane has four areas. Where you drag a field determines how it shapes the report:
FILTERS
Fields here apply to the whole report. Put Scenario and Company Name here so you can swap, say, "2025 Actuals" for "2025 Budget" across the entire table.
COLUMNS
Fields that spread across the top of your table. Month or Quarter usually lives here to create a left-to-right time series.
ROWS
Fields that stack down the left side. Account goes here for an income statement, letting you expand and collapse the hierarchy.
VALUES
The actual numbers. Drop Activity or Ending Balance here — this is what gets summed at each row-and-column intersection.
To add a field, check its box or drag it into an area. To rearrange, drag a field from one area to another and the report updates instantly. To remove a field, you have three options: uncheck its box (this removes all instances of that field from the report), drag it out of the layout area, or click the down-arrow on the field in its layout area and choose Remove Field.
A couple of handy pane tips: you can dock the Fields pane to either side of the Excel window and resize it, or undock it to float freely. And if you don't see a field you expect — for example after data changes in Catalyst — right-click the pivot table and choose Refresh to repopulate the list.
A simple example: income statement and balance sheet cuts
The same financial cube can produce very different statements just by changing which hierarchy level and measure you use. An income statement cut typically filters A1 – Level 1 to "Income Statement" with Activity as the value; a balance sheet cut filters to "Balance Sheet" with Ending Balance as the value. Same cube, two reports.
Expanding and collapsing detail
Hierarchies expand and collapse so you can drill from summary to detail. Double-click an item, or click the plus/minus button beside it, to show or hide its children. To expand or collapse an entire level at once, right-click an item, choose Expand/Collapse, and select Expand Entire Field or Collapse Entire Field.
Watch out for memory errors. Loading too much at once — for example, several levels of the same hierarchy stacked in Rows — can exhaust Excel's memory. Keep Rows lean and push broad selections into Filters whenever possible. If you hit allocation errors regularly, ask IT about installing 64-bit Excel.
Essential Pivot Table Mechanics
A handful of built-in Excel controls cover almost everything you'll need day to day. None of these are EBM-specific — they're standard pivot table features — but they're worth knowing because they make cube reports far easier to read and navigate.
Subtotals and grand totals
To show or hide a subtotal for a row or column field, click an item in that field to surface the PivotTable Analyze and Design tabs, then go to PivotTable Analyze > Field Settings and, under Subtotals, choose Automatic to show them or None to hide them. For the report-wide totals, click anywhere in the pivot table and use Design > Layout > Grand Totals to pick which grand totals appear. On a financial statement you'll often want grand totals on for columns (period totals) but off for rows.
Freeze panes for long statements
When a statement runs longer than the screen, freeze panes keep your account labels and period headers visible as you scroll. On the View tab, in the Window group, click the arrow below Freeze Panes:
Freeze Top Row
Locks the period header row only.
Freeze First Column
Locks the account-label column only.
Freeze Panes
Locks both at once — first select the cell just below and to the right of what you want to keep visible.
Formatting that keeps statements readable
A few small habits go a long way on financial reports. Use Excel's number formatting (parentheses for negatives, thousands separators, and consistent decimal places) so figures line up and read like a real statement. Turn off AutoFit on pivot tables — under PivotTable Analyze > Options, uncheck "Autofit column widths on update" — so your column widths don't reset every time you refresh. And if a refresh feels slow while you're rearranging several fields, check Defer Layout Update at the bottom of the Fields pane, stage all your changes, then click Update once so the cube only recalculates a single time.
The Data Journey: Why a Refresh Might Not Show What You Expect
When you're working in a cube file, you really only care about one thing: clicking Refresh and seeing current numbers. But it helps to understand the journey your data takes to get there — especially if you refresh and don't see what you expected.
Your numbers travel a path before they ever reach Excel:
Source systems → Catalyst. Data leaves your ERP or source systems via an automated integration or scheduled back-end jobs — typically running each night.
Proliferation through Catalyst. Catalyst cleans, transforms, attributes, and "explodes" the data so it's ordered and meaningful.
Pushed to the cubes. The processed data is pushed into the Analysis Services cubes that your Excel file connects to.
You refresh. Once all of the above has finished, your refresh in Excel returns the latest numbers.
The takeaway: These jobs run automatically, but they take time. If you refresh and last night's data isn't there yet, the back-end pipeline may still be running. You can check where things stand on the System Status page before assuming something is wrong.
A Word on Data & Connections
Every cube file holds a live external data connection to the Analysis Services cubes in your Catalyst environment. When you refresh, Excel sends your current selections to that connection and returns fresh numbers. You can see and manage this connection under Data > Queries & Connections — it's listed there as your cube connection.
Saving the file preserves the last refreshed snapshot, so you can reopen and review without an immediate refresh — but you'll want to refresh again to see the latest data. This live connection is also why Trusted Locations matter so much: it's exactly what Excel guards against by default. With the file in a trusted folder and content enabled, refreshes run quietly in the background using your Microsoft credentials.
Tips & Tricks for Finance & Accounting Users
If you build the same statements every month, a little structure up front pays off enormously. These conventions keep cube workbooks clean, fast, and easy for the next person to pick up.
Put together, a well-organized reporting pack looks something like this — a Table of Contents tab as the front door, formatted statement tabs, a tucked-away source-pivot area, and an OLAP-driven inputs tab, all riding on a single live cube connection:
When pivot tables aren't enough: OLAP formulas
Pivot tables are flexible, but they limit how freely you can arrange rows and columns. For polished, fixed-structure reports — standard P&Ls and Balance Sheets that don't change shape month to month — you can convert a pivot table into OLAP formulas (CUBEMEMBER and CUBEVALUE). These cells still refresh live from your data but give you complete formatting control, and they're ideal for building that inputs/reference tab.
Go deeper: Learn when and how to convert in the OLAP Overview article. A quick rule: build the view in a pivot table first, then convert — and only use OLAP for reports whose structure stays stable (not for fast-changing dimensions like Customers).
A note on slicers. Excel slicers are tempting for clickable filtering, but they don't play well with the cube's network connection and aren't recommended for Catalyst-connected workbooks. Reach for Filters or OLAP formulas instead.
Related Articles
Installing the EBM Excel Add-In
Get the EBM Office Bridge installed and showing in your ribbon.
Setting Up Trusted Locations
The one-time security setup every cube user should do first.
OLAP Overview
Convert pivot tables to live, fully formattable formulas.
What is Smartload?
How custom fact and attribute tables make their way into your cubes.
Managing and Adding Hierarchies
Where the dimensions in your field list come from.
Understanding & Managing Scenarios
Actuals, Budget, Forecast, and how to switch between them.
Query Builder
Query granular, line-level records beyond summarized cubes.
Understanding the System Status Page
Check whether last night's data pipeline has finished.
That's the foundation: confirm the add-in and a Trusted Location are in place, sign in with your Microsoft account, and use the EBM Office Bridge ribbon (or a right-click) to refresh. The PivotTable Fields pane — populated live from your Catalyst data — is your canvas, and when you're ready for polished, fixed-format statements, OLAP formulas take you the rest of the way. Still stuck? Submit a request and our Support team will help.
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