Reporting Layer · Houston, TX

The reports your warehouse system won't build.

Your warehouse management system runs the floor well. It reports badly. The data is in there — receipts, picks, shipments, on-hand, billing — and you can't reach it, can't join it, and can't build the one view you actually need. So somebody rebuilds it in Excel every month. We pull that data out on a schedule, land it in a database you own, and build the reports properly. The system stays. We just read from it.

Sound familiar?

Six reasons the answer lives in a spreadsheet

None of these are your team working badly. They're what happens when the only way out of the system is an export button.

The report you need isn't in the list

The built-in reports answer the vendor's questions. Yours is one column over, and the report builder won't go there.

You can't reach your own data

Your operational history lives in someone else's database, behind a login that only shows you screens. You cannot query it.

The same export, every month

Somebody pulls three CSVs, joins them in Excel, fixes the same four things by hand, and sends the file. Every month.

Two answers to one question

Billing says one number, the floor says another, and the spreadsheet in between has a filter nobody remembers setting.

Customers ask you for numbers

They want their own receipts, their own on-hand, their own on-time rate. Right now that request lands on a person.

Reporting waits on one person

One person knows how to build it. When they're out, or busy, or gone, the question waits — and then stops being asked.

Nobody sells the layer on top.

The vendor sells you the warehouse management system, and it earns its keep — the floor runs on it. But its job is running the operation, not answering questions about it. So the reporting stops at whatever the report builder was designed to cover, your own database is somewhere you can't log into, and the gap gets filled by a person with a spreadsheet. We're not here to replace anything. We read from the system you already run and build the part nobody sold you.

How it works

Four steps, and none of them touch your floor

Read-only from the first day to the last. Your pickers, packers, and billing clerks never see a change.

  1. 1

    Get read access

    You create a read-only account in your own system. We use its API where there is one, a scheduled export where there isn't. Nothing we build ever writes back.

  2. 2

    Land it in your database

    Orders, receipts, inventory, shipments, and billing land in a database in an account with your name on it. Full history on the first load, changes after that.

  3. 3

    Build the reports you actually asked for

    We start from your questions, not a template. Each number gets one definition, written down, so two reports can't disagree.

  4. 4

    Put it on a schedule and hand it over

    The refresh runs on its own and tells us when it doesn't. You get the queries, the credentials, and the documentation.

If the extract turns out to be the easy half and the real problem is two systems disagreeing, that's system integration — and we'll say so before you spend anything on reports.

What you get

Four things, and you keep all of them

Reports built to your questions, a database in your own account, a refresh that runs itself, and the documentation to hand to anyone.

Reports Built to Your Questions

The ones your warehouse system won't build, written to the question you actually asked.

  • Receiving, putaway, pick, pack, and ship measured the way your floor runs
  • Storage, handling, and accessorial billing reconciled against what was invoiced
  • Inventory accuracy, aging, and dead stock by client, not just in total
  • On-time and short-ship rates you can put in front of a customer
  • One definition per number, written down, so two reports can't disagree

A Database You Own

In your cloud account, under your billing, with your name on the credentials.

  • PostgreSQL or SQL Server, in an account you control from day one
  • Point Power BI, Excel, Metabase, or anything else that speaks SQL at it
  • Your analyst can query it directly without asking us for anything
  • Full operational history kept, including the periods your system trims
  • If we part ways, the database, the queries, and the schedule stay with you

A Refresh That Runs Itself

On a schedule you pick, with an alarm when it doesn't run.

  • Nightly by default, hourly where the decision is worth the extra load
  • Incremental after the first load, so we're not re-reading years every night
  • Rate limits and paging respected, off-hours where the system prefers it
  • Row counts checked on every run, so a short load fails loudly
  • A failed refresh reaches us before it reaches the person reading the report

A Self-Serve View & the Documentation

So people stop asking a person, and so the next person can pick it up.

  • A view your team opens themselves, with the filters they were asking for
  • A customer-facing view when it makes sense, scoped to that customer's data
  • Every field mapped: where it came from, what it means, what it excludes
  • The schedule, the queries, and the failure procedure written down
  • Handover to your team or your BI tool of choice, on request, not on renewal
Read-onlyNothing we build writes back to your system of record
YoursThe database, the credentials, and the queries
Any SQL toolPower BI, Excel, Metabase — point it wherever you like
DocumentedEvery field mapped, every schedule written down
Vendor-neutral by design

What we can extract from today

Not a partner list and not a certification list — just where the work has already been done, and how the data comes out.

System of recordHow we read it
Extensiv 3PL Warehouse Manager Its REST API, on a read-only service account you create.
NetSuite A read-only integration role, queried through SuiteQL or an ODBC connection where you already license one.
Dynamics 365 Business Central The OData and API endpoints, scoped to the companies you name.
ShipHero Its GraphQL API, paged and rate-limit aware.
CartonCloud Its REST API, one tenant at a time.
Infoplus Its REST API, per table, with changes picked up incrementally.
QuickBooks The Online API for the billing side. Desktop becomes a scheduled export instead.

CargoWise is a different conversation

We'd rather say that than list the name and work it out afterwards. Getting operational data out of CargoWise is its own project, with access questions to settle before anyone promises a report. If that's what you run, still call — just expect the first conversation to be about scope rather than about reports.

Your system isn't on the list? Ask anyway. What decides it is whether the system has an API or can produce a scheduled export — not whether we've seen its logo before.

Two things worth saying up front

The first: this does not replace your warehouse management system, and we would talk you out of it if you asked. Replacing the system that runs your floor to fix a reporting problem is the most expensive way to get a report. The system stays, the floor keeps working, and we read from it on a schedule.

The second: a reporting layer cannot settle a disagreement between two systems. If billing and the floor hold different numbers, someone has to decide which one is right before a report can be built on top of either. We'll put the conflict on one page and show you where it comes from. Naming the system of record is your call, not the query's.

Where this sits

  • The wider practice — warehouse systems, scanners, multi-client inventory and billing — is on the 3PL & warehouse software page
  • When the problem is data moving between systems rather than out of one, that's system integration
  • Cleanup, de-duplication, and one-off analysis live under data entry & analysis
  • Already invested in Power BI? Point it at the database — the layer underneath is the part that's missing
  • Everything else we do is listed on services

Trading-partner traffic

If the numbers you need are arriving as EDI documents, reporting on them starts with capturing them properly.

Reports nobody reads

Sometimes the answer is a fixed process, not a dashboard. Process improvement is the cheaper fix more often than anyone admits.

Changing systems soon?

A database you own is useful during a migration — old and new can be compared on the same numbers instead of on faith.

See the shape of the work

The project write-ups show what was built, what it replaced, and what it cost in effort — anonymized.

Toolkit

What we work in

PostgreSQL SQL Server SQL Python REST & JSON GraphQL OData SuiteQL ODBC Incremental loads & watermarks Scheduled jobs Row-count checks Power BI Excel & Power Query Metabase CSV & SFTP exports Read-only service accounts Field-level data dictionary Refresh monitoring & alerting
Questions we get

Straight answers

Does this replace our warehouse system?

No. Your warehouse management system stays exactly where it is, and your floor keeps working the way it works today. We connect to it with a read-only account and copy data out on a schedule. Nothing we build writes back into it, and nothing about your picking, packing, or billing process changes. If a vendor ever tells you the reporting layer requires replacing the system underneath it, that is a sales position, not a technical one.

Who owns the database?

You do, and that is the point of building it this way. It sits in a cloud account in your company's name, on your billing, with credentials your team holds. We are a user on it, not the landlord. You can point any tool that speaks SQL at it, hire anyone you like to work in it, and if you stop working with us the database, the queries, the refresh schedule, and the documentation all stay behind and keep running.

How current is the data?

As current as the schedule you pick. Nightly is the common answer and it is usually the right one, because most of these numbers get read in the morning and acted on during the day. Hourly is available where someone genuinely acts on the difference. We do not pretend this is real time: a report that is a few hours behind and always correct beats a live feed that quietly stops on a Friday.

Will this slow down the system our floor depends on?

It shouldn't, and that is treated as a hard requirement rather than a hope. Reads run on a schedule, off-hours where the vendor prefers it, paged and inside whatever rate limits the API publishes. After the first full load we only pull what changed, so the ongoing traffic is small. If your system has a documented limit or a maintenance window, we build around it and say so in the handover notes.

Our system already has reports. Why add anything?

Because those reports answer the questions the vendor chose to anticipate, and the report builder stops at the edge of that list. The moment your question involves a field the builder won't group by, a period it won't compare, or data from a second system entirely, you are back in Excel. The vendor sells the warehouse system. Nobody sells the layer on top of it, which is why every operator we talk to has built one by hand in a spreadsheet.

What if we change systems later?

The database stays and the extract gets rewritten. That is a real advantage of keeping your history somewhere you own: a system change does not take five years of operational data with it, and you can report across the boundary instead of starting a new spreadsheet on cutover day. It is also useful during a migration, because the old and new systems can be compared on the same numbers.

Can our own people work in it, or does everything come through you?

Your people can work in it. The whole design assumes an analyst, a controller, or a curious operations manager will connect to the database directly, and the field documentation is written for that person rather than for us. Plenty of clients take the reports and run with them. Others keep us on for new questions. Both are fine, and you are not locked into either by the way it is built.

What systems can you pull from?

Extensiv 3PL Warehouse Manager, NetSuite, Dynamics 365 Business Central, ShipHero, CartonCloud, Infoplus, and QuickBooks today, and the list is not a partnership list — it is where we have done the work. CargoWise is a different conversation, and worth saying plainly: getting data out of it is its own project with access questions to answer first, so we would scope that before promising anything. If your system is not named here, ask. What actually matters is whether it has an API or can produce a scheduled export.

How does an engagement start?

With a conversation about the reports you can't get today, not with a quote. We look at what your system exposes, what questions you're trying to answer, and whether there is a smaller version worth doing first. Sometimes the honest answer is that one report your vendor can build gets you most of the way, and we'll tell you that.

Which report are you rebuilding in Excel every month?

Tell us what it answers and what system it comes out of. You'll get back whether the data is reachable, what the extract looks like, and whether there's a smaller version worth doing first.

Get in touch