Workbooks

Ask for a spreadsheet and you get a workbook: a real .xlsx file where the numbers are live Excel formulas rather than typed-in values.

Why that matters

A spreadsheet full of pasted numbers is a dead end. Change one input and nothing else moves, and nobody can see where a figure came from.

In a workbook Asteria builds, "Total Net MRR" is a SUM over the data sheet, "Average Discount Rate" is an AVERAGE, "Active Accounts" is a COUNTA with a filter. Open it in Excel, change a number in the raw data, and every KPI and chart updates the way a spreadsheet is supposed to.

It also means the working is visible. Click any figure in Excel and you can see exactly how it was derived, which is what makes a workbook safe to send to somebody who has to trust it.

What the panel shows

Not a grid. The Workshop shows you what is in the workbook:

• Built from, naming the data it was made from
• Key figures, each with its name, how it is calculated and which column it uses ("Total Gross MRR, sum, MRR")
• Breakdown table, if there is one, with what it aggregates and how it is cut ("sum, Net MRR, Region by Plan")
• Charts, each with its type and what it plots ("Net MRR by Region, column")

This is a contents page, not a viewer. It is there so you can check the workbook is doing what you meant before you download it. Reproducing Excel in a browser panel would be a worse version of Excel; showing you the structure is something the panel can genuinely do better.

Download gets you the file itself.

Changing something

You do not edit a workbook in the panel. Ask:

Add a key figure for median contract length.

The breakdown should be by quarter, not by month.

Drop the pie chart and add a line chart of Net MRR over time.

The workbook is rebuilt from your data as a new version. That is the important bit: Asteria is not patching cells, it is regenerating the file with the formulas rewritten. Your earlier versions stay in History.

Working on a workbook you already have

You can also point Asteria at a spreadsheet of your own and ask questions of it, including what-if questions:

What happens to the total if the APAC discount goes to 15%?

It evaluates the formulas properly rather than guessing at the arithmetic, so the answer accounts for everything downstream of the number you changed.

A caution

Everything on this page makes the numbers reproducible. It does not make them right. The formulas are only as good as the data underneath and the question you asked, so check the inputs on anything that matters before you pass it on.