Daily DAX : Day 361 OPENINGBALANCEYEAR

Power BI DAX: OPENINGBALANCEYEAR Function

Description

The OPENINGBALANCEYEAR function in Power BI DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) calculates the balance of a specified measure or column at the start of a given year. It is commonly used in financial and time-intelligence analysis to retrieve the opening balance for a year based on a date column and a measure or expression.

Syntax

OPENINGBALANCEYEAR(<expression>, <dates>[, <filter>][, <year_end_date>])
    

• expression: The measure or column to evaluate (e.g., sum of sales or account balance).
• dates: A column containing date values, typically from a Date table.
• filter (optional): A filter expression to apply to the calculation.
• year_end_date (optional): A literal string defining the year-end date (e.g., "12/31" for December 31). If omitted, it assumes December 31.

Return Value

The value of the expression calculated at the first date of the specified year, considering any applied filters.

Use Case

The OPENINGBALANCEYEAR function is useful for scenarios like:

• Financial reporting: Calculating the opening balance of an account at the start of a year.
• Inventory tracking: Determining the stock level at the beginning of a year.
• Time-based comparisons: Analyzing year-over-year performance starting from the year's opening value.

Example

Suppose you have a Sales table with columns Date and Amount, and a DateTable with a Date column. To calculate the opening balance of total sales for each year:

OpeningSalesYear = 
OPENINGBALANCEYEAR(
    SUM(Sales[Amount]), 
    DateTable[Date]
)
    

This measure returns the total sales amount at the start of each year based on the DateTable[Date] column.

Notes

• Requires a proper Date table marked as a date table in Power BI.
• Ensure the dates argument references a valid date column.
• If no data exists for the first day of the year, the function returns a blank unless data is available in the context.