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Troubleshooting a Google Sheets Connection
Troubleshooting a Google Sheets Connection

Unable to connect to Google Sheets to Fathom or having trouble updating non-financial data?

Updated over a week ago

Contents:

Unable to access the non-financials page

If you are unable to access the non-financials page to connect or update a Google Sheet in Fathom then you’ll want to check:

  1. That you have the proper permissions in Fathom
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  2. That you are attempting to access the page in a single company and not a consolidated group

Needed permissions in Fathom

Those with ‘Advisor/Editor’ or ‘Admin’ level roles in Fathom have the necessary permissions to access the non-financials page by default.

If you are a ‘Client/Viewer’ level user, then you must have the ‘Update Non-financials’ permission turned on in ‘Advanced User Permissions’ to be able to access the non-financials page. To make the initial connection between a Google Sheet and Fathom, you must have the ‘Select KPIs’ permission turned on as well.

Non-financial results in a consolidated group

The non-financials page will not be accessible within a consolidated group. This is because the KPI results for a consolidated group are summed from the underlying companies’ KPI results.

Cannot find Google Sheet to select for import

When making the connection between a Google Sheet and Fathom, you’ll be asked to select a Google Sheet to connect. If you’re unable to find or select a Google Sheet, then you’ll want to go through the appropriate troubleshooting steps depending on if you’re attempting to:

Connecting to a Fathom template

When you choose to connect to a Fathom template, Fathom will create a Google Sheet for you. This Google Sheet will not automatically open in a new tab.

Instead, you can access the created Google Sheet through the following steps:

  1. Select the ‘Plug’ icon in the top right corner of the non-financials page
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  2. From the drop down, select the Fathom created Google Sheet. The name will be similar to ‘Company Name Custom KPIs Import’
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  3. In the menu that opens, scroll down to the ‘Other’ section
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  4. Select ‘Open in Google Sheets’. This will take you to the Google Sheet where you can enter in the data for the KPIs.
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  5. Once you’ve entered the data, return to Fathom and select the ‘Plug’ icon again
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  6. Select the Google Sheet
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  7. Click the grey ‘Sync’ icon in the top right corner of the menu that opens on the right. This will trigger an instant update of the data.
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❗Note: If you create several Google Sheets from Fathom templates for the same company, they will all have the same name (i.e. Company Name Custom Financial KPI Results). To help differentiate between them, you can rename the sheets in Google. Subsequent updates will update the sheet name in Fathom.

Connecting your own Google Sheet

If you are connecting your own Google Sheet to Fathom and are unable to find the desired sheet in the selector, then check the following:

  1. Ensure you have the appropriate permissions in Google to access the Google Sheet
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  2. Ensure the Google account you’ve signed in with is the same Google account with access to the sheet. You can connect multiple Google accounts to Fathom, so ensure you’ve chosen the correct one when making the connection.
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  3. Ensure the KPI results file has been saved as a Google Sheet.

💡Pro Tip: When selecting to 'Connect to Google Sheet' and 'Use your own sheet', in the menu that opens to select the Google Sheet, you can click on the 'A>Z' icon in the top right corner. This will allow you to filter the Google Sheets by the most recently modified or most recently modified by you to help you find a specific sheet more quickly.

Needed permissions in Google

The following permissions in Google will allow you to connect a Google Sheet to Fathom and update the data.

  • Viewer

  • Commenter

  • Editor

  • Owner

As long as you have access to view or read the data in the Google Sheet, you will be able to connect it to Fathom.

💡Pro Tip: If you’re able to access the non-financials page, but are unable to connect a Google Sheet, then you likely do not have the ‘Select KPIs’ permission turned on in Fathom.

Save the file as a Google Sheet

If you have the appropriate permissions in Google and you’ve connected to the correct Google account, then the document may not be saved as a Google Sheet in Google.

For example, when you upload an Excel spreadsheet to Google, it is automatically saved as an Excel or .xlsx file and not a Google Sheet. After it has been uploaded to Google, the file will need to be re-saved as a Google Sheet.

To ensure the file is saved as a Google Sheet, open the file in Google,

  1. In the top right corner, select ‘File’
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  2. If it is not already a Google Sheet, then you should see the option to ‘Save as Google Sheets’. Select this option.

A Google Sheet copy of the file will be added and saved to your Google Drive. You should then be able to select the file in the file selector.

Cannot edit non-financial data

Any non-financial data imported from Google Sheets cannot be edited within Fathom, it can only be edited in Google Sheets and then updated in Fathom.

This is because the Google Sheet is considered the ultimate source of truth and Fathom only pulls in data from Google Sheets, it does not send data back into Google Sheets. Therefore, to ensure the imported data matches with the Google Sheet, changes to the imported results can only be made from within the Google Sheet and then synced with Fathom.

If you’re trying to make changes to data imported from Google Sheets, then you will need to go to the Google Sheet containing the non-financial KPI results. To do this from within Fathom:

  1. Go to 'Step 4 - KPIs' of the company's Settings
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  2. At the top of the KPI list, select the green 'Non-financial KPI Results' option
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  3. In the top right corner of the non-financials page, select the 'Plug' icon
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    ❗Note: If you’re unsure which Google Sheet the KPI needing updating is connected to, you can click on the name of the KPI on the non-financial page. In the menu that opens, the Google Sheet the KPI is sourced from will be listed at the top.
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  4. From the drop down, select the Google Sheet that needs to be edited
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  5. In the menu that opens, select 'Open in Google Sheets'
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  6. The Google Sheet will open in another tab within the browser
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  7. Edit the necessary data
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  8. Return to Fathom and select the 'Sync' option to update the Google Sheet data

❗Note: If you have manually added data in Fathom for periods not sourced from the Google Sheet, then that manually entered data will be overwritten with the data from the Google Sheet for those periods.

Data in Fathom is not matching data in Google Sheets

If the data displayed in the non-financials page for KPIs sourced from Google Sheets does not match the data in Google Sheets, then go through the following troubleshooting workflow:

  1. Ensure the data has been updated in Fathom
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  2. Ensure the correct number of decimal places to be displayed have been chosen for the KPI
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  3. Ensure the KPI is sourced from the correct Google Sheet. A duplicate KPI (one with the same name) will not be imported into Fathom until it is removed from the original source sheet or the KPI name is changed in one of the sources.

Updating data from Google Sheets

If automatic updates are turned on for the Google Sheet, then the data will be synced with Fathom once every 24 hours. If changes have been made to the non-financial data in Google Sheets recently, then you can sync the Google Sheet with Fathom to bring over the changes.

  1. Go to 'Step 4 - KPIs' in the company's Settings
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  2. At the top of the KPI list, select the green 'Non-financial KPI Results' option
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  3. In the top right corner of the non-financials page, select the 'Plug' icon
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  4. From there, you will see a list of the data sources connected to the company
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  5. Select the Google Sheet that needs to be updated
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  6. A menu will open on the right where you can select the 'Sync' icon to update the data in Fathom

Decimal places

When non-financial KPIs are brought into Fathom via a connected Google Sheet, you are asked to choose the amount of decimal places to display for each non-financial KPI. By default, 0 decimal places will be chosen.

If the data for a KPI in Fathom is showing a lot of 0's and/or 1's when there is data in the Google Sheet file, then it is likely that the incorrect amount of decimal places has been selected for display.

  1. Go to 'Step 4 - KPIs' in the company's Settings
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  2. At the top of the KPI list, select the green 'Non-financial KPI Results' option
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  3. Click on the name of the KPI displaying the non-matching results. This will open the KPI's properties menu on the right hand side.
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  4. Select the drop down menu for 'Decimal places'
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  5. Choose to display either 'One' or 'Two' decimal places
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    ❗Note: If 'One' or 'Two' decimal places is already selected, then this suggests a different issue. Perhaps the Google Sheet needs to be manually synced for the data to be updated in Fathom.
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  6. Select the green 'Apply changes' button. The amount of decimal places displayed should change instantly, the GSheet will not need to be re-synced or updated.

Duplicate KPIs

If you have connected multiple Google Sheets with the same KPI, then the data for the KPI will only be sourced from the original connection.

Example: You connected Google Sheet A with a ‘New Hires’ KPI to your company in Fathom. You then connected Google Sheet B to the same company. Google Sheet B contains a ‘New Hires’ row as well with the exact same name as the KPI in Google Sheet A. Fathom will ignore the second connection, so the data for the ‘New Hires’ KPI will come from Google Sheet A.

To have the data come from Google Sheet B, you have two options:

Option 1 - If the duplicate KPI is not used in any Formula KPIs

  1. Go to ‘Step 4 - KPIs’ for the company
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  2. Find the ‘New Hires’ KPI on the list of KPIs and hover over it
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  3. Select the red ‘Delete’ button
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  4. At the top of the KPI list, select the green ‘Non-financial KPI Results’ option
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  5. Select the ‘Plug’ con in the top right corner of the non-financials page
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  6. Select Google Sheet B
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  7. In the menu that opens on the right, select the grey ‘Sync’ icon
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  8. Once the sync is complete, select the ‘Pending’ option in the menu on the right
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  9. Add the ‘New Hires’ KPI

The data will now be sourced from the second Google Sheet.

Option 2 - If the duplicate KPI is used in Formula KPI

If the KPI you deleted was used in any Formula KPIs, you would need to re-create those Formula KPIs. To avoid re-creating the Formula KPIs, then instead of deleting the KPI, you could:

  1. Select the ‘Plug’ icon on the non-financials page
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  2. Select Google Sheet A from the dropdown
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  3. At the bottom of the menu that opens, select the option to ‘Disconnect’ Google Sheet A from the company
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  4. Select the ‘Plug’ icon again
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  5. Choose Google Sheet B
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  6. Select the grey sync icon at the top of the menu that appears. The duplicate KPI should automatically match with the existing KPI and the data should be overwritten with the data in Google Sheets.
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  7. Select ‘Import results’ to re-connect Google Sheet A. The KPIs connected previously, except the duplicate now connected to Google Sheet B, should automatically match.

❗Note: You will need to have permissions to connect a Google Sheet in both Fathom and Google for Option 2.

Data from Google Sheets is not updating

If the non-financial data sourced from a Google Sheet is not updating in Fathom, then check the following:

  1. Ensure you synced the Google Sheet with Fathom to bring over the updated results
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  2. If an error message has appeared, click on the error message for more information
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  3. Ensure the data to be imported has a period date in the Google Sheet
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  4. If you have removed data from a Google Sheet, the data will not automatically be removed in Fathom.

Triggering an Update

If automatic updates are turned on for the Google Sheet, then the data will be synced with Fathom once every 24 hours. Automatic updates are not on by default.
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If changes have been made to the non-financial data in Google Sheets recently, then a manual sync is needed to bring the changes over.

  1. Go to 'Step 4 - KPIs' in the company's Settings
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  2. At the top of the KPI list, select the green 'Non-financial KPI Results' option
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  3. In the top right corner of the non-financials page, select the 'Plug' icon
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  4. From there, you will see a list of the data sources connected to the company (both Excel and Google Sheets)
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  5. Select the Google Sheet that needs to be updated
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  6. A menu will open on the right, where you can select the 'Sync' icon to update the data in Fathom

Error Message

If a sync has failed, then an error message will appear. Select ‘View details’ for more information.

If the message is unclear or you're unsure how to fix the issue described in the message, then reach out to our support team using the in-app messenger or email us at support@fathomhq.com.

Periods in the Google Sheet

Non-financial data will only be updated for columns in a Google Sheet that have a period title. If you have entered non-financial data, but have not added the date for the non-financial data, then the data will not update in Fathom.

  1. Go to 'Step 4 - KPIs' in the company's Settings
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  2. At the top of the KPI list, select the green 'Non-financial KPI Results' option
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  3. In the top right corner of the non-financials page, select the 'Plug' icon
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  4. From the drop down, select the Google Sheet for which the data is not updating in Fathom
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  5. In the menu that opens on the right, go to the 'Other' section.
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  6. Select 'Open in Google Sheets'
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  7. This will open the Google Sheet in another tab of your browser. Go to the data that does not have a date and enter in a period in the period row.
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  8. Sync the Google Sheet in Fathom.

Data removed in the Google Sheet will not be removed in Fathom

If the data for an entire period is removed in a connected Google Sheet, then when the Google Sheet is next synced with Fathom, the data will not be removed from Fathom. Instead, the data will be treated similarly to manually entered data. This means that you will be able to edit and remove the data manually in Fathom.

If you add back any data for the period in the Google Sheet and sync the sheet with Fathom, then all of the "manually" entered data in Fathom for that period will be overwritten for the KPIs linked to that particular Google Sheet. Cells left blank for that period in the Google Sheet but with manually entered data in Fathom will become empty cells in Fathom.

Still experiencing issues?

Reach out to our support team using the in-app messenger or email us at support@fathomhq.com.

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