use Template;
use Excel::Template;

sub xml_to_excel {

 my ($template_conf, $file, $hashref) = @_;  # template configuration from config file, filename based on request number,  data for the template processing
 my $xml; 

 my $tt = Template->new({
        RELATIVE => 1,        # in my case I had to use relative path because of $template_conf->{file} based on CWD.
 });

 $tt->process( $template_conf->{file}, $hashref, \$xml ) || die $tt->error;   # write the output to the $xml string

 open my $xml_fh, "<", \$xml;  # create a filehandle from the $xml string so that Excel::Template can read it.

 my $ET = Excel::Template->new({
        file => $xml_fh,   # use the filehandle here 
 });

 $ET->write_file($file);

 return $xml || 0;

}