Custom Dashboard

A single company-wide panel serves nobody: half of it is noise to the finance director and all of it is missing for the warehouse supervisor. Two people look at it in week one and nobody does by week three.

Data refreshes with day-to-day operations, so the panel is not a snapshot of yesterday, and when an indicator drifts you see it on the first of the month rather than at the meeting on the twentieth.

What decides whether a dashboard gets used is not the number of charts, but that each person sees exactly what they need for their job, with no noise around it.

One per person

The single dashboard nobody looks at

Almost every company has been through this: a general dashboard is built with the indicators that seem important, shown in a meeting, and three weeks later nobody opens it.

The reason is simple. Half of what the finance director sees is noise to them, the warehouse supervisor is missing everything that matters to them, and the service manager cares about things that are not there. A dashboard that serves everyone serves nobody completely.

Here each user or department builds their own with a widget assistant: sales, treasury, services, HR, stock. You choose what appears and in what order, and that panel is the first thing you see when you log in.

Live data

The dashboard is not a snapshot of yesterday

Widgets are fed by operations as they happen: a sale at the POS, a job closed at a customer's site, a payment reconciled at the bank. There is no overnight process consolidating anything.

The practical consequence is what decides whether a dashboard gets used: when an indicator drifts, you see it on the first of the month rather than at the meeting on the twentieth, by which point all you can do is explain it.

And because the figure is the same one used by reports and accounting, no part of the meeting is spent working out why two screens show different numbers.

What to put on it

Few indicators, and actionable ones

The temptation when building a dashboard is to fill it, and that is exactly what stops it being looked at. A useful dashboard has few indicators, and each one answers a question that leads to an action.

As a guide, this is what tends to work by role:

Management: revenue against target, margin, forecast cash and overdue debt.
Sales: pipeline by stage, closing forecast and the week's activity.
Service: outstanding work orders, open issues and deadline compliance.
Warehouse: products below minimum, orders to pick and stock valuation.

What gets checked daily belongs here; what is looked at once a month works better as a saved report, and what should simply arrive by email on a schedule, as a scheduled report.

See the dashboards in a demo

Clearing things up

Frequently asked questions

Answers to what we get asked most.

Why does one company-wide dashboard not work?

Because half of what the finance director sees is noise, the warehouse supervisor is missing everything that matters to them, and the service manager cares about things that are not there. A dashboard that serves everyone serves nobody completely, and three weeks later nobody opens it.

How often does the data refresh?

With operations, as they happen: a sale at the POS, a job closed at a customer site, a payment reconciled at the bank. There is no overnight process, so when an indicator drifts you see it on the first of the month rather than at the meeting on the twentieth.

What should a dashboard contain?

Few indicators, each with an action behind it. Management usually watches revenue against target, margin, forecast cash and overdue debt; the warehouse, products below minimum and orders to pick. Filling it with charts is what stops it being looked at.

How is it different from a report?

In how often it is consulted. What you check daily belongs on the dashboard; what you look at once a month works better as a saved report, and what should simply arrive on a schedule, as a scheduled email report.

Reporting, dashboards and integrations

Reports you build yourself without writing SQL, dashboards per user and an API so your systems talk to each other.

BI · Custom Reports

Build your own reports over the system's real data with a visual editor: pick the dataset, drag in the columns, apply filters and get tables, indicators and charts, without writing a line of SQL.

View module

Centre Reports

Scheduled reports generated and emailed at whatever frequency you set.

API and Integrations

A public REST API with tokens and granular permissions so your website, your online shop or any other application can talk to the system.