Key takeaways
- A dashboard is used when it answers a question someone asks every week, and ignored when it is a wall of charts.
- Design the page before the tool: decide the questions, the numbers, the targets and the owners first.
- Every number needs a trustworthy source and a refresh schedule, or the dashboard loses credibility within a month.
- Build one page for the owner, then one for each manager with only the numbers they influence.
We have seen dashboards that cost a great deal to build and were last opened the week they launched. We have also seen a single page, refreshed every Monday, change how a company runs. The difference has little to do with the software. It comes down to whether the dashboard answers questions people actually have, in time to act.
This is how we design dashboards for BC companies so they are read, discussed and acted on.
Start with the questions, not the charts
Sit with the owner and each manager and ask what they want to know every Monday morning. The answers are usually short: do we have enough cash, are we selling enough, are we delivering it profitably, who owes us money, where are we against plan. Each question becomes one or two numbers with a target. If a number does not answer a weekly question, it does not go on the page.
Sketch the page on paper before opening any tool. The sketch should fit on one screen without scrolling.
Choose numbers with trustworthy sources
Every number on a dashboard needs a source that is accurate on the day the dashboard refreshes. Cash and receivables come from the accounting system and are only right if the bookkeeper has reconciled. Sales pipeline comes from the CRM and is only right if the sales team keeps it current. Job margin comes from the job management system and is only right if costs are coded. The dashboard project is often a data discipline project in disguise.
Where a source is unreliable, fix the source or leave the number off until it is fixed. One wrong number teaches people to distrust the whole page.
Write down, for each number, where it comes from, who is responsible for that source being current and the day it is refreshed. This source list is the most valuable part of the dashboard project, because it exposes every place where the company's data is late or inconsistent, and fixing those places improves the monthly close and the forecast as well.
Design for a decision
Each number should show the current value, the target and the trend, in that order of prominence. Colour should be used sparingly and only to signal a breach of the target. Charts are for trends over time, not for decoration. Tables are for lists people act on, such as the five largest overdue customers or the five jobs with the biggest margin variance. Text is for the one line of commentary that explains what changed.
A dashboard that needs a legend or a training session is a report, not a dashboard.
One page per audience
The owner's page covers cash, sales, margin, receivables and the two operational drivers of the business. The sales manager's page covers pipeline, conversion and quoted margin. The operations manager's page covers delivery, utilisation and delivered margin. The office manager's page covers receivables, payables and remittance dates. Each page contains only numbers that person can influence, with targets they have agreed.
Owner pay, bank balances and personnel costs usually stay on the owner's page only.
Set the rhythm and the meeting
Decide the refresh day and time and hold to it. A weekly dashboard refreshed on Monday morning and read in a thirty-minute Monday meeting becomes a habit within a few weeks. A dashboard that refreshes whenever someone remembers never does. Automate the refresh where sources allow it, but accept a manual step for a number that matters more than the automation.
Review the page itself every quarter. Remove numbers nobody discussed. Add the number people kept asking for.
The meeting matters as much as the page. Keep it short, start with the numbers that breached their targets, agree one action for each and record who owns it. A dashboard with a meeting attached becomes the way the company runs. A dashboard without one becomes a screensaver.
Tools, briefly
Most cloud accounting platforms used in Canada have built-in reporting, and general-purpose dashboard tools connect to accounting, CRM and spreadsheets without custom code. The choice of tool matters far less than the design above. We usually start with a spreadsheet version for a month, prove which numbers earn their place and only then build it in a tool.
Avoid building custom connections before the design has settled, because every change to the page then becomes a development task.