Do you need a dashboard? A plain-English guide for small businesses

“Dashboard” sounds like something only big companies need. In practice, a dashboard is just a page that shows the handful of numbers you check most often, kept up to date for you. This guide helps you decide whether you need one, and what it should show.

What a dashboard actually is

A dashboard pulls data from the places it already lives (your till, online shop, accounting software or spreadsheets) and turns it into a few figures and charts. Instead of opening four systems and building a pivot table, you open one page.

The sales dashboard demo uses a year of made-up coffee shop sales. Change the date range, product or region and every figure updates.

Signs you might need one

• You spend time every week or month pulling the same report together.
• You can’t quickly answer “how did last month compare with the same month last year?”
• Data sits in several systems that don’t talk to each other.
• Decisions about stock, staffing or marketing are made on gut feel because the numbers are hard to get.
• More than one person needs to see the figures, and you’re emailing spreadsheets around.

Signs you probably don’t (yet)

• Your sales or booking system already has reports that answer your questions.
• You only look at the numbers once a quarter.
• You have very little data, for example a handful of large jobs a year.

In those cases, a well-organised spreadsheet with a couple of charts may be all you need.

Which numbers should it show?

Fewer is better. Start with three to six figures you would act on. Common ones for small businesses:

• Revenue this week or month, compared with the previous period.
• Number of orders or bookings and the average order value.
• Best and worst sellers, by product or service.
• Repeat customers: how many came back.
• Outstanding invoices and how overdue they are.
• Stock running low, if you sell physical products.

If a number wouldn’t change a decision, leave it off.

Cheaper things to try first

1. Use the reports you already pay for. Shopify, Square, Xero, QuickBooks and most booking tools have built-in reports.
2. Make one tidy spreadsheet. Export your data monthly into one consistent sheet and add a pivot table and chart.
3. Try a free tool. Google Looker Studio can connect to Google Sheets and build basic charts at no cost.

If those still leave you copying and pasting every week, that’s the point where a custom dashboard starts to pay for itself.

What a custom dashboard involves

A simple one usually means: connecting to your data sources (or a regular export), cleaning and combining the data, and building one or two screens with the figures you chose. It should refresh automatically and work on your phone. A good dashboard also shows where each number comes from, so you can trust it.

Keep access limited to the people who need it, especially if it includes customer details, and avoid copying personal data into it where totals will do.

Questions to ask before you build one

• What decisions will this help me make, and how often?
• Where does each number come from, and can it be exported?
• Who needs to see it, and on what device?
• How fresh does the data need to be: live, daily or weekly?

Not sure?

Play with the sales dashboard demo, or tell me which numbers you keep looking for. I’ll tell you whether a spreadsheet will do or whether a dashboard is worth it, with a fixed price.