How to Build a Financial Dashboard

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Are you building your dashboard but don’t know where to start? In Episode 2, our CEO W Michael Hsu picked up what we left in the last episode - the timeliness of the dashboard.  Also, he shared few points that give you some direction to start building your own dashboard.  Let’s check!

Topic: How to Start Building Your Dashboard

Know the timeliness of the dashboard

Many entrepreneurs get caught up by too detailed information. When they starting building a dashboard, they think about what metrics to put on the dashboard. Then, they probably said, “I want to know my profitability by vertical, by the clients, by the departments, and by the salespersons. They want to put all the information on the dashboard.

But, what are the benefits to do it? It takes time for bank information to come in, for your accountant to reconcile, and tons of effort to do it. So from our perspective, we won’t suggest you build an accurate dashboard that all data are come in late.Instead, we’d recommend you to build a dashboard that is good enough and accurate enough.

What metrics you should track on the dashboard

After knowing what makes a good dashboard, you’re probably thinking what metrics you should put on it. With our many years’ experiences, we’d suggest you start from the small thing.

If you already identify few areas where your company needs to work on. That’s where you should start. For example, you spend a lot of money on the marketing, but it seems you don’t get enough returns. Then, you know what you need to work on. Start from there and walk your way down from there, and review your dashboard on the daily/weekly basis, and figure out if you take the different action because of it.

If you don’t know which area of your business needs to be work on. Try out our Power of One template which can help you identify the areas that your company needs to improve. Also, you can start with 5 basic metrics and you need to review it in a regular rhythm to see what works and what doesn’t. If things don’t change after taking an action, you probably get into the wrong way. Try it again, test, and you’ll find your way to success.

Give us a shoutout if you find this useful or reach out to us. We’re more than happy to help you to achieve your goal.