Custom Business Dashboard or Template: How to Choose
When an off-the-shelf dashboard template or reporting app is enough, the signs you have outgrown it, and what a custom business dashboard involves.
Most business owners who want a dashboard face the same fork early on. Use a ready-made template or reporting app that plugs into your accounting software, or have a dashboard built around how your business actually works.
We build custom dashboards, so it would be easy for us to say custom is always better. It is not. Plenty of businesses are well served by a template, and paying for something built from scratch would be a waste. This article sets out where the line usually falls, so you can make the call yourself.
Two different things
It helps to be clear about what each option is.
A template or reporting app is a ready-made set of charts that connects to one or more popular systems. The dashboards built into Xero and MYOB are the simplest version. Next come reporting apps that connect to your accounting file, and templates for tools such as Microsoft Power BI or Google Looker Studio. You sign up, connect your accounts, and the charts fill in. You can usually rearrange and filter them, but the underlying logic is the same for every customer.
A custom dashboard is built for your business. Someone works out which numbers you need, where each one comes from, and how each should be calculated. Then the connections, the calculations and the screens are built to match. It takes longer and costs more up front. In return, it shows your numbers your way.
When a template is genuinely enough
Be honest about where you are. A template is usually the right choice when most of the following are true.
- Most of your numbers live in one system. If nearly everything you care about is in Xero or MYOB, a reporting app built for that system will show it well.
- Standard definitions suit you. Revenue, gross profit, debtors and cash flow, calculated the normal way, answer your questions.
- A small group reads it. The owner, a bookkeeper and perhaps a manager, all of whom can log in to a separate app.
- Daily or weekly is fresh enough. You review the numbers at a regular meeting rather than acting on them during the day.
Picture a small accounting practice with one office, all work tracked in its practice software and all finances in Xero. A good off-the-shelf reporting app will cover revenue, work in progress and debtors without any custom work. The same goes for a café with one point of sale system and one accounting file.
If that sounds like you, start with a template. You will learn which numbers you actually look at, and that knowledge is valuable if you ever do move to something custom. Our guide on planning a useful business dashboard applies either way.
Signs you have outgrown the template
Templates struggle in predictable places. These are the signs we see most often when a business is ready to move on.
Your rules are specific to your business
A trades business might count a job as complete only when the compliance certificate is uploaded, not when the technician leaves the site. A wholesaler might calculate margin after rebates that arrive months later. A firm might bill some clients on fixed fees and others on time. A template cannot know any of this, so it shows a number that is technically correct and practically wrong.
Your data is spread across three or more systems
Once the numbers you need sit in a job system, an accounting system and a rostering or stock system, templates start to strain. Each one usually connects to a few popular systems well and the rest poorly, if at all. The real questions, such as labour cost per job or margin by customer once freight is counted, need data from several systems joined together. That joining is exactly what a template leaves to you, usually in a spreadsheet.
Nobody agrees on the numbers
If the sales manager, the operations manager and the bookkeeper each have their own version of revenue for last month, a template will not settle it. It will add a fourth version. Getting everyone onto one set of figures means writing down definitions and building them into the calculations, which is a custom job by nature. Our article on dashboards that help decisions covers why this matters so much.
You need it inside a portal or another system
Sometimes the people who need the numbers are not your staff. A wholesaler may want each customer to see their own orders, rebates and account balance. A facilities contractor may want each client to see open work orders and response times for their sites only. Templates are built for internal viewers. Putting the right numbers in front of each outside party, securely, inside your own customer portal, is a custom build.
You need parts of it to be live
Many templates refresh daily or a few times a day. If your dispatch team or kitchen needs numbers that update within minutes, you need connections designed for that. Our guide on how to set up a real-time business dashboard explains which numbers genuinely need to be live and how each kind of system can feed them.
What a custom dashboard involves
If you have ticked two or more of the signs above, it is worth understanding what custom actually involves before you talk to anyone. A sensible project has four parts.
- Discovery. Working out the decisions the dashboard supports, the handful of numbers behind them, and how each is defined. This is the most important part, and it should happen before any price is fixed.
- Connections. Linking each source system, such as Xero, MYOB, your job or booking system, and any spreadsheets that cannot be avoided. Each source has its own limits on how often it can be read, which decides how fresh each number can be.
- Calculations. Turning raw records into your numbers, with your rules. This is where the definitions agreed in discovery are built in, so the dashboard and the accounts agree.
- Screens and access. The views people use: a summary for the owner, a wallboard for the floor, a phone view for managers, and a portal view for customers if needed, each showing only what that person should see.
Done properly, custom business dashboard development is mostly about the first three steps. The charts are the easy part. When you speak to anyone about a build, ask how they handle definitions and data checks, not just what the screens look like.
It is also worth knowing what you own at the end. A custom dashboard should leave you with the connections, the calculations and the definitions documented, so the next person can maintain it. For a real example, see our multi-venue restaurant group dashboard, which brought point of sale, rostering and accounting data into one view.
How to decide
A few plain questions settle most cases.
- How many systems hold the numbers you need? One or two well-known systems points to a template. Three or more, or anything unusual, points to custom.
- Are your definitions standard? If the textbook definition of revenue, margin or a completed job works for you, a template will too. If you keep adding exceptions in a spreadsheet, it will not.
- Who needs to see it? A few internal people suits a template. Customers, suppliers or many staff with different access suits custom.
- How fresh does it need to be? Daily suits a template. Within minutes usually needs a custom build.
- What does the spreadsheet tell you? If someone already spends hours each week patching template output together in a spreadsheet, that spreadsheet is the specification for a custom dashboard.
There is also a middle path. Some businesses keep a template for the standard finance view and build a smaller custom dashboard only for the numbers the template cannot handle. That is often the most sensible place to start.
If you are leaning towards custom and want an honest view of whether it is worth it for your situation, talk to us about business dashboard development. We will tell you if a template will do the job.