Building Reports and Dashboards
With measures and dimensions defined, a report is a matter of choosing what to show and how to break it down.
Building a report
Pick the measures, choose the dimensions to group by, set the filters and the period. Because the definitions are central, two people building the same report independently get the same numbers.
Filter by entity deliberately
Where you operate more than one legal company, decide explicitly whether a report is for one entity or the group. A figure that silently spans entities will be quoted as a company figure by somebody who did not build it. Put the entity in the report title.
Period comparisons
A number on its own rarely means much. This month against last, or against the same month last year, is what turns a figure into information. Prefer year-on-year for anything seasonal — comparing December with November tells you mostly about Christmas.
Keeping reports fast
Aggregating a large movement or journal history is real work. If a report is slow:
- Narrow the period. Most questions are about recent activity.
- Check the underlying columns are indexed, particularly dates and the entity.
- Reduce the number of dimensions. Each additional grouping multiplies the result set.
- Schedule genuinely heavy reports to run overnight and be delivered by email.
Dashboards
A dashboard should answer "is anything wrong today". Keep it to figures somebody will act on: stock below minimum, overdue debt, unbilled time, an unprocessed feed inbox, maintenance due. Analysis belongs in a report someone opens deliberately.
A dashboard of twenty charts is a dashboard nobody reads, and its real cost is that the two figures that mattered were on it and got ignored.
Reconcile before you circulate
When a report is first built, tie it to something known — the trial balance, a stock valuation, last month's figure from the previous system. A report that has never been reconciled is a hypothesis, and the first time it is checked should not be in front of the board.