Your first business dashboard: which numbers to track

Start with decisions, not charts

A dashboard is useful when someone looks at it and does something differently. Before choosing charts, write down the three or four decisions you make every week, such as what to reorder, which customers to call back, or where to put more staff. The numbers worth tracking are the ones that change those decisions.

Pick five numbers, not fifty

A first dashboard works best with about five numbers. For many small businesses they look like this:

• Money in: sales or invoices issued this week, next to the same week last month.
• Money owed: unpaid invoices, and how many are overdue.
• Demand: new requests, orders or bookings.
• Speed: how long a request waits before someone answers it.
• One number specific to your work, such as stock running low or missed appointments.

Find where each number lives

For each number, write down the tool it comes from and who owns that tool. Common sources:

• Accounting or ERP: invoices, payments and stock.
• CRM or inbox: requests, leads and response times.
• Online store or booking system: orders and bookings.
• Spreadsheets a person updates by hand. Replace these first, because they go stale.

Define each number once

Two people can read "sales" differently: with or without VAT, by order date or by payment date. Write one line per number that says exactly how it is counted, and show that line on the dashboard next to it.

Alerts beat daily checking

Nobody watches a dashboard all day. For each number, decide the line that needs attention, such as overdue invoices above a set amount, and send an email when it is crossed. The dashboard answers "why"; the alert answers "when".

Where we can help

We pick the numbers with you, connect the tools they live in, and build the first dashboard in Arabic or English. Our public status board, which checks every site we run, is a small example of the same idea.