Custom reporting dashboard for business owners: one screen in place of the weekly report

What should an owner's dashboard actually show?

A dashboard earns its place when it answers the questions you already ask every week. For a service business that is a short list: enquiries in, enquiries answered, calls booked, work won, money invoiced, money collected and jobs delivered on time. Our guide to the numbers a service business dashboard should show goes through each one.

The common mistake is to chart everything a tool can export. Twelve numbers you act on beat sixty you scroll past. We hold every number on the screen to three tests:

• One source. Each number comes from one named system and one written rule, so two people cannot arrive at two versions of "sales this month".
• One owner. A named person is responsible for the number and is told when it moves outside the range you set.
• One click to the records. You can open the enquiries, invoices or jobs behind a figure, so a surprise can be checked on the spot.

Which Agentryx solutions does this involve?

The main one is dashboards and reporting. Two others often sit next to it, because a dashboard can only be as accurate as the systems it reads from.

Solution	What it does for you	How it pays
Dashboards and reporting	Connects your CRM, finance, booking and delivery tools and shows the agreed numbers on one screen, with a view for each role.	Time back: the hours spent building reports by hand.
CRM setup and migration	Gives every enquiry an owner, a stage and a next step, so the sales figures the dashboard reads are true.	More clients: fewer enquiries left with no next step.
Internal tools	Turns the screen from something you read into something your team works in: assign, approve, update and close from one place.	Time back: more work handled by the same team.

You may need only the first. If your sales data lives in inboxes and a spreadsheet, the CRM comes before the dashboard, and our page on CRM migration cost covers that work. If you want the team to act inside the screen, read internal tools development.

What is it worth? Do the sum

The leak sounds like this: "Every Monday someone exports from four tools, pastes it all into a spreadsheet and fixes the totals before I can see how last week went." That is paid time spent on copying, and the report is out of date by Tuesday. The lever here is time back, and time has to end in pounds.

A dashboard removes the copying in four steps:

1. Each tool is connected once, so the figures arrive without an export.
2. Every number is worked out by the same written rule each time.
3. The screen refreshes on a schedule you choose, so Monday's view is ready before Monday's meeting.
4. A number outside its agreed range is flagged to its owner, so nobody has to go looking.

What to count	Example figure
Hours a week spent building reports by hand	5
Hourly cost of the person doing it	£30
Weeks a year	52
Cost of the hand-built report a year	£7,800

Example figures. Swap in your own. They are made up to show the method. They are not a result, an average or a promise. The sum is 5 hours × £30 × 52 weeks, which comes to £7,800 a year of wages going on copy and paste.

To get your own number, track it for two normal weeks. Write down everyone who touches the report, including the time you spend checking it, and how long each person takes. Multiply the weekly hours by what an hour of that person costs you, then by 52. Bring that figure to the call. If you go ahead, the audit report puts a yearly cost on each problem it finds, this one included.

When a spreadsheet or your existing reports are enough

A custom dashboard is the wrong purchase for some businesses, and it is cheaper to find that out now.

• Your numbers live in one tool. If your CRM or accounting software holds everything you need, use the reports inside it.
• The report takes minutes. If one person updates a spreadsheet in twenty minutes a week and you trust it, the sum above will not justify a build.
• You have not agreed what to measure. A dashboard cannot settle an argument about what counts as a qualified enquiry. Agree the definitions first, on paper.
• The data underneath is wrong. Charts drawn from half-filled records look convincing and mislead you. Fix how the data is entered, then report on it.

A build starts to make sense when the numbers sit in three or more systems, when different people need different views, or when decisions wait on a report that arrives late.

How we build a dashboard

The work follows the stages on our approach page. For reporting, the detail looks like this:

• Audit. We list every report your business produces, who builds it, which tools it draws from and which decision it feeds.
• Design. The written scope names each number, its source, its rule, its owner and who is allowed to see it.
• Build. We connect your tools inside your own accounts and keep the ones that already work.
• Test. Each figure is checked against your current report for the same period. We explain every difference before the old report is retired.
• Launch. Your team is trained, the documentation is handed over, and the hand-built report stops.

For an example of reporting inside a wider build, see MRM Group. That project included operational reporting inside an internal command centre for clients, deals and tasks, with human approval at sensitive decision points. We publish what we built there, with no results figures attached.

What a custom dashboard costs

Scoped builds run from £5,000 to £20,000, or $10,000 to $30,000 in the US. Where a dashboard sits in that range depends on how many systems it reads from, how clean their data is, how many role-based views you need and whether the team acts inside the screen or only reads it.

The paid audit comes first, at £3,000 plus VAT. Before it we give a range, never an exact price. The fee is credited against the build when the build deposit is paid within 14 days of the report. Hosting and software are paid directly to the providers from your own accounts.

These prices are our fee. The sum earlier on this page is only an example, so do not read the two together as a promised return. Custom software cost has the fuller breakdown.