In our third product release, we introduced Dashboards.

Dashboards are fully interactive displays that show you all the financial metrics you care about in a single view. You can use dashboards to visualize your organization’s customer, product, and financial health data in one place. Let’s take a look at what you need to know to make the most of this tool.

To get to the Dashboard, navigate to Analytics powered by Syft. You will see a selector that says “Visualisations” at the top of your screen. Click on the drop-down arrow next to that and select “Dashboards”.

As is the case with other features, when you load your dashboard for the first time, you’ll see demo data. This gives you a taste of the feature while your own data loads. As soon as your data has loaded, it will replace the demo data and you can begin tweaking your dashboard.

The default view of the dashboard is the Performance overview. This is the dashboard format that you are able to access on every plan. If you are on the Comprehensive/Established plan, you will also have a number template options for your dashboard, which you can find out more about below.

Depending on the card you are looking at, you will have a range of comparatives options, such as current vs prior, current vs prior last year, and total prior year.

There are a number of different templates available. These include the following:

To add a dashboard from a template, click on "Manage dashboards" and then "Add dashboard from template."

Within the general settings for the dashboard, you have the following options:

To create a new dashboard, click on “Manage dashboards” and choose a new template as your base. Please note that “dashboard” refers to the whole page, composed of numerous cards, whereas “card” refers to an individual graph within the dashboard.

To add a new card to your dashboard, click “Add card” and select the category of data you would like to choose. Once you’ve selected the category, you can then select specific metrics or the financial type, depending on what you have selected. You can choose between the following categories:

The dashboard will automatically scroll to the new card you’ve added so you can see it right away.

To edit a card, open the More options (the vertical ...) menu. This will open a floating strip with settings for the card that’s active. You can change the following:

You can also duplicate or delete cards.

In certain instances, you may also be able to set which specific accounts to show.

When viewing your dashboard, you can hover over a metric to see the trends of which that bar or point is comprised.

You may want to edit aspects of your dashboard. Let’s consider what you can amend. To get started, navigate to “Manage dashboard.” From there, you can:

Shared dashboards are view only pages. You cannot edit them in the shared mode. If you would like to edit anything in your dashboard, you’ll need to return to the dashboard in Analytics powered by Syft. However, you can access AI insights within the shared dashboard.

On each page, you can see the last sync and the option to refresh now. By default, your dashboard refreshes every 15 mins. You can toggle on “Show demo data” if you’d prefer to showcase dummy data.

Use a live link to share your dashboards with clients, stakeholders, investors, or members of your team. You can share these as view-only dashboards, which can be set to refresh daily, weekly or monthly.

You also have the ability to delete dashboards so that they will no longer be accessible. To delete a dashboard, simply disable sharing. To generate a new link, re-enable sharing.

In our second product release, we introduced KPIs and Cash graphs, along with the ability to add a logo.

Welcome to our second release update. From new graphs and insights to improve your decision-making to a simple but effective way to add branding to your reports, there's a lot to explore.

Let's get started.

First up - a little taste of branding. You now have the ability to brand your visualizations and reports on Analytics powered by Syft by uploading a logo or selecting an icon. This adds an element of professionalism to the appearance of your visualizations, making them ready to be shared with external parties.

To add a logo, click on the icon next to your entity’s name. This will open a dialogue box with the option to upload. If you click on “Upload your logo,” you can then choose a logo from your computer files.

Alternatively, if you don’t have a logo, you can search for an appropriate icon in the search bar below and use that to represent your entity.

As the old axiom goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. That's why we believe in the power of visualizing your data - helping you to understand what's going on in your business, from key metrics to cash in- and outflows with the power of graphs.

In addition to the new logo options, the team is happy to introduce a beautiful way for you to gain deeper insights into key performance indicators (KPIs) and cash data on Xero through KPI and Cash Graphs.

Let's take a look at what this entails.

The Cash tool is handy for getting a visual sense of your cash flow and balance. Sometimes, when you see your cash in a graph, you pick up on trends you might otherwise miss.

This is a powerful cash management tool that enables you to see what is happening to your cash and the key reasons for the inflows and outflows so that you can drive the inflows and reduce the outflows in the future.

You can visualize your cash in five different ways:

Want to narrow your focus to a particular month, quarter, or more specific date range? We've got you covered.

You can choose between several frequencies to view your cash flow and cash balance. These include basic frequencies:

And more advanced frequencies:

You can also select the date and year you would like to view.

In the Graph options menu, you can choose:

If you click on the tear drop, you can choose between various color schemes so that your graphs match your organization's branding.

Magnify refers to the hover states available in these graphs and it's one of our favorite features. This is because, like a magnifying glass, it is able to enlarge vital details that you may have missed just by looking at the line or bars of your chart.

How does this work? Well, simply put, if you hover over a line or bar in your graph, you will be able to see the following:

Want to share your cash information with interested parties? No problem. You can export these graphs to email, Excel, PDF, Slack, WhatsApp, or Microsoft Teams to share them with clients, investors, or other stakeholders.

Key performance indicators or KPIs are quantifiable measurements of performance over time for a specific outcome. They help you determine targets to aim for, set milestones to assess your organization's progress, and provide insights to various members of your team into how they could improve performance or make better decisions.

With Analytics powered by Syft, KPIs can be visualized in either a line graph or a grouped bar chart. Simply click on the relevant icon to change the graph type. Here are a few reasons why you might choose each option:

The KPIs you can choose to view in these graphs include:

Just as with Cash graphs, you can customize your view further by selecting the specific viewing frequencies that make sense to your business and where you would like to focus your attention. You can choose between several frequencies to view your KPIs.

In the Graph options menu, you can choose:

And, as with the cash graphs, you can choose between various color schemes so that your graphs have the look and feel of your organization.

Once again, this tool includes the beloved Magnify feature. On hover, you are able to identify:

You can export these graphs to email, Excel, PDF, Slack, WhatsApp, or Microsoft Teams to share them with clients, investors, or other stakeholders. As easy as that.

Our very first release of features on Analytics powered by Syft, dedicated to helping you visualize your financial data in no time.

Financial information is most useful when it is easy to understand and is structured in a way that aids decision making. Xero Analytics powered by Syft helps you by automatically transforming your financial data into customizable graphs and tables that can be analysed or downloaded with ease!

Let’s take a look at how it works.

In Analytics Powered by Syft, you have the following options across the top of your screen:

Once you are in each of these sections, you have a number of options to choose from in terms of what you want to see and how you’d like it to be presented.

You will see a key for the graph on the right-hand side to help you identify what you are looking at.

You can choose the frequency you would like to see, choosing between basic frequencies and more advanced options. The basic options are:

The more advanced frequencies are:

You can also choose which month and year to show by clicking on the drop-down arrows.

To choose how many months you would like to look at, use the period selector.

In graph options, you can choose:

You can filter your graphs according to specific tracking categories, such as Location or Revenue. You can then apply these filters to any category (any category that meets the criteria) or an exact category (a category or categories that meet the specific criteria).

You can apply a colour theme of your choosing to the graph, deciding between the following options:

You can hover over the graph line to identify trends, top transactions and top contacts, giving you a comprehensive view of what constitutes key figures.

All graphs can be exported to PDF, Excel, Slack, WhatsApp or Microsoft Teams by clicking on the Export button and selecting the relevant option. Sharing to Slack, WhatsApp or Teams makes it easier to send graphs directly to team members, clients or stakeholders.

Under Settings at the top right of the screen, you can choose from the following options in terms of display:

You can also change your reporting currency.

At the bottom of the screen, you can see the last time this data synced to your underlying accounts. You can also click on the revolving arrows to refresh it now.

If you would like to look at dummy data as opposed to your actual data, you can toggle on the “Show demo data” option to get a sense of what the graphs look like with demo data. This is helpful for giving clients or staff a taste of the data without inputting sensitive information.

At the bottom right of the screen, you’ll see you have the option to provide us with feedback on Analytics powered by Syft. Please let us know what you think so we can continue to improve this feature.

Now, let’s get into the nitty gritty details of the different visualizations.

When looking at the Profitability section, you can choose between the following metrics to focus on:

Under Profit & Loss accounts, you can choose between a wide range of graph types, namely:

As with the other graphs, you can change the dates to view and toggle between different graph options.

With the line graph, grouped bar graph and stacked bar graph, you can select the accounts to display as well as the number of periods to view them for.

Within the horizontal bar graph, the normalised horizontal stacked bar graph and the donut graph, you can see:

For certain graphs, you can also select the comparison period to view.

Using the “Specify accounts” button, you can choose which exact accounts to show on the graph. You can tick the box next to each individual account that you would like to see.

As with other graphs, you can filter according to tracking categories, change your graph colours, or export.

Balance Sheet accounts work very similarly to Profit & Loss accounts with the same graph types available, and the ability to choose which accounts to display. For example, you may want to include total accounts such as Total Liabilities, or perhaps some non-current asset accounts such as Motor Vehicles to focus on those specific details.

You can also choose the number of periods to display (i.e., 24, 12, 6 or 3).