The Best Finance KPI Dashboard: What to Look For

Let’s be honest. It’s super frustrating having to sort through spreadsheet upon spreadsheet of your business’s financial data, trying to make sense of what’s working and what you need to fix. 

Even if you know what financial KPIs you need to track performance, bouncing between systems and waiting until the month’s end (often longer) to get that data does you no good. This is especially true for small businesses that need a granular view of their finances in near real-time to make decisions at a moment’s notice.

That’s where financial KPI dashboards come in. These tools lay out your financial data in a simple-to-understand, centralized format so you always know what’s going on in your business. 

But not all dashboards are the same.

To get the most accurate view of your data and run your business efficiently, there are a few capabilities and features you should never go without when choosing your financial KPI dashboard.

Step 1: How to pick the right financial KPIs

Before you search for a financial KPI dashboard, you need to determine what specific KPIs to track. As with most things, the KPIs you choose can vary based on your unique business goals and operations.

Generally speaking, there are a couple that are always good to track:

• Net burn — The amount of money you lose every month after accounting for your revenue. It helps you monitor financial sustainability and how long you can keep operating based on your current finances.
• Cash runway — How long your current cash reserves will last you before you run out of money. The longer your runway, the longer you can stay in business.
• Cash flow — Tracks how much money comes in and goes out of your business. A much higher outflow than inflow may indicate financial trouble.
• Revenue concentration — Shows how much of your revenue comes from a few core sources. Having a high concentration with only a handful of customers can put you at risk of financial trouble if you lose one of those clients. 
• Revenue growth — Compares how your revenue has increased from one time period to another. The higher the percentage, the better.

KPIs are not the same as metrics 

It's important to understand that KPIs are a unique way of tracking your financial health, different from metrics. Key performance indicators are always tied to specific goals, such as revenue growth or debt payoff. Meanwhile, metrics are only data points. While they are important, their context and what you do with that data mean more for your business.

Once you've decided what KPIs to track, you can move on to finding a dashboard that best suits your needs.

Must-haves in your finance KPI dashboard

When shopping for a financial KPI dashboard tool, you’ll find many options for businesses of all sizes. Some will be better than others, but there are a few features that you shouldn’t live without.

1. Real-time financial updates

While traditional accounting processes let you close your books and get a bird's-eye view of your finances every 30 or so days, as a small business owner, you can't wait that long to know what’s going on with your money. 

If you're going to effectively track financial KPIs, you need numbers that are updated every few minutes, not every few weeks. Your dashboard should leverage finance automation capabilities to give you real-time accounting insight into your cash flow for all accounts and track your performance month-over-month and year-over-year. 

2. AI-powered insights

Remember when we said the context of your data matters most? You need a finance KPI dashboard that uses AI to give you easy-to-understand summaries of your finance data. It should also use that technology to identify spend, revenue, and vendor trends and highlight major changes, so everything is right in front of you.

3. Dynamic financial reporting

In the same way you shouldn't have to wait 30 days to access your financial data, you should be able to pull financial statements and reports in a matter of seconds.

Your KPI dashboard should allow you to pull smart, interactive profit and loss statements and balance sheets, and get a granular look into every transaction. It should also give you the option to compare different reporting periods and perform historical comparisons of past financial performance.

4. Customizable widgets

One of the most important, but often forgotten must-haves of a KPI dashboard is the ability to customize what you see to suit your preferences and goals.

The right KPI dashboard will allow you to add and remove widgets that you need and track the metrics you care about most for your business.

5. Easy query features

You shouldn't need a degree in finance to get answers about your money. Look for a KPI dashboard that allows you to ask simple, plain-language questions and get answers in the exact same style. It's even better to find one that already prompts you with common questions right on your main dashboard.

In a perfect world, the platform will have a chat feature built specifically around financial data. This way, it uses the proper terminology and understands your questions perfectly.

6. Advanced analytical tools

It's not enough to simply see your financial data. Your dashboard should analyze that data so you can leverage it to make strategic decisions for your business. You should be able to get a quick analysis on things like:

• Expense intelligence – expenses by category or vendor, automatic percentage changes, charts that outline expense trends
• Revenue tracking – by customer or service, key clients, risks in revenue concentration
• Vendor relationships – monitor price changes, alerts for unusual spikes in spend

7. Strict security measures

Security is critical when it comes to choosing a finance KPI dashboard. After all, this is not just your financial performance. It's your bank details and sensitive customer data.

Make sure the KPI dashboard you choose runs on a tightly secure web application that passes regular SOC audits and offers bank-level encryption. Since your dashboard should offer AI capabilities, ensure that the platform keeps your information private and does not share your details with external AI models.

8. Strategic accounting support

Last but certainly not least, you want a dashboard that offers more than advanced technology capabilities. Search for a platform that offers professional human expertise on top of AI insights and analyses.

That added support ensures that your finance data is always clean and adds an extra layer to monitor your accounting information for inconsistencies. The technology and people combined let you build a truly scalable financial operation. 

Get real-time accounting at the speed of business

Traditional accounting isn’t made for the speed of today’s business world. You need and deserve better than manual, month-end financial reporting. You deserve the real-time data financial reporting Digits offers, supported by Hiline’s accounting experts.

Hiline is the first U.S. outsourced accounting firm to offer Digits as a standard feature, leading the charge in transforming financial operations. With our partnership, you get AI-powered, real-time financial visibility,  professional expertise, and scalable financial operations. 

The result? You have more time back to focus on the future of your business.

See how you can access this feature at no extra cost.