In this article:
- Who can use the Dashboard?
- Importing data from your accounting solution
- Using your actuals to create a starting forecast
- LivePlan Monthly Review
- How can a start-up business use the Dashboard?
- Interpreting the Dashboard display
The LivePlan Dashboard is an easy-to-use graphical display that combines two important sources of data:
- Your financial forecast data (your plan)
- Your company's actual accounting data (your actual results)
Your Dashboard tells you exactly how your business is performing against the goals you'd set out in your forecast. Armed with that information, you can catch problems early and make smart decisions for growth.
This feature is available to LivePlan Premium users. To learn more about LivePlan Premium, please click here.
Who can use the Dashboard?
The Dashboard needs actual accounting data, so it's designed for businesses that are up and running. If you have a start-up company and you've used LivePlan Standard to build your forecast, you'll be ready to use the Dashboard in LivePlan Premium once your company starts operating. (Scroll down for some helpful tips for start-ups.)
Importing data from your accounting solution
LivePlan connects with either QuickBooks Online or Xero. The whole process takes about 90 seconds, as LivePlan pulls in your current year’s actual accounting data and up to two years prior. (If your business doesn’t yet have several years of actuals, don’t worry. LivePlan will import the data you have.)
To get started, please see these pages:
Note: If you don't use any of these accounting tools, you can always enter your actuals directly.
Using your actuals to create a starting forecast
LivePlan's Forecast Builder enables you to create a starting forecast from your accounting data when connected to QuickBooks Online or Xero. When 13 or more months of historical data are available, LivePlan automatically calculates an average rate of change based on the overlapping months between the current year and the prior year.
Note: For a detailed breakdown of how this feature calculates, read this guide on How the starting forecast is calculated
Note: If you've already built your forecast, you can always create a fresh scenario to use the use the automated forecast feature.
LivePlan Monthly Review
Keeping your LivePlan Dashboard up to date with your actuals will provide you with the information you need in order to conduct your reviews. However, the LivePlan Monthly Review can help you contextualize this data by conducting a comprehensive analysis of your actuals and forecast data for you. This review will provide a detailed report offering insights into performance discrepancies, focal points for attention, recommended actions, and suggestions for long-term strategic goals.
For more information on LivePlan Assistant please see this article.
How can a start-up business use the Dashboard?
If your company is just getting started, you can start using the Dashboard once you have a month or two of actual accounting data available. The more months of data you have, the more useful the Dashboard becomes.
We're assuming that you've already built a forecast in LivePlan - that's an important step to completing your business plan. Once you have at least a month's worth of actual data in your accounting system, you can either connect it to LivePlan, or enter your data directly.
At that point, you'll need to map your chart of accounts to your LivePlan forecast so you're comparing the categories you want to compare.
For details, please see Mapping your accounting solution to LivePlan data.
Interpreting the Dashboard display
These pages will help you read the Dashboard charts and understand what they mean:
- Using the Dashboard Overview
- Dashboard Trends: comparing actuals to your forecast
- Metrics available on the LivePlan Dashboard
- Ratios available in the LivePlan Dashboard
- Spending and productivity metrics available in the LivePlan Dashboard
- Printing reports from the Dashboard