Teri’s Tips: Understanding your Xero Dashboard
All you need to know about your Xero Dashboard
At Rosemary Bookkeeping, we work closely with our friends and partners at Xero to help our clients get to grips with their bookkeeping.
And there is still a lot to get to grips with.
That’s why our accounting crackpot, Teri Cotta, has been working hard to bring you the top tips to be a Xero whiz and understand its processes, from the terribly simple to the terrifically complex.
In this Teri’s Tips, you’ll learn how to use the Xero dashboard to get an overview of your business.
And if you’re a visual learner, don’t worry, a full video showing each of these points step by step can be found on our YouTube channel.
Get to grips with your Xero Dashboard
When you log in to Xero, the first thing you’ll see is the dashboard.
It provides useful information about your bank balances and your organisation’s financials.
Let’s take a closer look at each panel.
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Business Bank Account
Use the bank account panel to monitor your bank balance, and to reconcile the bank transactions.
Click the menu icon to see what else you can do with the bank accounts.
Hover over a dot on the graph to see the balance on that date.
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Total cash in and out
The next panel shows the cash moving in and out of your organisation based on figures in the bank summary report.
Hover over a bar to see the breakdown for that month or click on a bar to see the bank summary report for that month to see more details.
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Account watchlist
This displays accounts that you’ve chosen to monitor on the dashboard.
To add more accounts to this list, go to the Chart of Accounts, then add an account and enable the option to show on the dashboard watchlist.
The watchlist shows two balances.
The first column shows the balance posted to the account during the current month.
The second column shows the balance posted to the accounts for the financial year to the end of the current month.
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Invoices owed to you
This panel shows you a summary of the invoices owed to you and how long they’ve been owed based on the due dates of the sales invoices you’ve sent to your customers.
Hover over a bar to see the outstanding amounts for that period or click on the bar to go to the sales overview and see more details.
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Bills you need to pay
The next panel shows you a snapshot of the bills you need to pay and when you need to pay them.
It helps you to identify your future commitments, which allows you to keep on top of your cash flow.
Once again, hover over a bar to get a summary for the period, or click on the bar to go to the purchase overview and see more details
How to Customise your Xero Dashboard
Lastly, customise the dashboard layout to view your financials to suit you.
At the bottom of the screen, click Edit Dashboard.
To move a panel, click on the panel and drag it to the new position.
Click hide or show, to remove or add a panel to your dashboard. Then, save the changes.
Need an expert bookkeeper?
Teri Cotta is joined worldwide by Rosemary Bookkeeping’s network of Xero-certified bookkeepers.
So, whether you need help choosing the right software for you, using Xero or outsourcing your books, our experts can help.
Take the hassle out of your bookkeeping and get the time back to focus on what matters most by finding your nearest Rosemary Bookkeeping business today.
