It is probably the screen you see the most; its normally the one you see every time you log in – the Xero dashboard. Since you see it so often you may as well spend a couple of minutes understanding how it works and how you can customise it for your workflow.
Xero Dashboard Panels
The dashboard is made up of “panels” that display key information. Once you have setup your organisation in Xero you can choose which panels you want to show up and in which order. Depending on the version of Xero you are using here are some of the available panels:
Bank accounts
This is one panel per bank account. It shows the reconciliation status of the account and you can jump straight into reconciling from here. You have quite a number of screens you can go to from the “more” ellipsis on the top right.
Account watchlist
This allows you to monitor any account you wish. It shows the amount posted to it this month and year to date. You can jump directly to any account you have added from here. You can add a budget column from the “more” ellipsis to help you track how you are doing with any particular account.
Total cash in and out
This panel is self explanatory. Blue bars show cash in and grey show cash out. Clicking the title will take you to a bank summary page where you can perform various searches.
Invoices owed to you
Again, this panel is fairly obvious. It’s a useful overview showing draft, awaiting payment, and overdue invoices. You can also create a new invoice directly from here.
Bills you need to pay
This is similar to the invoices owed to you panel except with bills to pay. So, you can quickly create a new bill and see bills that are draft, awaiting payment, and overdue.
Expense claims
Depending on your user permissions, from here you can see expenses that are in draft, those to review, and those that are awaiting payment. You can also create a new expense claim directly from here.
You can choose as few or as many panels as you like from the above and you can put them in any order you want. It’s definitely worth spending a few minutes getting familiar and arranging it to your liking.
What Next?
So, hopefully that will help you streamline your workflow and make the most out of your Xero dashboard. Do you want to free up even more of your time? Have you considered outsourcing your bookkeeping? Here at BiGRoC Accounting we can look after your books so you can focus on other more important things. Check out our services here and feel free to reach out to see how we can help you.
