Anyone searching our Insights to find out more about bookkeeping in general and Xero in particular will quickly realise that we are big fans of Xero here at Hive. There are general blogs on here about why we love Xero and how to get more out of Xero, as well as specific blogs about bank rules, bank feeds, managing credit cards and several others.

These articles generally cover the nitty gritty of getting the information into Xero in the most efficient way and ensuring that all items are correctly treated from a bookkeeping and accounting point of view.

But once the data is correctly into Xero, how can it be used to help you run your business? While this should always be an important consideration for business owners, it has become especially vital during the COVID-19 lockdown. It will remain a critical tool once the lockdown is lifted and businesses begin to open again and enter their regenerate phase.

One of the ways to use Xero to monitor your business performance is to tailor the Dashboard. The Dashboard is the first screen you see when you log in to Xero, and as such should give you a simple and visual snapshot of the current position of your business. When the Xero account is initially set up there is a default layout for this screen – bank accounts are displayed in the order they are set up in and it shows a graph for cash in and out. However, the default layout may not be the most useful one for your business and tailoring the Dashboard to suit your own requirements could not be easier. Simply click on ‘Edit Dashboard’ at the bottom of the page, and this will enable you to:

• reposition each of the panels within the Dashboard, so that the ones that are most important to you are right at the top. They will then be immediately visible when you open Xero;
• hide altogether report panels that you do not need – for example you do not need to see the ‘invoices owed to you’ graph if you do not use the sales ledger function within Xero;
• attach business performance graphs.

It is also worth noting that the set up of the Dashboard is different for each user, so if more than one person in your organisation uses your Xero account, they can each set up the Dashboard to suit their own requirements.

We can help with the process of tailoring Xero to give you the information you need quickly and easily – get in touch if you would like more information.