Intacct: Graphs for Dashboards
Do you have 15-30 minutes today? If you do, I encourage you to do the following:
- (2 minutes) Think back to your initial demo of Sage Intacct. Were you awed by the impressive (and real-time) dashboards you saw? (Need some dashboard inspiration? Check out these industry specific dashboard examples!) Were you mesmerized by the eye-catching graphs? I’m betting you most likely were. Who wouldn’t be? It’s a great feature!
- (5 minutes) Think about a graph you would like to create in Sage Intacct. Also think about what type of graph you would like to create (Pie Chart, Line Graph, Bar, etc). Some ideas to inspire you:
- Expenses by Department
- Expenses by Location
- Expenses by Program
- Revenue by Source
- Revenue by Product Type
- Revenue by Business Line
- Budget to Actual Trend
- Net Assets by Restriction
Got an idea? Great! I’ll walk you through how in the remainder of the 8-23 minutes you can build your graph in Sage Intacct. It really is that quick and easy. You’ve followed me this far, no point in avoiding it now!
- (8-23 minutes)
Step 1: Go To: General Ledger > + Graphs
Step 2: Give your graph a name
- Feel free to steal some of the ideas listed above.
- In my example I’ll be using “Expenses by Department”.
Step 3: Choose a Primary Data Series
- Use the primary data series to select how values are categorized. You can choose from dimensions, account groups, reporting periods, or dimension structures here.
- Since I want to see all my expenses and how they fall into my different departments, I select departments as my primary data source. The Primary Data Source really answers the “how” question: How would you like me to display your data in the graph? By a dimension? By account groups? By time periods?
Step 4: Optionally choose a Comparative Data Series
- This is great for budget to actual reporting.
- My graph will not have a comparative data series so I left this selection blank.
Step 5: Enter the Additional Parameters
- Here you’ll choose the reporting period, account group, and values in my graph.
- This is where you tell the graph what data to look at. I want to know what my actual expenses were for the current year broken out. So I chose: “Current Year”, “Expenses”, and “Actual”.
Step 6: Enter Additional Filters
- You can filter your graph by any dimension or dimension group as well.
- My graph is not filtered, however if this specific graph I wanted to analyze all Admin expenses and that was a group of my departments I could certainly do that.
Step 7: (The fun part!) Choose a type of graph from one of the icons on the right hand side and click Refresh. My personal favorite part of the graph writer (and a newer feature) is the ability to quickly see the graph preview while building it. You can jump back and forth between graph types as well. Don’t like the look of the pie chart? Switch over to a bar graph! It’s really that easy!
While graphs most likely don’t fall at the very top of your priority list, due to their ease of use, in just 15-30 minutes you can have an impressive graph to add to any dashboard.
Kathy Jastrzebski is a manager with CLA’s Intacct team. CLA is an Intacct Premier Partner with a partnership that spans over 20 years and more than 1,000 successful implementations. Kathy brings five years of accounting experience along with seven years of Sage Intacct implementation experience. Along with her accounting experience, she has a passion for leveraging technology to lead finance teams worldwide through system implementations with a mission of increasing department efficiency through business process improvements.