# Dashboards and reports

## Build a dashboard for one screen

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**Rule:** Answer “is anything wrong, and what changed” in one screen, without scrolling.

**Why:** A dashboard is read between other work: below the fold is not read.

**Except:** A phone stacks the blocks and scrolls; budget a desktop screen.

**Do:** A period control, a row of figures, a short list of exceptions.

**Don't:** A second screen of blocks below the figures.

## Put only figures, trends and exceptions on a dashboard

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**Rule:** Keep a dashboard to figures, trends and the rows that need attention.

**Why:** Reading a table is what a report is for.

**Do:** The figures with their trends, then the payouts needing a decision.

**Don't:** The whole ledger and a paragraph about it.

## Link each reference to its row

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**Rule:** Link each reference to its report row and bring that row into view.

**Why:** A dashboard stops at what happened; a report opening at its own top has not answered the reference.

**Do:** Each payout reference opens its row in the report.

**Don't:** A block that lists what is wrong and offers no way in.

## Build a report for the whole answer

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**Rule:** Answer “why, and exactly how much”, with the rows behind the figure.

**Why:** Analysis needs the rows: a summary cannot say how much.

**Do:** The payout ledger, with the fees and net on every row.

**Don't:** The same ledger reduced to three figures.

## Give a report its filters and its export

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**Rule:** Offer filters and one export on every report.

**Why:** Narrowing the question, or taking the rows away, needs no second screen.

**Gap #555:** The kit's Stock screener is a report with filters and no export.

**Do:** A filter row above the table, the export at its end.

**Don't:** A table alone, its period fixed when it was built.

## Put the table under every chart

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**Rule:** Show the table a chart was drawn from under it, on every report.

**Why:** A chart shows the shape of a change, not the amount it is read for.

**Do:** The months as bars, then the same months as rows.

**Don't:** The bars alone, every month estimated by eye.