Home-page counts and dashboards from the ledger
Where the Industry CRM's home-page counts come from, why none is typed in by hand, and how dashboards read from the ledger differ from management accounts.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Running a business businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
Every sales dashboard has a weak spot: the numbers someone types in. A pipeline value updated before the Monday meeting, a "won this month" figure that includes a deal still waiting for a signature, a revenue tile that counts what the sales team expects rather than what was invoiced. The dashboard looks precise, and everyone in the room knows it is partly hopeful.
Achekam's Industry CRM takes a stricter line. Its home-page counts come from records, tasks or the ledger, and none is typed in by hand. This article explains where each count comes from, what the dashboards read from the ledger add, and how they relate to the management accounts your accountant prepares.
Counts that nobody types
Each industry pack sets its own home-page counts, as it sets its own words, records, workflows and ledger accounts. Whatever the pack, every count is worked out from something that already exists in the system: a record in a stage, a task with a due date, or an entry in the ledger.
That has a simple consequence. If a number on the home page looks wrong, the fix is never to overwrite the number. It is to find the record, task or posting behind it and correct that. Over time, a team learns that the home page is only as good as the work it records, which is exactly the habit a CRM is meant to build.
Records, stages and tasks
Most of the counts describe the work itself:
- Open records: how many jobs, matters, bookings or other main records are currently open.
- Records in a stage: how many sit at a particular point in the pipeline, such as On site for a contractor.
- Pipeline value: the value of what is in the pipeline, taken from the records.
- Overdue tasks and tasks due today: what has slipped and what needs doing now.
- Key dates in the next 7 days: the court dates, start dates, renewals or deliveries coming up this week.
For an owner, these answer the Monday-morning questions without a meeting. For a team leader, overdue tasks are the earliest warning that work is stuck, long before a customer complains.
Won this month and revenue this month
Two counts reach into the results: won this month and revenue this month. Like the others, neither is typed in; both are worked out from what the system already holds.
Read them together. A pipeline can fill up with deals marked won that have not yet turned into invoices, and a month with plenty won and little revenue is a prompt to ask what is stuck between the two: work not started, invoices not raised, or deals marked won too early. The reverse, revenue running ahead of new wins, can be a sign that the pipeline needs attention before next month.
Dashboards read from the ledger
Beyond the home-page counts, the Industry CRM's fourth wave adds dashboards read from the ledger. The same wave links till sales to a customer's Industry CRM timeline and turns low stock into a reorder task, drawing more of the business's day-to-day activity into the CRM's view.
The principle stays the same: the CRM shows what the books say, rather than keeping a second set of figures of its own. A dashboard that reads from the ledger cannot drift away from the accounts, because it is looking at them.
How this differs from management accounts
Dashboards and management accounts answer different questions, and both are worth having. AccountingTools explains management accounting, the internal reporting that tracks revenues, expenses, variances and other measures to help managers act.
Achekam's management accounts show an income statement for a chosen period beside the period before, and a balance sheet at period end, both added up from the business's own journals and exportable as PDF or CSV. They are the formal monthly picture: complete, closed off and comparable. Note that the year-to-date preset starts on 1 January rather than the business's own year start, so choose your dates yourself if your financial year starts elsewhere.
A business can also set a budget per account and period and compare it with actual figures from its ledger. That comparison, with the management accounts, is where performance is judged.
The CRM's counts and dashboards are the working view: what is open, what is due, what was won and invoiced so far this month. They help people act during the month. The management accounts tell you, after the month, how the business actually did.
| CRM home page and dashboards | Management accounts | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Daily and weekly action | Monthly performance |
| Source | Records, tasks and the ledger | The business's own journals |
| Typical user | Owner, sales and operations | Owner, accountant, board |
| Timing | As things happen | After the period is posted |
Making the counts worth reading
A few habits make the home page trustworthy:
- Move records through their stages as work actually progresses, not in a batch before a meeting.
- Close or reassign tasks promptly, so overdue counts mean something.
- Issue invoices as soon as work is billable, so revenue this month keeps pace with won this month.
- Review the management accounts monthly with your accountant, and treat the CRM counts as the early warning, not the final word.
Choosing the pack that sets your counts is covered in choosing an industry pack and changing it later. For examples of industry-specific measures, see account health and usage scores and loyalty tiers and till spend.
Next month, put the CRM home page and the management accounts side by side and look for the places they tell different stories. Each one is worth understanding.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
