Stop 5 of 9 · Weekly
The dashboard
Three exports, eight numbers, a trigger value on each one, and a read that takes five minutes because there is nothing else on the page.
Why a dashboard and not a report
Nadia already reads a cash position and a monthly review. Both tell her what happened. Neither tells her, in the time it takes to drink a coffee, whether the week needs her.
A dashboard is a different object. Fixed numbers, fixed order, every week, so your eye finds the odd one before you have read the words. It is built from three exports she already has: QuickBooks, the CRM, and the shared calendar. No new system, no new subscription.
The eight numbers
| Number | Trigger for a call |
|---|---|
| Cash collected this week | Below the four-week average two weeks running |
| Invoiced this week | Below the four-week average, or any invoice missing a PO |
| Receivables over 45 days, as a share of the total | Above 15 percent, or up two weeks running |
| Orders shipped on the promised date | Below 95 percent |
| Open quotes older than five days | Above six, or any quote over ten days |
| New deals created this week | Zero for any rep |
| Tickets opened, closed, and the age of the oldest open one | Oldest open above four days |
| Exceptions closed by someone other than Nadia | Below 70 percent of exceptions closed |
Eight is not a magic number. The rule that produced eight is: if you cannot say what value makes you act and who acts, the number comes off the page.
Building it
Read three files from my Drive: the QuickBooks export, the CRM export, and the exception log. Build a file called dashboard with the eight numbers in this fixed order: cash collected, invoiced, receivables over 45 days as a share of total, on-time shipping rate, open quotes older than five days, new deals per rep, tickets opened closed and oldest open, and exceptions closed by someone other than me. For each: this week, the four-week average, and the direction. Where a number crosses the trigger in the triggers file, add one line underneath with the rows behind it and the person who makes the call. No commentary, no causes, no recommendations. If an export is missing or a number cannot be built, write the number name and the words not available with the reason.
Here are twelve weeks of my QuickBooks and CRM exports: [paste or attach the twelve weekly exports]. For each of the eight numbers, show me the weekly value, the median and the worst week. Then propose a trigger value for each that would have fired in the bad weeks and stayed quiet in the ordinary ones, and tell me how many times each proposed trigger would have fired in the twelve weeks. Do not average away a bad week, show it.
Here is this week's dashboard file and last week's: [paste both]. Tell me only what changed enough to matter, in at most five lines, each naming the number, the direction and the person. Say nothing about the numbers that did not move.
The read
Five minutes, same time every week. You are looking for two things: a number past its trigger, and a number that moved without a reason you already know. Everything else is noise you have already paid for by building the page.