New Features That Are Simply Dashing

Version 5.5 of Sage Accpac introduced new analytical dashboards in Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, and for Sales Analysis.  These new dashboards provide a visual snapshot of your company’s financial and operational status.  They are a fantastic tool for enabling managers and executives to make better-informed and timelier decisions.  Dashboards are particularly useful because they consolidate vast amounts of data from a variety of sources into a single snapshot which makes all of that data easy to digest and interpret.  In all likelihood, these 3 new dashboards are just the beginning and you can probably expect to see more with future versions of Sage Accpac.  So let’s take a quick look at the value of dashboard-style reporting and analysis.

It’s Just Like Driving a Car
One glance at the dashboard in your car tells you everything you need to know about your speed, fuel, oil temperature, and other vital systems to ensure your car runs smoothly.  The same thing can be said about a reporting dashboard that provides visual analysis of business activity.  It aggregates vital information that is scattered across your business and throughout your Sage Accpac database and presents it in an easy-to-read format that’s simple to interpret at a glance. 

In your car, you wouldn’t necessarily monitor your tire pressure or brake fluid every five minutes using a dashboard gauge.  The same can be said about a reporting dashboard that can be customized to include only the information that you feel is vital to the smooth operation of your business.  These vital bits of data are sometimes referred to as key performance indicators, or KPIs – important financial and non-financial metrics that management relies on to evaluate operational health and progress toward long-term organizational goals. KPIs answer the question “what information is absolutely critical and most important to me?”

Managing by Exception
Dashboards help support what’s sometimes referred to as “Management by Exception” where the objective is to reduce the quantity of detail contained in management reports and focus attention only on the things that require quick and decisive action.  Just like the Red light in your car that indicates your engine is running hot, the glaring chart or graph on your Sage Accpac dashboard might be indicating that sales are dropping off, customer invoices are going unpaid, or other critical issues that require immediate attention.  And one of the nice things about a dashboard is that the information is displayed in real-time so you can take action before things really get out of hand and not have to wait until the end of the month or quarter when you finally get the report you’ve been waiting for.

The new Accounts Payable, Receivable, and Sales Analysis dashboards are a great addition to your analytical reports.  Contact us to learn more about this new feature of Sage Accpac Version 5.5.