Dashboards can be a powerful reporting tool, based on any information within the Acumatica system. They are visually pleasing and easy to see the data important to you. Acumatica dashboards are generally made up of one or several widgets, which are a report of some kind. You can also configure several different dashboards and they can be assigned to the home page for any user. You can had different dashboards for your warehouse people, controller, sales, etc.
Here’s the default “Controller” dashboard in Acumatica
Building a Widget for Your Dashboard
The following is an example of how easy it is to build your own Dashboard report based on a Generic Inquiry. We will build an example Dashboard report to show Revenue by Product Line (subaccount).
Step One – Find the Data
It can be easy to find the data you need for dashboard reporting, using the Customization > Inspect Element tool within any Acumatica screen.
Our example, Revenue by Product Line will be based on General Ledger data. From the General Ledger – Journal Transactions screen, select Customization > Inspect Element and the cursor will change to ‘Inspect’ mode.
Next click on any field in the screen and Acumatica will display the Element Properties. In most cases the Data Class (GLTran in this case) is the table needed for report building.
Step Two – Build a Generic Inquiry
In most cases, a powerful Dashboard report can be created using a small number of tables. Here we will use the GLTran table exclusively.
Go to Customization > Generic Inquiry to get started. Building a Generic Inquiry will involve a few steps, using different tabs within the Generic Inquiry screen. We are going to use the Revenue by Product Line report, so not all tabs are needed.
- Tables – identify the table or tables needed for the report. In our example, we click the plus + sign to add a table, and type ‘GLTran’ in the search bar. Acumatica displays the list of tables meeting the search criteria, and in this example it is the GL.GLTran table we need.
- Parameters – user prompts to allow users to specify run-time filters.
- Results Grid – list the fields needed on the report.
- Note the <All Fields> selection to automatically add every field from the table.
- View Inquiry button – preview the report.
Step Three – Add a Shared Filter
Generic Inquiries (GIs) are meant to be just that, ‘generic’. Once a GI is created, users can add filters to the report, which will create separate tabs of report output. In our example, we will filter the GL transaction activity to only the Revenue accounts, in the 40000 range as shown above.
Note: we are choosing the option to make this a Shared Filter.
Step Four – Create a Dashboard Report
From our Management Dashboard, we will use the Design mode to add a new widget.
- This report will be displayed as a Chart.
- Inquiry Screen – the source of the data, in this case the GL-Transactions Generic Inquiry.
- Shared Filter to Apply – the Revenue filter will focus our report on revenue activity.
- Caption – name the report
Here is our report, which is based on the configuration settings below.
Note: as the user hovers over the chart, the specific monthly data is displayed.
Here is our report, which is based on the configuration settings below.
- Categories – increments along the x axis.
- With Transaction Dates, we can group the activity by Months with Date Rounding.
- Series – defines the individual lines in the chart.
- Values – defines the values for each Series, the monthly revenue for each product line.
Now you can use this widget in any of your dashboards. Here we see our new widget in the Controller dashboard.
If you have questions or need some assistance, visit our support page for more help.
