Widgets are the tiles within Acumatica ERP dashboards that display specific data and offer drill-down capabilities to view this data. Widgets can be incredibly useful for employees to become more effective, organized, and efficient in managing their responsibilities. We will walk through creating a widget using a practical example for your accounting team, detailing the steps from selecting the widget type, configuring widget properties, setting filters, and choosing appearance options.
Widget Request Scenario
Your Accounts Payable (AP) Clerk requested an Acumatica dashboard to help them track vendor documents, approvals, payments, and related activities. The AP Clerk Dashboard has already been created; however, your AP Clerk is now requesting a specific widget for bills that need to be paid. The widget provides drill-down capability for your AP Clerk to manage open bills in a single centralized location, rather than manually searching for them. The goal of the widget is to provide faster visibility and easier follow-up. However, it will only be effective if the appropriate inquiry, thresholds, and refresh settings are selected. To create this new widget in Acumatica 2025 R2 or newer versions, please follow the steps outlined below.
Note: To create this widget, you must have the Dashboard Designer role assigned to create and edit dashboards and widgets in Acumatica.
Creating the Widget
1. Open the established AP Clerk dashboard and click on the “Design” button.
2. Click the “+ New Widget” button.
3. Select the Widget that displays how you want the data shown on the dashboard. For example, the Score Card displays the Key Performance Indicators as a scorecard; choose this widget type.
Figure: There are over seventeen widget options available within Acumatica 2025 R2 and newer versions. Hover over each option for a brief overview of the widget.
Widget Properties
1. Name the widget in the Caption field to “Bills to Pay.”
2. Choose the Inquiry Screen (Generic Inquiry) that will populate the information for the widget; in this case, choose “Vendor Documents to Pay.” This Inquiry Screen includes all open vendor documents (bills) that require payment.
Note: The most complex part of creating a widget is finding the correct Inquiry Screen to populate it. In some cases, you may need to create a Generic Inquiry to collect the required data. Please refer to the Acumatica documentation for more information about Generic Inquiries.
3. Select the timeframe that you want the tile’s data to refresh. Several options are available, from “On Page Reload” to “Every Week.” Choose a refresh interval based on how often your data changes, so the dashboard updates only when necessary, making it more responsive to your needs.
Widget Filters
1. Select “All Records” for the Shared Filter to Apply field.
Widget Appearance
1. Choose “Reference Nbr.” as the Field to Aggregate because this is the unique document number assigned (Reference Nbr.), allowing the Generic Inquiry to gather all the individually specified AP bills.
2. Under the Aggregate Function field, select “Count All.” This is the specific data you want displayed on the widget, or the specific total number of unpaid AP bills. In this example, all the aggregated data from the Vendor Documents to Pay screen will be displayed.
3. Choose the Normal Color of the widget. Over 14 color options are available. Teal is the default “good” color in Acumatica’s Modern UI (formerly green). [RS3.1]
4. The “Normal Level Type” will be a Fixed Value because you want a certain number (COUNT) of open invoices to be paid.
Note: Text-based fields do not support SUM or AVG; a runtime error will occur. [RS4.1](Resolve this runtime error by removing the widget from the dashboard or the Dashboards screen in Acumatica.)
5. Choose the number of open invoices to be paid as the “Normal Level.” In this case, five (5) invoices to be paid to vendors are normal; therefore, the widget will appear teal.
6. The “Warning Color” can be any color designated as a warning; this is usually yellow or orange.
7. The “Alarm Color” should stand out on the dashboard, which is why pink is the default alarm “bad” color in Acumatica’s Modern UI (formerly red). [RS5.1]
8. The “Alarm Level Type” will also be a Fixed Value. Dashboards v2
9. In this example, 10 bills outstanding should signal the alarm in “Alarm Level.”
10. The last option is to choose an Icon associated with the widget that will be displayed on it.
Figure: Icons available to display on the widget.
11. Click Save.
12. Click the “Design” button again to return to the normal view.
The “Bill to Pay” widget now appears on the AP Clerk Dashboard with a pink stripe at the top, indicating that the number of invoices to pay exceeds 10.
If you click the “Bills to Pay” widget, the Vendor Documents to Pay screen appears and displays the 35 open bills.
The Bills and Adjustments screen opens after you click the Reference Nbr., allowing your AP Clerk to complete their process.
If you have questions or would like additional training on creating dashboard widgets in Acumatica, please contact sales@crestwood.com.
