Your dashboard and metrics explained

Your dashboard is the first thing you see when you open Travada Books. It has two tabs: Overview, a set of cards with the numbers you check most, and Metrics, with charts that show how things change month by month.

Where the numbers come from

Almost every figure is worked out from your Transactions: money in counts as income, money out counts as expenses. When you record a payment on an invoice, it's added to your transactions as money in, so it counts on the date you were paid. Transactions with the status Excluded don't count.

Amounts in other currencies are converted to your base currency.

The invoice and quote cards work from your invoices and quotes instead.

Choose the period

The button at the top right shows the current period, Last 1 year to begin with. Open it to change:

• Period: This month, Last 3 months, Last 6 months, Year to date, Last 1 year, Last 2 years, Last 5 years, or Custom to pick dates on a calendar.
• Revenue type: Gross Revenue (inc tax) or Net Revenue (ex tax).
• Currency: if you have transactions in other currencies, you can view every figure in one of them instead of your base currency.

The same settings apply to both tabs. Cards marked Live always show what's true right now and don't change with the period.

Customise the Overview

1. On the Overview tab, select the settings button next to the period.
2. Drag cards by their handle to reorder them.
3. The cards you're not using appear below a dashed line. Drag one up to add it, or drag a card down to remove it. You can show up to seven at once. If you add an eighth, it replaces the last one.
4. Select the tick button when you're done.

Your layout is saved to your account, so each teammate can set up their own.

Overview cards

• Overdue Invoices (Live): how much is overdue, on how many invoices, and the customer who's been late the longest.
• Outstanding Invoices (Live): everything customers still owe you, split into unpaid and overdue, with the largest amounts listed.
• Revenue: money in for the period, compared with the period before.
• Cash Flow: money in minus money out for the period.
• Monthly Burn / Surplus: on average, how much more you spent than you earned each month (burn), or earned than you spent (surplus).
• Cash Cushion: how many months your cash would last if you kept spending at the current rate. It needs your opening balance (see below).
• Top Customer: the customer who paid you the most in the period, and their share of your revenue.
• Top Expense Categories: where most of your money went, by category.
• Monthly Spending: what you spent in the period, compared with the period before.
• Fixed Costs: this month's total for transactions marked as recurring.
• Profit & Loss: income minus expenses, and your margin as a percentage of income.
• Payment Score: the average number of days customers take to pay, compared with the period before. Fewer days is better.
• Customer Churn: of the customers you invoiced in the previous period, the share you haven't invoiced in this one, with their names.
• Tax Summary: the tax recorded on your money in, minus the tax recorded on your money out. A rough guide to what you might owe, not a tax filing calculation.
• Quotes Pipeline: how many quotes are waiting for an answer and their value, your acceptance rate, and how long customers take to decide.
• Vault Activity: the latest documents added to your Vault.

Select a card with a link, such as Overdue Invoices or Top Customer, to jump to the details.

Metrics charts

• Revenue: money in, month by month.
• Cash Flow: income and expenses each month, with the difference as a line.
• Expenses by Category: your top spending categories for the period.
• Customer Activity: customer churn for the period compared with the one before.
• Expenses: money out, month by month.
• Profit & Loss: income and expenses each month, with net profit as a line.
• Burn Rate: how much you burned (or saved) each month, with a three-month average.
• Cash Position: where your cash balance is heading if spending stays the same. It's a straight-line estimate, not a forecast. If you earn more than you spend, it shows your balance instead.
• Quote Conversion: of the quotes you sent in the period, how many were accepted and how many became invoices.

Set your opening balance

Cash Cushion and Cash Position need to know how much cash you started with.

1. Open the menu under your business name at the bottom of the sidebar and choose General.
2. Under Opening balance, enter your Starting balance and the date it was true on, under As of.
3. Select Save changes.

Travada Books adds up your income and expenses from that date to work out your cash today.

Good to know: The dashboard is only as complete as your transactions. Import your statements regularly and categorise your transactions so the numbers stay accurate.

Next steps

• Import a bank or M-Pesa statement
• Record a payment