Reading your dashboards

Four screens sit under Forecast in the left sidebar. They read the same forecast in four different ways, and each answers a different question:

Screen	Answers
Overview	What is the story of this plan?
Dashboard	What do profit and cash do, month by month?
Waterfall	Where does the revenue actually go?
Runway	How long does the cash last, and what is consuming it?

None of them is an input. Every figure on all four is derived from your plan — see How forecasts are built.

The shared controls#

Most of these screens carry the same three controls in their page header:

Year picker — narrows the page to one forecast year, or shows the whole plan.
Scenario picker — the version of the forecast being read. See Set the working case.
Project layers — switches each project on and off the forecast.

The Overview#

The Overview is the plan told as a story, and it is the screen to open first.

Your plan in one sentence#

The page opens with a single line describing your plan, with the key figures picked out as chips. It is the fastest read on the page: if that sentence isn't the business you think you're running, something upstream in the plan is wrong.

Cash horizon#

The main chart is the closing bank balance, month by month, across the whole forecast — shaded above the zero line and, more pointedly, below it. Hovering anywhere gives you that month's cash, revenue and net flow.

When a scenario is applied, a dashed line shows the base case behind it, so you can see what the scenario is doing to cash without leaving the page.

Pinned onto the chart are milestone flags at the moments that matter, so the turning points sit on the curve that produced them.

Moments that matter#

The same turning points, listed in date order:

Moment	What it marks
Plan starts	The opening cash you begin with
Breakeven	The month profit after tax holds from — or No breakeven, if the plan never turns profitable
Cash low point	The deepest the bank balance goes, and when
Out of cash	The month the balance goes negative and stays there
Best revenue month	The peak, and how much
A project starts	Each enabled project with a start date, as its layer joins the plan
Plan ends	What is left in the bank at the horizon

No breakeven is the one to act on. It means nothing in the current plan ever turns the business profitable, which is a modelling answer, not a rendering problem.

The tiles#

Six figures for the selected window:

Tile	What it shows
Revenue	With growth against the previous year
Gross margin	With the gross profit behind it
Operating margin	With the operating profit behind it
Monthly burn	Average net outflow across the burning months — or Cash positive
Runway	Months until cash runs out — or Beyond plan
Closing cash	The bank balance at the end of the window

The two pulses#

Two mirrored charts, both reading the same way — bars above the line, bars below it, and an overlay line for the net:

Cash pulse — money in above, money out below; the line is the month's net movement.
Trading pulse — revenue above, operating costs below; the line is profit after tax.

Reading them together is the point. The trading pulse can be healthy while the cash pulse is negative, and that gap is the working-capital story — timing, not trading.

Before there's a plan#

With nothing entered, these screens show an invitation rather than empty charts — "Your forecast is waiting" — with links straight to Products, Costs and Employees. Every panel fills itself from the plan; none of them needs setting up.

Bank balance & cash position — the cash line in detail.
The Runway dashboard — what's consuming the cash.
The financial statements — the numbers underneath all of it.