MYOB Advanced – Important features of reporting dashboards

MYOB Advanced is built to consolidate your data and reports, simplifying your decision-making process by giving you the best view of your data. When you can see all the important information in one place, you do not need to waste time gathering data and manipulating it into a readable format. The dashboard page in MYOB Advanced presents all the information you need in easy-to-digest graphs, tables, and charts. These dashboards can be customised based on your specific role so that you are only seeing the data that you really need. From the dashboards, you are able to drill through quickly and easily to find more detailed information.

Dashboards allow users to monitor financial, operational, and organisational information while analysing real-time trends that relate to their role in the company. You can now create and use personalised business dashboards to display different information types related to job functions, roles, or responsibilities to give you an overview of your current financial, organisational, and operational information.

There are three things to consider when designing your dashboard:

1. What are you trying to accomplish?
2. How do you want to display it? 
3. Who is going to be seeing it?

Hint: MYOB Advanced comes with sample dashboards. Always check the out-of-the-box dashboards before you build a new one. 

By understanding these three questions, you can better design a necessary and purposeful dashboard rather than one that shows superfluous information.

Here is an example of a Sales Managers’ dashboard. It shows various information such as Opportunities by Stage, Year-to-date (YTD) Sales, Sales by Salesperson, and the Value of each Opportunity. This detailed and specifically relevant information is available at a glance to the user upon signing into MYOB Advanced.

Each small component on the MYOB Advanced Dashboard is called a Widget. With the appropriate permissions, you can modify these widgets to display the needed information depending on your role and responsibilities. Each one of the widgets gives you visibility into critical data and allows you to drill down on that data to make informed decisions and to act on those items that require your action.

There are several different types of dashboard widgets supported by MYOB Advanced, including charts, data tables or listings of information, embedded pages from other websites or applications, header tiles, Power BI tiles, key performance indicators through scorecards and trend cards as well as wiki pages. These widgets are based on information sourced from generic inquiries within MYOB Advanced.

Configuration – some examples of Dashboards

Displaying Invoice Amounts

This example will demonstrate how to display invoice amounts for the last 10 periods in descending order of months.

Read More

1. To create a dashboard, go to Customisation > Profiles > Dashboards and select the plus icon.

Configuration Elements	Description
Name	Type a name that describes the data that is shown on this dashboard.
Owner Role	The user role that owns the dashboard. It is usually the Dashboard Designer role.
Allow Users to Personalise	Other users with access will be able to copy the dashboard and modify its settings according to their needs. The settings of the original dashboard are not changed.
Expose to the Mobile Application	If the check box is selected, a user of the Advanced mobile app can view this dashboard on the main menu.
Make Visible on the UI	You can choose not to make it visible until you finish testing your database.
Site Map Location	The position in the site map where the dashboard will be displayed.
Workspace	The name of a workspace in the user interface from which the dashboard can be accessed.
Category	The name of a category under which the dashboard will be displayed in the selected workspace.

2. To create the Invoice amounts for the last 10 periods, Enter the following information and click the Save icon.
3. Select the View button to design your dashboard.

When you select the view button, you will see an empty shell as you have not yet designed your dashboard.

4. Select the Design button to add a widget.

5. Add a new widget and select the Chart for this example.

Widget Properties	Description
Inquiry Screen	All the data in MYOB Advanced comes from a Generic Inquiry. Select the Invoices and Memo GI as the Inquiry Screen.
Select Filter to Apply	You can select an existing filter from the drop-down list. Note: The existing filters won’t be listed unless they are marked as Shared within the Generic Inquiry.
Filter Settings	You can override the existing filter setting by creating your own filter. Note: This would not alter the filter settings attached to the Generic Inquiry.
Refresh Data	How often do you want to refresh the data

6. Select the Configure button to configure the chart settings and click Finish to complete the widget properties setup.

Chart Settings	Description
Chart Type	Select the chart type from the drop-down list. Note: Depending on the Chart Type selected, the options fields displayed would vary.
Categories	Legend: Select the legend type from the drop-down list. Sort By: Sort either by ascending or descending order. Maximum Number of Values Shown: Select the no of records to display. Date Rounding: Select when to display results. Format: Select the date format.
Series	Legend: Select the legend type from the drop-down list. Sort By: Sort either by ascending or descending order. Maximum Number of Values Shown: Select the no of records to display. Date Rounding: Select when to display results. Format: Select the date format.
Values	Value: Select the value type to display on the chart. Format: Select format type.

Below is the column chart widget displaying the invoice amounts for the last ten periods in descending order of months.

Use Dashboards to show a list of invoices

This next example shows how to create a Data Table widget to show a list of invoices. In this example, you will use the same data source to display data, however, in a different way.

Read More

1. Add a new widget and select the Data Table.

2. Select the same Invoice as Memo GI as the Inquiry Screen. Select the columns you want to display.

3. Select Finish to complete the widget properties setup. You can view the List of Invoices displayed as a data table. You have the option to create a filter to view today’s invoices only and re-size the chart if you wish to.  

Creating a Score Card widget to highlight invoices of a certain level

You can also create a Score Card widget to highlight invoices greater than or lower than a certain set level.

Read More

1. Select Amount as the Field to Aggregate to sum the amounts for the Normal Level and the Alarm level.
2. Set the Normal Colour to green, the Warning Colour to yellow and the Alarm Colour to red.  

Create a Trend Card widget to display invoice trends

Trend Cards can be created as a dashboard to display invoice trends across time periods, for example, this year vs last year.

Read More

1. Use the Trend Card KPI in the Add Widget menu.
2. Select the period that will affect the trend card
3. Set the Trend Display conditions (Failing, Flat and Rising)

Parameter Search by customer within Invoice Sales Data

Creating the ‘Parameter to search by customers within the Invoice Sales Data’ dashboard allows the end-user to make selections and quickly display that information.  

Read More

1. To choose the Customers as the selection, go to the Invoices dashboard properties and select the Parameters tab. Add the below parameter and click save.

2. You can now view the Customer filter. However, this is not yet linked to any existing widgets. To link the Customer filter to perhaps the data table widget, select the Design and click edit.

3. Click the plus icon to add the below filter settings, click OK, and use the Finish button to complete the filter setup.

4. If you now filter by a customer, you will see the change in data table values as per below.

Phocas Software – a Business Intelligence add-on solution

Phocas Software’s Analytics module is helping thousands of companies across the globe make better decisions faster.

With its drag-and-drop interface, Phocas makes it easy to create beautiful reports and visualizations from your data. Ad-hoc analysis lets you follow your train of thought to answer your own questions and uncover far-reaching business opportunities.

• The ad-hoc analysis layer, or “Grid”, allows you to follow your train of thought to answer your own questions and uncover business opportunities.
• Phocas allows you to drill down from high-level dashboards into the underlying transactions so you can get to the truth faster and drive results.
• Phocas’ visualizations make it easy to track your company’s progress with scorecards and live dashboards that give you a full picture at a glance
• Database Designer lets administrators bring in new data sources and configure Phocas to their business needs with drag-and-drop functionality, reducing ongoing costs.

Interested in other ways to optimise MYOB Advanced?

Check out our handy MYOB Advanced Tips and Tricks blogs here:

1. Generating On-Demand Statements in MYOB Advanced
2. The New User Interface – MYOB Advanced
3. Row-Level Security in MYOB Advanced
4. Generic Inquiries in MYOB Advanced
5. Fixed Assets in MYOB Advanced
6. Business Events in MYOB Advanced
7. Restricted use of Control Accounts in MYOB Advanced
8. Corporate Cards in MYOB Advanced
9. Matrix Items in MYOB Advanced
10. Restricted Visibility of Customer and Supplier Records
11. Important features of reporting dashboards
12. The Global Search Function in MYOB Advanced
13. Learn to Streamline your Intercompany Sales
14. Simplify Your Cross-Company Sales
15. Adding one-off public holidays to MYOB Advanced Payroll
16. Deferral Schedules in MYOB Advanced
17. Keyboard shortcuts to improve efficiency in MYOB Advanced

We hope these tips and tricks were helpful to you! If you have any questions about Dashboards in MYOB Advanced, our friendly team is here to help. Call us on 1300 857 464 (AU) or 0800 436 774 (NZ), or send us an email.