Reading the Dashboard and Reports

The Dashboard

The Dashboard is your at-a-glance financial position, updated live from your records. It surfaces the numbers you check most often:

• Open receivables — the total balance customers owe you across issued, partially paid, and overdue invoices, with a count of open invoices.
• Open payables — the total you owe vendors across open bills, with a count.
• Invoiced — the total you've invoiced (excluding voided invoices).
• Posted expenses — what you've spent, with a count.
• Active customers and vendors, open estimates, and posted payments counts.

Use it as a daily check-in: receivables tell you who to follow up with, payables tell you what's coming due.

Reports overview

The Reports section turns your documents into statements. Each report takes a date range (and aging reports take an "as of" date). The four reports are Profit & Loss, Tax Summary, A/R aging, and A/P aging.

Profit & Loss

Profit & Loss shows revenue, expenses, and net for a period.

• Revenue is the pre-tax (subtotal) amount of your invoices that aren't draft or void, by invoice date.
• Expenses are the pre-tax amounts of your posted expenses (broken out by expense account) plus your non-draft/non-void vendor bills (rolled up under "Vendor bills").
• Net is revenue minus expenses.
• Tax is excluded from both sides, so GST/HST never inflates your P&L.

Important: P&L is calculated directly from your source documents (invoices, expenses, bills), not from a separate ledger — so it's accurate the moment you save a document.

To run it: open Reports → Profit & Loss, choose a from and to date (defaults to the year so far), and read the revenue and expense lines and the net.

Tax Summary

Tax Summary prepares your sales-tax position for a period, grouped by tax code:

• Taxable sales and sales tax collected (from invoices).
• Taxable purchases and purchase tax paid (from expenses and bills).
• Net tax due — sales tax collected minus purchase tax paid.

This is what you use to prepare a GST/HST remittance. Run it for your reporting period and read the net-tax-due total.

A/R and A/P aging

Aging reports show how overdue money is, bucketed by how long it's been outstanding as of a chosen date:

• A/R aging — customer balances in buckets: current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, and 90+ days, with amounts and counts, plus per-invoice rows.
• A/P aging — the same buckets for what you owe vendors.

To run: open the aging report, set the as-of date (defaults to today), and read the buckets. The 61–90 and 90+ columns are your collection (or payment) priorities.

Worked example

At month-end, Northlight Coaching:

1. Runs Profit & Loss for the month — revenue from invoices, expenses split by account, and a net figure.
2. Runs Tax Summary — sees GST collected on invoices, GST paid on expenses/bills, and the net tax due to remit.
3. Runs A/R aging as of today — spots a client sitting in the 31–60 bucket and follows up before it slips further.

Tips

• The Dashboard reflects posted/issued documents; drafts don't count, so send invoices and post expenses to keep it accurate.
• P&L and Tax Summary default to the current year — narrow the dates for a specific month or quarter.
• Use A/R aging weekly to drive collections; the older buckets are where cash gets stuck.
• Record tax on expenses and bills so Tax Summary can net your input tax credits against tax collected.

FAQ

Why doesn't my P&L match a bank balance? P&L is an accrual-style view from your invoices, expenses, and bills — not your cash balance. A drafted invoice or unposted expense won't appear until it's finalized.

Are voided invoices in revenue? No. Void invoices are excluded from revenue and receivables.

Can I change the aging buckets? The buckets are the standard current / 1–30 / 31–60 / 61–90 / 90+. Change the as-of date to see the position on a different day.