Graph and Chart summary in dashboard can help the user to understand the status of financial summary for a period of time.
That can show number of invoices issued, bills entered, invoices collected, invoices in due, total sales, expenses and income.
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Please search the forum before starting a new topic. This topic has already been discussed in several posts.
Maybe it is time to consider adding a ‘Graphical Reports’ tab/settings where users can define comparative periods and generate graphical reports for:
Performance
Sales charts in amounts
Net Inventory items (or a specific item) sold (in quantities)
Net Non-inventory items (or a specific item) sold (count)
Net Inventory Items (or a specific item) Purchased
Income Vs Expenses
Income Vs Expenses (Compare divisions)
Cash Flow
Net Cash Inflow
Net Cash Outflow, or
Inflow Vs Outflow
Orders
Total Sales Orders
Total Purchase Orders
Number of Projects
Others
Fixed Asset Purchased Chart (Showing Cost).
Employee total cost (based on Payslips generated in the defined periods).
Accounts Balances: To compare account (including control accounts) balances for defined comparative periods. (For both Income Statement and Balance sheet account). E.g Advertising expenses or Account payable control account. You should be able to select more than one account for this report, e.g sales and Account receivable.
I personally can do without this feature but it has been requested many times on the forum by the user base and I believe it is about the time it received some consideration.
@lubos A toggle button can be added on the summary screen which will enable users to switch between the Summary Page and the Graphical Reports screen.
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I doubt the developer could ever identify a set of graphs that would be both useful and satisfy a majority of users. The situation would quickly deteriorate into disputes over graphic design. There are simply too many variables involved, even if basic objectives could be agreed (which they probably cannot).
I agree with an approach as suggested by @Abeiku but think the amount of graphical representations is too large and would focus more on where visualization would be most helpful and that is to understand in a business owner way better how the business is developing and doing. A trend-line may help but I think that it would be a good start if gross-margin and net-profit charts would be generated or one can combine Revenue, Sales and the Gross Margin and Net Profit in one chart. Some information is better in a table such as outstanding orders, invoices, etc, but I would encourage to keep it simple to be useful.
Visualization of data for the target market of Manager, i.e. small business and not necessarily accountants will help better understand the need for up-to-date financial data at a glance as it is proven that visualization of data helps other parts of the brain to connect the dots in other ways compared to the higher abstract presentation of figures alone. It will also quickly help to detect wrong data entries as they may instantly show that something with the data is wrong. As some may find visualization a waste of space and are excellent at reading data from tables others can really be helped by representing the data in different ways.
I agree with @Tut that there is a danger of getting numerous requests for all kinds of good to haves but in accounting a core infrographic on how the business is doing would be helpful and the expertise on this forum should help to limit it to the absolute common denominators similar to why we agree that Balance Sheet, Cash-Flow and Profit and Loss are core to any financial reporting for management purposes.
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Graphs are useful to understand time based data with many time points such a weekly, monthly or quarterly based results.
The major weakness of graphics is they hide the details giving the false impression the reader knows the accounting is correct & OK. The devil is in the detail and finding things early saves larger costs later.
The other problem is programming resource allocation. There are far more valuable things to fix in Manager
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Do not doubt the developer. Other pieces of accounting software have done some visual presentation effectively. It may be just a case of where to build the feature into the Manager framework.
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Agreed
Are there any promises or action plans from the developer in this regard?
No. He has expressed opposition to the idea in the past.
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