How to build a better expense dashboard for deeper visibility and insight

Picture this. You’re in the quarter-end financial meeting staring at an expense dashboard that doesn’t tell you what you need to know. Or worse, you’re furiously scrolling up and down in a massive spreadsheet trying to find the right data to answer the questions flying at you from around the table.

Where did the money go? Why are expenses up? Are we still on budget? You’re scrambling for answers that should’ve been obvious.

Sound familiar?

If imagining that made you feel anxious, you could probably use some good information on how expense analysis dashboards can help you avoid such situations.

In this guide, we show you how to build one, breaking down exactly what makes an expense analysis dashboard useful and walking you through the essential features to look for when evaluating the dashboard capabilities of software that improve financial reporting.

What is an expense analysis dashboard?

An expense analysis dashboard is a type of financial dashboard that tracks expenses across all the different areas of your business. 

Think of it as a financial command center. Instead of digging through spreadsheets, you can see quickly where your money is going, how much is being spent, and who is spending it. Expense analysis dashboards use intuitive visuals like bar charts and pie graphs to view a breakdown of expenses by department, category, project, vendor, or time frame.

Suppose you’ve budgeted to spend $10,000 this quarter on entertainment for staff. You’re tracking expenses by category with an expense dashboard. You notice you’re still a month away from the quarter end, and $9,000 of that budget has already been spent.

You call the person in charge of approving entertainment expenses, inform them about the possibility of an overrun, and take preventive action.

If you were tracking expenses using a spreadsheet? You’d have to compile entertainment expenses into a sheet, sum them up, and assuming you don’t make a mistake, you might have been able to take preventive action in time.

See the difference?

Visibility into expenses is one of the key benefits of expense analysis dashboards and what most finance professionals are looking for when they build them. But they actually offer much more. 

The benefits of using an expense dashboard

The shared, real-time visibility that expense dashboards provide is made possible through integration of whatever financial reporting software you’re using with all the other systems in your financial tech stack, such as your ERP and invoice management software. 

These integrations allow the data needed for your dashboard to automatically flow into your reporting system. This means the data in your expense analysis dashboard is continually updated based on real-time information. And if your software also offers role-based access features, you can share this data with select team members, allowing them to view or edit data based on their role.

Here are some other ways using an expense analysis dashboard benefits your business:

• Easier analysis: Looking at columns and rows full of data only makes you dizzy and does little to help your analysis. Visualizing that same information gives you quick insights into the breakup and quantum of expenses while minimizing cognitive load.
• Data-driven decisions: Expense analysis dashboards facilitate data-driven decision-making by consolidating expense data into a single dashboard and displaying it in a way that suits your analysis. For example, you can break down data by department, vendor, project, or time.
• Customizable insights: Expense analysis dashboards let you tailor the data to the right audience, from high-level executives to granular department-level breakdowns. Whether you’re looking to analyze the company’s cost structure as a whole or track how much your staff spent on birthday cakes last month, you can find out from your expense dashboard.

Top metrics to include in your expense dashboard

Your expense dashboard has to be dynamic, meaning the metrics you choose today may not be the metrics you need tomorrow. To achieve the full benefit of an expense analysis dashboard, the metrics you include must change based on your current priorities. Each company has its own set of expense-related priorities, which can change with time. So, there’s no one set of metrics that’s useful for every company.

However, there are a few types of metrics that expense analysis dashboards commonly include. You may add other metrics or skip any metrics in the list if they don’t align with current priorities.

• Budget vs. actuals: Comparing budgeted and actual expenses is key to tracking variances. If a variance for any category seems significant (on the adverse side), it’s your cue to investigate and take steps to minimize variances in the future. Of course, remember that not all adverse (unfavorable) variances are a cause for concern. For example, a project might run longer than expected because of a change in scope. It’s normal to spend more than budgeted in such cases.
• Operating expenses (OpEx): These are ongoing costs that are not directly tied to product creation, such as salaries, rent, utilities, and software tools. Tracking OpEx helps you see how efficient your operations are. A significant spike in OpEx could mean you’re scaling too quickly without the revenue to back it or that a department needs to rein things in.
• Expenses as a percentage of revenue: This metric adds context to your spending by showing what portion of every dollar earned is directed towards expenses. A high ratio suggests overspending or underperforming sales, while a low ratio might mean your operations are becoming more efficient or you’re underinvesting in growth. The goal here is to balance spending enough to fuel growth while hitting your profitability targets.
• Expense composition: This is where you look if you want a breakdown of expenses by category. If marketing spend jumps 40% but revenue stays flat, you need to chat with the marketing head to dig deeper. This is also where you’ll find the information you need to make smart decisions when reallocating funds toward more high-impact areas and trimming some expenses elsewhere. Of course, you can also view expense composition by vendor, project, or other classifications to make data-backed decisions.
• Expense changes: Tracking month-over-month or quarter-over-quarter changes in spending helps find patterns, outliers, and seasonal shifts. For example, a sudden uptick in software costs could mean your company just signed up for a new enterprise software system but forgot to cancel the previous one.
• Untagged expenses: Those mystery charges lurking in your books? This is the part of your expense dashboard that gives you a peek into them so you can accurately track where your money’s going. Flagging them helps improve reporting accuracy and avoid “miscellaneous expenses” from becoming an expense black hole.
• Customer acquisition cost: This tracks how much you spend to acquire each new customer. It includes the cost of marketing, sales, promotions, and more. On its own, it’s a vital metric. When paired with revenue or customer lifetime value (LTV), it’s a strategic tool to measure the ROI of your growth efforts.

How to create an effective financial dashboard for tracking and analyzing expenses

Creating an expense analysis dashboard is fairly simple. All you need is to follow best practices and this structured approach:

Step 1: Define your goals

Start with the why. Are you trying to track overall spending? Identify waste? Monitor departmental budgets? This helps narrow your focus and get clear on what success looks like.

Step 2: Identify key metrics

Choose metrics that matter to you the most instead of bloating your dashboard with a dozen charts. In addition to basics like operating expenses and variances, add metrics you’re currently trying to improve, such as customer acquisition costs. Remember, your dashboard isn’t set in stone. You can add and remove metrics as your priorities change.

Step 3: Integrate the dashboard tool with data sources

Your expense dashboard relies on one thing: accurate data. Any discrepancy in data can extrapolate and lead to an inaccurate picture of your expense composition or variances. It’s your responsibility to feed the dashboard tool accurate data. 

Drivetrain makes this easy with 800+ integrations that can pull data automatically into a single platform for analysis. If your software is missing one or more of the integrations you need, you’ll have to move the data manually, losing the real-time reliability of your dashboard.

Step 4: Choose a dashboard tool

This is the most critical part of the process. There are many different financial management tools on the market today that can aggregate your expense data, including accounting and ERP systems and some business budgeting software. 

If you choose the right tool, you’ll never have to transfer data manually or deal with a complex interface. Drivetrain, for example, is user-friendly and automatically collects data from internal systems to serve data visualizations on your expense dashboard. 

As a comprehensive financial planning and analysis (FP&A) platform, Drivetrain also lets you create on-demand custom metrics and supports predictive forecasting of expenses, all of which allows you to significantly level up your information your dashboard can provide. 

Step 5: Design the board with clarity in mind

Keep your dashboard clean and intuitive. Group related metrics, use color coding for quick insight, and avoid clutter. You want a dashboard that answers questions at a glance—not raise more of them.

Step 6: Review and refine

Your priorities might change from quarter to quarter or year to year. Review your dashboard every few weeks or months to see if the data you’re tracking on your dashboard is still your priority. If you’ve found new challenges and solved a few, replace those metrics to fine-tune the expense dashboard to serve your needs best.

Key features the best expense analysis dashboards have in common

When sifting through dashboard tools, look for essential features that simplify expense tracking and analysis. Here are some key features to look out for when choosing an expense analysis dashboard tool:

• Executive summary or overview: Think of this as your command center. It gives you a high-level snapshot of important metrics at a glance. This helps decision-makers who don’t have time to dig through tabs or pivot tables.
• Expense categorization: When decision-makers want to dig deeper, the expense analysis dashboard must be able to provide a breakdown of expenses by category. For example, if the CFO isn’t happy about operating expenses, they should be able to view how much was spent on marketing, operations, and other operating expenses.
• Time-based analysis: It’s important for the same reason as categorization—the decision-maker must be able to break down aggregate expense figures to view expenses across time frames. For example, the high operating expense on the dashboard that seems alarming may seem normal when the CFO digs deeper and sees the spike is attributable to a major marketing campaign for the next quarter that was initiated a few months early in the previous quarter.
• Department-wise expense analysis: Find a tool that lets you break down expenses by department, cost center, or team. This is vital if you want to assess which departments are spending strategically and which ones may need closer oversight. It also enables leaders to reflect on their own impact on the bottom line.
• Interactive filtering options: This feature lets you slice and dice expense data based on your needs, such as time, expense category, department, vendor, or even individual transactions. When the dataset is too large, filtering options can make drawing insights a whole lot easier.
• Budget tracking: Think of this as your variance-preventing feature. Addressing variances is a retrospective act, while tracking actual expenses and comparing them to budgeted figures in real time is a proactive approach to avoiding cost overruns. Speaking of being proactive…
• Customizable alerts: This feature lets you know whenever a team exceeds its budget or a new expense category suddenly appears. As long as your tool offers customizable alerts, you don’t have to watch the dashboard all day to be proactive about budget tracking.
• Anomaly detection: AI-powered tools can detect anomalies in expense data and alert you for further investigation. You might not catch these problems just by looking at the dashboard. For example, a sudden spike in SaaS spend or a duplicate charge may not necessarily be apparent when you view the data on the expense dashboard. However, the dashboard tool’s algorithm can detect and prevent these unexpected or unusual charges from snowballing.
• Export and reporting options: People in your organization can access the dashboard tool, but what about stakeholders who can’t access expense data? That’s why your dashboard tool needs the ability to generate quick reports and export them. This feature is vital when preparing for a board meeting or sharing insights with external stakeholders.

Drivetrain powers financial dashboards that move businesses forward

The real power of any financial dashboard is its ability to turn data into fast insights. This requires more than the ability to make nice looking visuals to illustrate your data. A rich feature set that allows you to tailor the data and visuals to provide those insights—with granular, real-time tracking of custom metrics and forecasts—is essential. 

Drivetrain packs in all the core dashboard features, but that’s not all. It’s simple, efficient, scalable, and offers a range of advanced capabilities, including the ability for users to drill down into any visual in your dashboard to see the underlying data. 

Drivetrain isn’t just a dashboard tool. It’s a hybrid solution that’s suitable for both mid-market and enterprise users. It provides integrated planning, real-time monitoring, and advanced analysis capabilities at scale.

If you’re looking for an AI-powered business planning system that offers a wide range of financial capabilities and a built-in dashboard tool, It’s time to explore Drivetrain!