The dashboard in Xero is the main screen for your organisation in Xero and it displays a snapshot of your organisations financials.

On the left hand side you find your bank accounts, credit cards and PayPal accounts. If you want to know the balance on your accounts it is the “Statement Balance in Xero” that shows you that (for the day before).

 

Add Bank Accounts

If you need to add a bank account, credit card or PayPal on the dashboard please follow these steps:

1. Go to the accounts tab
2. Select bank accounts
3. Add bank account
4. Select bank account, credit card or paypal
5. Enter the bank details and save
6. Select the dashboard and click on the green button get bank feeds and follow the directions

Reorder Bank Accounts

To reorder the bank accounts on the dashboard (showing the most important at the top) please follow these steps:

1. Go to the accounts tab
2. Select bank accounts
3. Click on the arrows to the right on the page to be able to reorder the bank accounts

Remove Bank Accounts

To remove a bank account from the Xero Dashboard, just untick the “Show on Dashboard” in the Bank Accounts overview.

If you need to remove a bank account, credit card or PayPal account completely, please follow these steps:

1. Go to the settings tab
2. Select chart of accounts
3. Tick the bank account on the left side and archive (make sure that you have $0 in balance before archiving the account.) Archiving allows accounts to be restored at a later date if needed.

The Accounts Watchlist

On the right side you can view important account balances in real time. Sales  or liabilities (e.g. GST, Superannuation or PAYG) are useful to keep an eye on.

Choose what is most appropriate for your organisation:

1. Go to the settings tab
2. Select the chart of accounts
3. Click on the account that you want to add and showing on the Watchlist
4. In the edit area of that chosen account please tick the box (show on dashboard)
5. To find the changes, go to the dashboard tab

Follow the same steps to take away an account that you don’t want on the Watchlist anymore.

Money Coming In

Under the Watchlist you find an overview of your money coming in. This displays a graphical snapshot of the money that your customers are owing you.
It also shows you when you can expect the money to come in based on the due dates on your invoices. The bars show net amounts on your customer invoices and credit notes in each month.

To find out more please hover over or click in one of the bars and you will see the invoices related to it in the Sales section.

 

Money Going Out

This shows a graphical snapshot of the money that you owe your suppliers and when it needs to be paid based on the due date or planned payment date of invoices that are still outstanding (due date is used by default, but if you have added a planned payment date to an invoice, this date will be used instead). Green bars show amounts that are paid.

You can use the paragraph slider under the bottom of the graph to see as far as 60 days of invoices that are due or already paid.

Clicking on any bar will show the details in Purchases section.

 

Expense Claims

While the expense claim function works beautifully with Xero Touch (the iPhone and Android app), I would only recommend using it when you actually need to reimburse your employees for things that they have purchases from their own money.

Limiting What My Employees See

Remember that you are the one having control of the users on your subscription and you are the one deciding what everyone is allowed to access.

The most common user role for employees is the Invoice Only access and Payroll Employee Role. Payroll Employee users cannot see anything on the Dashboard. Invoice Only users can view the Dashboard. What they can do depends on the subrole: “Draft Only” can create draft invoices but not send them or see other users invoices. “Approve and Pay” has full invoice access.

To use the Expense Claim function, a user has to have Invoice Only access – Draft Only is enough. More details are in the Help center.