A comprehensive home of your clients, this is the first place to come to get a handle on your practice. Each row is a client in Dext, and here we store many of our metrics.
Note: The Practice Insight is available for users on the Advanced plan with Data Health & Insights. If you’re an existing precision user, you’ll also have access to this Insight.
What you need to know
- The data we pull is based on last complete month by default. There is an option to view the data based on the reporting period set in each client account. This is called ‘Custom Per Client’.
- There is no option to select your own reporting periods for this Insight.
- The clients you see on this Isnight will be based on your user permissions.
The Practice Insight is a KPI data playground across all of your clients. It contains the data from the Client List such as Clean Up Tools and Insights. Using this Insight, you can create reports that will help you analyse the health across all your clients enabling you to identify possible issues which will assist you to make improvements to the quality of their bookkeeping.
There are benefits for your practice:
- Improve your recovery rates (reduce the amount of time you write off each year per client by having good quality data).
- Spot additional revenue opportunities across your client base. Such as offering bookkeeping service to DIY clients or identify clients that may benefit from Credit Control services.
- Provide you with more visibility across all clients in one report rather than having to log into each client separately in Xero or QuickBooks Online to review the status of their bookkeeping.
To access the Practice Insight, from your Practice account go to Insights and then Practice.
Navigating the Practice Insight
The Practice Insight has spreadsheet-like functionality. You can choose the columns you want to see and filter the information specific to the purpose of the report, such as a Year End. For example you can create a report that shows activity for Clean Up Tools so you can track the amount of transactions in order to complete the bookkeeping for the period due.
To build this report I selected the following:
Under Columns
- Client Name – (which I pinned to the left so so I could scroll the report to see all other columns. To pin a column select the 3 lines at the top of the column and choose Pin Column – Pin Left)
- Last Sync – important to know when the last time the clients file was synced with Xero/QBO
- Health Score – helps to get an understanding of how healthy the client is and what support may be needed
- Year End – this will help prioritise client work if preparing a bookkeeping for a year end
- Account Manager 1 – informs you who is responsible for this client for any queries you may have
- Bank Reconciliation – status of unreconciled transactions, when the last activity was on the bank accounts
- Clean Up Tools – shows the number of transactions that need your review.
- Draft Invoices – identifies draft invoices that need to be reviewed so they can be posted to the ledgers so they are included in your bookkeeping period you are reviewing.
Under Filters
Using the Filters you can choose to look at the data in the report in a specific way. So Columns is what you want to see and Filters is how you want to see it. For example, to view the report by clients for a specific Year End so you can view the work involved and prioritise getting that group of clients bookkeeping up to date.
Click on Filters to the right of the report, click on Year End then type in Date.
Saving and Exporting Reports
You can save or export your configurations to Excel, using the buttons in the top right.
You can save these configurations in your Practice Insight by selecting Save. You’ll need to give your Insight a name, then decide whether to keep this report configuration private, or share it with the rest of your team. Saved dashboards can be accessed by selecting Custom in the sidebar under Insights in your Practise Profile. Just like custom reports, they can then be edited, favourited, or deleted from this view.
Report Filters
By default, the Practice Insight will be set to the reporting mode Month End, which means all Practice Insight metrics come from the last complete month, to ensure that every metric is comparable for each client.
If you select Custom per client the Practice Insight will use the Reporting Mode dates set against the client from the Client Overview. This will result in each client displaying metrics from their own custom Reporting Mode period (if set).
To change the reporting mode, click the Filter button in the top right corner.
Next Steps:
Take a look at our Deadlines Insight to manage your client’s deadlines for Companies House, Account Filing Dates and MTD VAT.