Visualizations are a key way to track company performance, report on strategic goals, and measure success.
With Reports you can:
Create an Executive Summary
Track and share Department specific financials
View a real-time spend analysis
Track a live report of Budget vs Actuals
Report top-line numbers with external investors or your board with a written storyline
Create a monthly Reporting package with notes
Embed financials or external files from Google Sheets or Slides
Adding a Chart
In a Dashboard, you have edit access to:
Click the + Add button in the top right of a Dashboard page
Give your new Chart a name
Select the Chart type such as Callout, Line, Table, Note, and others.
Select the Chart size
Add one or more line items from your repository of metrics to plot
Specify the Time Range for your Visualizations
Sometimes you may want to limit your visualization's time range, such as solely viewing the current fiscal year or the last quarter.
In the top-right of the Dashboard, click on the time-range drop-down and set the date range to view.
Adding a Top-level Summary for your Dashboard
At the top of every Dashboard, you have the chance to add a descriptive summary or note.
You may use this space as you wish, many financial teams find it useful to utilize this space to:
explain how to use the dashboard or report
callout high-level tasks or checklists for monthly reporting
explain the high-level story of how the visualizations should be interpreted
Adding Embedded Context and Notes to Charts
A special type of "Chart" is the Freeform Note. This is similar to the Dashboard level note, except it provides a space to embed context alongside your charts.
In the example below we can explain the sudden spike in Income for a month and the latter drop.
Modifying your Chart Views
Charts are highly configurable. From a chart click on "..." and select Modify View.
From here you'll be presented with various options to change the type of chart, size, as well as what data to display.
Chart View Options
Time Series
This affects the time-range axis for your data, you can view metrics grouped
Monthly
Quarterly
Yearly
Use current actuals value if available
If checked, this will plot all available actuals numbers including actuals for the current month which may not be finalized yet.
Include historical forecasts
If checked, this will plot historical forecast numbers for months that have already been rolled over and closed within Basis.
Line item Period Value
In Basis, we call a "Period" either a month, a quarter, or a year. When plotting Quarterly and Yearly Periods you can set how your monthly data is aggregated and displayed.
For example, in the Chart below we show Quarterly values for Total Income and Total Expenses. If instead, we wished to see what the Average Income and Expenses were per Quarter, we can set the Period Value to show the Average of Period.
Options include:
Sum of Period: The sum of all months in the Period
Start of Period: Displays the first month in the Period
End of Period: Displays the last month in the Period
Average of Period: Displays the average value for the Period
Period to Date: Displays the sum of the period to date (depending on your Fiscal Year configuration)
