Help centre / Money & accounts / Read your finance dashboard
Read your finance dashboard
The Finance page shows your cash at bank, free reserves against your policy, runway in months, and profit and loss against last year. When accounting software is connected, the figures come straight from your books, read-only. You can't change anything by looking.
What do the tiles at the top mean?
- Cash at bank: today's balance across every bank account in your accounting software.
- Free reserves: money the charity could spend on anything, from your last accounts. If your reserves policy sets a floor, the tile warns you when reserves fall below it.
- Runway: how many months your cash would last at your current spending. We take your last 12 months' spending, divide by 12 to get a monthly figure, and see how many of those months your cash covers. Under 12 months shows as a warning.
- People invoiced: how many different customers were invoiced in the last 12 months, across your income groups.
What's in the tables below?
Bank accounts lists each account. Choose one to see money in, money out and the closing balance, month by month, for the last year.
Profit & loss shows this financial year against last year, line by line. Choose any line to see it month by month.
Deferred, restricted & agency funds shows the year-end traps: money received in advance for next year, money given for a specific purpose, and money held for someone else. These come from the accounts you've mapped, so a trustee can check them at a glance.
Invoiced income by group totals the last 12 months' invoicing for each income group you've set up, with the number of customers behind it.
Where do the numbers come from?
When Xero or QuickBooks is connected, everything is read from your books. Figures refresh on a schedule, from every hour to once a day; choose the Refresh button for the latest. The connection is read-only, so nothing flows back the other way.
No accounting software? The page shows figures you enter by hand instead, clearly labelled "Entered by you". See Track money without accounting software.
Can I break anything from here?
No. The Finance page only reads. Nothing you click changes your accounting software or your charity's records, so explore freely.
The governance behind this: our free guide on charitycontrol.org explains the why in plain English.