Financial dashboard: examples, the ten figures a CFO dashboard needs, and a free template

A financial dashboard is the page a CFO reads first each month. It does not replace the monthly reporting package; it says, in about two minutes, whether the month was on plan and where the cash went. This page lists the ten figures that belong on it, works one month through, and gives you a free Excel template that builds all ten from your trial balance. It is a business template for a company's finance team.

What a financial dashboard is for

One page, ten figures, each against budget and the same month last year. The reader should be able to answer three questions without turning a page: did we make the money we planned, did it turn into cash, and is working capital moving the wrong way? Anything that needs a paragraph of explanation belongs in the package behind the dashboard, not on it.

The ten figures on a CFO dashboard

The line captions follow US practice: the SEC's Regulation S-X, Rule 5-03 sets the income statement captions public companies use, from net sales down to net income. EBITDA is not one of them. It is a non-GAAP measure, and the SEC staff's non-GAAP interpretations describe it as "earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization", so the template shows exactly which lines make it.

Worked example: one month

June 2026 for the sample company, as the Dashboard sheet shows it:

How the figures are built:

• Cost of sales was $2,940,000, so gross profit was $1,880,000: 39.0% of revenue. The budget had the same $1,880,000 of gross profit on $120,000 less revenue, a 40.0% margin.
• Operating expenses were $1,210,000 against $1,180,000, $30,000 over, so EBITDA was $670,000 against $700,000.
• Operating cash flow of $540,000 is net income of $420,000, plus $80,000 of depreciation, plus $40,000 released from working capital. Less $120,000 of capital expenditure, free cash flow is $420,000.
• DSO is receivables of $7,130,000 over April-to-June revenue of $14,250,000, times 90: 45.0 days. DPO is payables of $3,760,000 over three months' cost of sales of $8,650,000, times 90: 39.1 days.
• The current ratio is $13,900,000 of current assets over $8,200,000 of current liabilities: 1.70.

The reading: revenue beat budget by $120,000, but the margin rate fell a point and operating expenses ran $30,000 over, so EBITDA finished $30,000 under budget. The status column uses the same rule as the KPI dashboard template: On track if on or better than budget, Watch if worse by up to 5% of budget, Off track beyond that. EBITDA margin is Off track while EBITDA is only Watch because a 1.0-point miss on a 14.9% margin is 6.7% of the budget.

Financial dashboard examples by reader

• CFO: all ten figures, plus the variance bridge from budget EBITDA to actual.
• Board: revenue, EBITDA and margin, free cash flow, closing cash and covenant headroom, by quarter rather than month.
• FP&A: the same ten figures against the latest forecast as well as the budget, with the full-year outlook.
• Controller: the Checks sheet first, then DSO, DPO and the accruals behind operating expenses.
• Business unit head: revenue, gross margin and operating expenses for the unit, against its own budget.

What is in the free template

The workbook has no charts; every figure is a formula, so it opens in Excel 2016 as well as Microsoft 365.

• TB. One row per account: Account, Name, an opening balance (the day before the first month), then the net change for each of 15 months, debits positive and credits negative. Columns C and D look up each account's line and type in Map.
• Map. Each account once, with its line (Revenue, Cost of sales, Operating expenses, Depreciation and amortization, Cash, Accounts receivable and so on) and PL or BS.
• Calc. Lines down, months across. P&L lines are a SUMIFS on the mapped line, with revenue negated once, here and nowhere else:

=-SUMIFS(TB!T$2:T$2000,TB!$C$2:$C$2000,"Revenue")

Balance sheet lines are closing balances: the previous month's balance plus this month's net change. The cash flow uses the indirect method from the same movements. DSO and DPO sum the last three months:

=IFERROR(Q18/Q41*90,"")

• Budget. Revenue, cost of sales, operating expenses, operating cash flow, capital expenditure, closing cash and the three ratio targets by month. Gross profit, margins and free cash flow compute. Columns B and C hold each line's direction of good and Watch tolerance.
• Dashboard. Type the month in B2. Each figure is read from Calc with INDEX and MATCH, and prior year is the column twelve months earlier:

=INDEX(Calc!$C$5:$Q$5,MATCH($B$2,Calc!$C$4:$Q$4,0))

• Trend. The ten figures for the 13 months ending with the dashboard month, one column per month.
• Checks. One column per month, every row must be 0.

The checks that prove it

1. The trial balance balances. Each month's net changes, and the opening balances, sum to zero. If they do not, the export is incomplete.
2. Nothing is unmapped. A new account shows as UNMAPPED and is counted.
3. Net income and EBITDA agree with the ledger. Net income on Calc equals minus the sum of every PL row; EBITDA, built as gross profit less operating expenses, equals ledger net income plus D&A, interest and tax.
4. Cash lands. Opening cash plus operating, investing and financing cash flow equals the cash account's closing balance.

These are a control total and an identity each: a figure from the source compared with the report, and an equation that must hold whatever the numbers are.

Where it goes wrong

• Sign conventions. Trial balance credits are negative, so revenue shows negative unless flipped once, in one place.
• One month of revenue in DSO. In a seasonal business it swings wildly; use a three-month window and say so. The template uses three months and 90 days.
• A budget never phased by month, so every month looks off by the seasonality.
• D&A inside operating expenses. EBITDA is understated; map depreciation and amortization to their own line.
• Ratios without amounts. A current ratio of 1.70 means little without the $3,150,000 of cash next to it.
• Year-to-date exports. The TB sheet expects each month's net change. Pasting year-to-date balances makes every month after January several times too large.

From a template to a dashboard that answers questions

The template needs the mapping and the checks rebuilt each month. Covirage's tools compute the same figures from your trial balance and budget exports and confirm they reconcile before showing them; the external AI model explains the variance and never calculates it. See FP&A reporting to get the monthly reporting package and its dashboard on day one, computed from the files you already export and reconciled to the ledger. For the definitions behind the tiles, see financial KPIs and financial ratios; for the package the dashboard sits in, management reporting.