The Sandbox is your data playground, a place where your KPI hopes and dreams can come to life. The Sandbox is available within any client that belongs to your team, and also at the Team level containing all data across all your clients.
The Sandbox grid format is used throughout Dext Precision, usually wherever you see a table, so many of the tricks that apply to these large grid reports such as sorting and exporting also apply to the grids within cards.
Each Client in Precision has a Sandbox view in the sidebar. A core piece of Precision functionality since it's launch, we start with Journal Line Items as a base, and supplement each record with additional data based on the type of journal it is - be it an Invoice, Bank Transaction, Credit Note or so on. We also bring in Contact and Account information so you've got all the key information you need in one place.
::: tip Within the Practice Dashboard, any metrics not available for QBO or Xero clients specifically will be displayed as blank in the relevant column. You can filter for clients from a specific accounting software using the ‘Accounting Software’ column. :::
To get started with the Client Sandbox, you can watch our latest Sandbox training webinar here:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LiwjlNFiHs8?rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>At the team level, Dext Precision has 4 different practice-level sandboxes that contain data across all your clients. They are:
A comprehensive home for all your clients, this is the first place to come to get a handle on your practice. Each row is a client in Precision, and here we store many of our metrics.
By default, the Practice Dashboard will be set to the Reporting Mode 'Month End', which means all Practice Dashboard 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 Dashboard 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).
Here's a short introduction to the Practice Dashboard functionality from Simon Williams; note that since this was recorded the dashboard is still evolving, and we add more metrics to it all the time!
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/K9MX2tsKMW4?rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>The Activity Stats view is your source for Precision's performance metrics from the Activity Stats Insight, month-by-month for the last year. This includes MoM and YoY changes, so you can check which of your clients are under- or over- performing.
Note that the Activity Stats dashboard, like the Practice Dashboard, defaults to the data from the last complete month and works backwards from there.
::: note The HMRC dashboard is currently only available for Xero clients, we hope to make this available for QBO clients soon! :::
For UK clients using our HMRC integration this dashboard is your location for all things MTD in your practice. Each row is a VAT period detected by Precision for each client, including the filing period, due dates, status, amount and outstanding values.
This dashboard is an alternative to the Flow List in Focus, showing all Flows at all stages of completion. This includes the all Flow details including the assigned team member, reviewers, reporting period, number of checks completed and total number of checks.
The sandbox grid is a drag and drop report-builder, with spreadsheet-like functionality, right in your browser. And if you're a fan of Excel's pivot tables, you'll find that too. You can choose the columns you want to see, group-by, sort, collapse and expand until you get it just how you want. In the image below the sandbox has been customised to group by Contact, sort by Gross Amount and hide some columns.
Interested in the tech? Behind the scenes we've integrated ag-Grid's amazing data tables framework, which provides the enterprise-grade pivot table functionality.
Grown a liking to your sandbox setup? You can save sandbox configurations as custom reports by clicking Save.
You'll need to give your report a name. You can then decide whether to keep this report configuration private, or share it with the rest of your team.
Custom reports are automatically added to your sidebar in the Reports section. The beautiful thing is that they are available for any client that belongs to you or your team, not just the client you created it on.
You can make and save changes to a Custom Report configuration. When you do so you'll be asked whether you want to save over the existing report or create a new one.
The Reports section also contains a number of Precision default reporting configurations developed by the Dext team, so be sure to check them out:
- Debtor Days and Cash Report (Practice Dashboard)
- Cost Review by Supplier (Client Sandbox)
- Cost Review by Report Code (Client Sandbox)
- Expenses by Month and Contact (Client Sandbox)
- Invoiced Totals by Contact (Client Sandbox)
Each custom report at the team level will have a coloured icon indicator next to it, to let you know where the data comes from:
- Blue speedometer: Practice Dashboard
- Pink line chart: Activity Stats
- Yellow crown: HMRC Dashboard
From either the Sandbox or a Custom Report, or within any grid in a Check, you can export to a spreadsheet file. You can do this from the Export button in the banner at the top of the report (to produce a .xlsx file), or export to a csv file by right-clicking anywhere inside the grid and choosing Export -> CSV Export.
Where results are available for checks with a list of transactions, we display this data in a grid view that works just like the Sandbox or Practice Dashboard; by clicking into each of the column headers you can pin columns, sort and filter the results as you need to.
There are a few things we have added to these results to make reviewing transactions easier than ever:
- Fullscreen Grids: In order to view more results at once, you can click View Fullscreen at the top-left of the grid to enlarge the grid to the full screen. This makes it easier to review all the transactions, and use the grid's sorting and filtering capabilities.
- View in Xero: Clicking View in Xero against a transaction will take you directly to the transaction for that client in Xero that Precision has detected. If you are not logged into Xero, you will be prompted to do so before you can view the transction.
- View in QuickBooks: Clicking View in QuickBooks against a transaction will take you directly to the transaction in QuickBooks that Precision has detected. However, Precision requires you to be logged into the correct client in QuickBooks online before you can view this transaction. On the first time clicking this link for a client per session, you will be asked by Precision that you are logged into the correct client before you proceed.