The problem
Most accounting reporting is monthly, which means an aging problem, a reconciliation gap, or an inventory variance is often first noticed during the close, after the period it belongs to has already ended. The data needed to see those problems earlier already exists in the ERP. It is simply not surfaced in a form anyone looks at daily.
The approach
I defined a small set of KPIs for each of AP, AR, and inventory, chosen because a change in them points to a specific action rather than just describing the past. The dashboards pull from the ERP through reporting queries and present current values against expected ranges, so attention goes to the exceptions. Keeping the metric set deliberately small was the important design decision: a dashboard with fifty numbers gets ignored, and a dashboard with six gets read.
Tools
What it enables
- Aging and reconciliation issues surface during the period instead of during the close.
- Team performance is measured against consistent definitions rather than ad hoc pulls.
- Less time spent building recurring status reports by hand.
My role
I selected the KPI definitions, built the reporting queries, and built the dashboards.