Understanding your Period Close Dashboard

Stay in control of your period close data checking jobs

Updated: 15 May 2024

Your Period Close Dashboard shows you at a glance the progress of period close data checks for ALL of your activated clients. 

You can: 

• Quickly identify which clients’ files still need work without having to dive into each client's details individually.
• Check what those outstanding tasks are and easily access the relevant details.
• Check that data alerts marked as reviewed have been checked properly and are safe to ignore.

Use this to: 

• Stay in control of the hectic period close processes.
  Be reassured that you have the situation under control.
• Motivate your team to get the whole board green.
  Get that satisfaction and single-minded focus with clear visual cues of tasks done.
  
• Prioritise and manage your workload intelligently.
  Plan your work, staffing, and information request timing accordingly to ensure your team can complete their jobs on time, especially for any compliance tasks with legal deadlines.
• Work efficiently through the volume of work.
  Multitask and work through your client list while you wait for feedback and missing information.

How to use the Period Close Dashboard’s key features:

• The Dashboard is an aggregate summary of your active client’s Period Close Checklist statuses. Read How to use the Period Close Checklist to learn more about how to set up and use your standard and client-specific checklist in
• Like with the Advisory Dashboard, 
  • All of your activated clients are automatically shown on the Period Close Dashboard.
  • If you have just done a lot of work in Xero, you can click on under the client’s name to resync the data for that client if you don’t want to wait for the daily update.
  • You can sort and filter the Dashboard to help you stay focused on a particular category of data check or a particular group of clients.

1. Checklist and period selection:

• Annual Checklist for the last complete financial year. 
  This should help you with the most hectic end-of-financial-year period close work. 
• GST Period Checklist for the period next due. (NZ and AU only.)
  Meet the next GST deadlines with ease.
• Monthly Checklist for the last complete month. 
  Useful for ensuring your advisory clients are on top of their performance KPIs and can take timely actions to remedy issues.
  Also helps you incrementally keep the annual and GST period data current and avoid a pile up of work at the end of the year and GST period.
• More options coming soon.

2. Checklist Status column

• This summarises the progress of the period close data check for all of your activated clients.

• Use this to help you prioritise and chase up clients and team members who are falling behind.
• Checklist status and alert totals: 
  This is the status shown on the client’s Period Close tab for this period.
  The total numbers of red and grey alerts for the period are also listed.
  
• Checklist completion progress: 
  This is the percentage and number of alerts that have been marked as reviewed. 
  Use this to help you gauge how much work is left for each client’s period close.
  

• These show you what tasks are outstanding, as well as any data alert that has been marked as reviewed and safe to ignore.
• Use these to monitor and work through the period close data checks efficiently.
• To help you stay focused on job completion, only items that need attention are flagged up.
  
  
  • Red alert counts:
    • Data alerts that have NOT been checked off.
    • Manual checks that have NOT been checked off.
  • Grey alert counts:
    • These are red data alerts that have been checked off.
      If you are a reviewer, you may want to double check that these data alert overrides are appropriate and the alerts are safe to ignore. We recommend that you or your team add comments to clarify why the alerts can be ignored.

• To minimise distractions, items that don’t need attention are not included in the counts. These include:
  
  • Green data alerts - i.e. the data indicates there is nothing that needs to be reviewed.
  • Manual checks that have been checked off.
    
  • Categories that show “0” - this means there are no red or grey data alerts and all manual checks have been checked off.
  • If a category shows “n/a” - this means there are no automated or manual checks set up for the category. For example, if your client is not using Xero Payroll software and you have not set up any other checks, then the Payroll category may show “n/a”.

4. To find out more about a Checklist Category’s alerts:

• To find out more about the alerts in a category - click on an alert count to see: 
  • what data alerts and manual checks are still outstanding
  • what data alerts have been checked off as reviewed and safe to ignore
  • whether any comments have been added to these data alerts and manual checks
• To see or add comments - click on an alert’s in the popup list.
• To investigate a red or grey alert - click on the alert’s name in the popup list.
  This will take you to that specific alert’s details in the client’s Period Close Checklist, where you can check the relevant data and leave comments.