What this means
The Analytics Dashboard gives your workshop one place to track the operational numbers that matter most: jobs coming in, jobs getting stuck, capacity being used, money being invoiced or received, stock value, and customer activity.
The best use of Analytics is not to build one giant board with every widget available. It is to build a small number of dashboards that help different people answer clear questions quickly. A service advisor may care about job status and ageing jobs. An owner may care about cash received, gross profit, and customer growth. A workshop TV may only need three or four large widgets that update through the day.
What you will see first
Many workshops will already have a shared starter dashboard called Workshop overview the first time they open Analytics. It is pre-populated with a focused set of widgets for jobs, sales, capacity, stock, and customer activity so your team has something useful immediately rather than an empty dashboard list.
Treat that starter dashboard as a real starting point, not a locked demo. You can keep using it as your shared default board, edit it, or duplicate it to create owner, service-advisor, or workshop-TV versions.
Before You Start
Use desktop when you want to build, rearrange, resize, or change widget settings.
If you already have Workshop overview, start there before building from scratch.
Check the dashboard date range, included business data, and any active widget filters before trusting a number.
Start with one dashboard per audience or meeting, not one dashboard for the whole business.
Give each dashboard a plain-language name and description so your team knows what it is for at a glance.
How to get value quickly
Open Analytics and review the shared Workshop overview dashboard if one has already been created for you, or create a new dashboard or duplicate one you already like.
Set the dashboard date range so everyone is looking at the same period.
Choose the included business data carefully if you manage more than one business.
Add three to six widgets that answer one clear job to be done, such as daily workshop control, weekly owner review, or monthly branch comparison.
Use a mix of headline widgets and detailed widgets so your team can spot an issue and then investigate it without leaving the dashboard.
Good starter dashboards
Daily operations board: Use jobs created, job status, ageing jobs, booked minutes, and capacity. This is the dashboard to open in the morning meeting or keep on a workshop screen through the day.
Owner weekly performance board: Use invoiced sales, cash received, financial performance, inventory value, and new customers. This is the right board for end-of-week commercial review.
Customer and quality board: Use new customers, customer reviews, top items serviced, and selected job-status widgets to spot service bottlenecks and customer trends.
Good to know: The default Workshop overview dashboard roughly follows the daily operations board pattern and is meant to be adapted, not left unchanged forever.
Best Practices
Keep each dashboard focused on one audience and one decision-making routine.
Use favourites for the dashboards your team opens most often.
Name dashboards around the question they answer, for example Workshop daily control or Owner weekly finance review.
Use dashboard descriptions to explain what the board is for and when it should be checked.
Review dashboards after a week of use and remove widgets nobody acts on.
Common setup mistakes
Building one oversized dashboard with too many widgets, which makes issues harder to spot.
Mixing businesses in one dashboard without making that clear in the title or description.
Comparing periods that are not like for like, such as a full week against only two days.
Treating No data available as a system failure before checking date range, included businesses, or filters.
Troubleshooting
If the layout feels crowded, remove widgets before resizing everything smaller.
If a number looks wrong, check whether you are looking at invoiced sales, cash received, or tax on paid invoices. Those are not interchangeable.
If a colleague cannot see a dashboard, check the access level and their business or role context before changing the widget setup.