How to create a dashboard in QuickBooks (step by step)
QuickBooks Online already has a dashboard built in — most owners have just never customized it. Here is exactly how to set it up, what it can and cannot do once you have, and the three paths to take once you outgrow it.
10 min read
Before recommending anything else, it’s worth answering the question honestly: QuickBooks Online’s free, built-in dashboard is real, it takes about five minutes to set up, and for some small businesses it is genuinely enough. This guide walks through that setup first. If you get to the end and find the limits it runs into, the same guide covers what to do about it — including QuickBooks dashboards built specifically around your business rather than QuickBooks’s fixed tile list.
Part 1: Setting up QuickBooks’s built-in dashboard
Open the Dashboard
Log into QuickBooks Online and click “Dashboard” (labeled “Business overview” in newer versions) in the left navigation. This is the home screen QuickBooks shows by default — it already exists, no setup required.
Review the default tiles
QuickBooks starts you with a handful of preset tiles: Profit and Loss, Expenses, Sales, Bank accounts, and Invoices. Each tile is a small live view pulled from the matching report — not a static image.
Customize which tiles show
Click the gear or “Customize” icon in the dashboard header. From here you can add or remove tiles from a fixed list QuickBooks provides, and reorder them by dragging.
Pick a chart type per tile
Some tiles — Sales and Expenses in particular — let you switch between a bar chart, line chart, or pie chart. Not every tile supports every chart type, and you cannot add a chart type QuickBooks does not offer for that tile.
Set the date range
Each tile has its own date range control (this month, last month, this quarter, this year, or a custom range). Ranges are set per tile, not globally, so lining up two tiles on the same period takes a few extra clicks.
Add the Bank accounts and Invoices tiles
If you want cash and receivables visible at a glance, add the Bank accounts tile (shows connected account balances) and the Invoices tile (shows open, overdue, and paid invoice totals) from the same customize menu.
Done — it saves automatically
There is no explicit save step. Your tile selection, order, and chart choices persist to your login and reload the same way every time you open QuickBooks.
Part 2: Where the built-in dashboard stops
Once it is set up, the native dashboard is honestly useful for a quick daily check. It also has a hard ceiling that shows up fast for any business past its first year or two. Here is exactly where that ceiling sits.
No custom metrics
You can only choose from QuickBooks's fixed list of preset tiles. There is no way to define a metric of your own — gross margin by job, a blended revenue-per-employee figure, anything that is not already a named tile.
No trend lines beyond one chart period
Tiles show the selected period's numbers, not a rolling trend. Seeing whether revenue is up or down over the last six months means manually changing the date range and remembering last month's number.
No cross-report or blended views
Each tile maps to a single report. QuickBooks cannot combine, say, job cost data with A/R aging on one tile, or roll up numbers from more than one QuickBooks company file into a single view.
No owner-level rollups
There is no tile for job or project profitability, no ranked list of top customers, no AR aging breakdown by bucket. Those all exist as QuickBooks reports — none of them are dashboard tiles.
No alerts or thresholds
The dashboard is something you have to remember to open and read. It will not tell you when cash drops below a threshold or an expense category spikes — there is no notification layer at all.
Part 3: Three ways to go further
Once QuickBooks’s native dashboard stops answering the questions you actually ask, there are three realistic upgrade paths — not one right answer, but a clear way to tell which one fits.
Path 1: Export to a spreadsheet
Best for: a single owner who needs one custom view occasionally, not a recurring workflow.
Export the reports you need to Excel or Google Sheets, then build the trend lines, comparisons, or blended views QuickBooks's dashboard cannot show. It is free and fully flexible — the tradeoff is that every number is frozen the moment you export it. Next month, you are doing the same manual export and rebuild again.
Path 2: A BI tool like Power BI
Best for: businesses with a dedicated analyst, multiple data sources beyond QuickBooks, or reporting needs too complex for a fixed dashboard product.
Power BI (or a similar BI tool) can connect to QuickBooks data and build genuinely powerful, fully custom models — blending accounting data with a CRM, an operations system, or anything else you track. The cost is real setup time, a data pipeline to maintain, and enough DAX or query knowledge to build and troubleshoot it. Orivian has hands-on Power BI consulting experience, so this is a path we can speak to directly, not secondhand: it is the right tool for some businesses and genuine overkill for most small QuickBooks-based ones.
Path 3: A purpose-built tool like DashEase
Best for: the large majority of QuickBooks-based businesses that have outgrown the native dashboard but do not need a full BI rollout.
A connected product like DashEase sits between the two — it reads QuickBooks directly, refreshes on a schedule, and comes with the trend lines, comparisons, and owner-level views (cash flow, AR aging, job profitability) that the native dashboard cannot build, without requiring a spreadsheet rebuild every month or a BI analyst on staff.
FAQ
Common questions about QuickBooks dashboards
Can I create a custom dashboard in QuickBooks Online?
Not a fully custom one. QuickBooks Online lets you choose which of its preset tiles to show, reorder them, and pick from a limited set of chart types per tile — but you cannot define a new metric, blend data from more than one report, or add a tile QuickBooks does not already offer.
Does QuickBooks Desktop have the same dashboard?
QuickBooks Desktop has its own “Insights” and “Company Snapshot” screens, which work similarly — fixed tiles pulled from standard reports, limited customization. The steps in this guide are written for QuickBooks Online, which is where most small businesses have moved, but the underlying limitations are close to identical on Desktop.
Why doesn't my dashboard show job or project profitability?
Job and project profitability is not one of QuickBooks's preset dashboard tiles, even though the underlying data exists in QuickBooks (via classes, projects, or billable time and expenses). You would need to open the Profitability by Project report separately, or use a connected tool that turns that report into a dashboard view.
Is DashEase harder to set up than the built-in dashboard?
No — it is a one-time QuickBooks authorization, similar to connecting a bank feed. After that, DashEase syncs automatically and the dashboards are ready without any manual tile configuration.
When should I use Power BI instead of a tool like DashEase?
When your reporting needs go beyond QuickBooks — blending in a CRM, field operations data, or multiple entities — or when you have someone on staff who can build and maintain the data model. For a business whose reporting question starts and ends with “what is QuickBooks telling me,” a connected tool gets you there faster with far less setup.
Ready for a dashboard that grows with the business?
DashEase connects to QuickBooks and builds the trend lines, comparisons, and owner-level views the native dashboard can't. Free to start.