Jump to a section of this article using the links below or just scroll down.
Dext Precision is at it's most powerful for accountancies when you have added all your practice clients. The Client List and Practice Dashboard are essential tools for prioritising and staying on top of your clients and keeping an eye on your practice performance; you'll be able to handle issues as and when they occur, and your clients will always feel like the centre of attention.
# Client List
This is your Team home page in Precision, and also where you can add, search and access each of your clients. In this view, you can choose to display all clients, only the clients you are an Account Manager for, or the ones you have selected as favourites. Click on each of the client cards to view the Client Overview for that client.
You can sort and filter your clients from this view for an at-a-glance practice overview. Sort by the general Client Health Score, or select an insight metric and choose to sort by either it's individual Health Score or the number of issues identified for that insight (i.e., by volume). You can choose to sort ascending or descending, and combined with the filtering of the list by My Accounts and Favourites, the "at a glance" reporting potential is quite powerful.
In each of the client cards, on the left you can view the company name, and their last sync date. A small pink padlock icon indicates that the client is no longer linked to their accounting software, and you will need to re-link that client by clicking in to their Client Overview.
On the right of the client card, you can view the client's metric (if one is selected from the dropdown), their overall health score, the account manager's icon, a star button for selecting that client as a 'favourite' and a three-dot menu icon - clicking this menu icon will allow you to view that client in your accounting software, sync with your accounting software or remove it from Precision.
# Start getting ahead of the curve
Here's some scenarios that will immediately benefit from this kind of practice-level insight:
- As a Managing Director, which of my team's clients needs attention the most, right now?
- Similarly, as an Account Manager, which of my clients needs some help?
- We're considering taking on a new client - what is the general state of their books so I can price accordingly?
- I'd like to get a team member onto sorting out the Fixed Assets Register across the board, but which clients should they start with?
- How are the clients doing that are being looked after by my newest bookkeeper?
- Which client has got the highest ratio of Multi-Coded Contacts so we can look to improve their coding processes?
# Favourite Clients
By clicking the pink star, your client will become a 'Favourite'. This is really useful for clients that you need to view regularly, or are currently working a lot with. Favourite clients are specific to each user, so you can just select the Clients that are most relevant to you.
You can filter both the client list, and the practice dashboard, to your favourite clients, to check them out more easily.
When switching quickly between clients in the sidebar, your favourite clients will always sit at the top of the list so you can find and switch between them quickly.
# Practice Dashboard
The Practice Dashboard is a KPI data playground across all of your clients. This view contains the data from the Client List including all of your client metrics, plus links straight to the client in Xero for you to compare data across clients or account managers.
The Practice Dashboard looks, and functions, just like the Precision Sandbox ; a drag and drop report-builder, with spreadsheet-like functionality. You can choose the columns you want to see, group-by, sort, collapse and expand until you get it just how you want. If you're a fan of Excel's pivot tables, you'll find that option too in the columns panel on the right.
You can save or export your configurations to Excel, using the buttons in the secondary navigation at the top right.
You can save these configurations in your Practice Dashboard by selecting save. You'll need to give your dashboard a name, then decide whether to keep this report configuration private, or share it with the rest of your team. Saved dashboards can be accessed by selecting Custom Dashboards in the sidebar. Just like custom reports, they can then be edited, favourited, or deleted from this view.
# Client Overview
Clicking on a client card from the Client List will take you through to the management of that specific client.
This view highlights a selection of key alerts, metrics, activity stats, and also highlights any issues with the client's Lock Dates - find out more.
Clicking on any of these stats will take you through to the relevant tool or insight in Dext Precision to learn more. When clicking from the overview, Precision opens these views in dashboard mode so you'll see the information with the same dates and parameters as we use for the Overview.
# Overview Reporting Mode
The Overview displays the last complete month by default, but you can set the Overview to represent data for a range of date periods. By clicking on the date range below the title, or in Configuration > Overview Configuration you can select a date range that is most suitable for your client.
|
WARNING Unlike the date periods which are rolling, if you set a manual date configuration the overview will not update until the date range is changed again. |
In addition to providing high-level stats about a client, the overview is where you can manage a client, removing it from Precision via the Remove button or un-linking it from your accounting software using the Unlink button.
Unlinking a client means it will remain in Precision, but will no longer sync with your GL to retrieve the latest changes. A client can be re-linked at any point, and syncing will resume.
Syncing happens automatically overnight, but you can also trigger a sync on-demand via the Sync Now button.
You can export the client overview in both PDF and .XLS format:
- The PDF export contains your team branding (which you can add in the Team Profile) and additional explanations for each item, which will make it easier for your client to understand. The items are also arranged in priority order.
- The .XLSX format is a really stripped-down version of the overview, which is perfect for linking into your own spreadsheet reports.
In the sidebar, clicking on Configuration will show the client configuration options:
- General: Here you can update the basic client settings in Precision, including the client name, account managers, and what tags are applied to the client.
- Visibility: View and edit the current client visibility settings applied to the client.
- Overview Configuration: This allows you to adjust the reporting mode of the client, which will adjust the overview dates and the health score accordingly.
- Tax and Control Accounts: Throughout Precision, different tools can be customised with key tax and account codes to make the correct calculations for a client. You can edit these all centrally from this area.
# Client Health Score
Dext Precision calculates an overall score for a client to indicate the health of their books. You'll find the Health Score displayed on each client in the Client List, and on each client's Overview page underneath their name. A lot of our cleanup tools and insights now have an individual Health Score, which the overall Health Score is derived from. You can now focus on improving the data quality of your clients and easily see that progress on a daily basis.
The score is presented as a percentage, with a heart icon for traffic-light status. The health score is relative to the date selected, and proportional to the size of the client. The following Precision elements contribute to the health score currently:
- Bank Reconciliation (Xero clients only)
- Multi-Coded Contacts
- Duplicate Contacts
- Regular Supplier Anomalies
- Lock Dates
- Fixed Assets (Xero clients only)
- Dormant Accounts
- Contact Defaults (Xero clients only)
- Aged Balances
- PAYE (Xero clients only, if configured)
|
TIP The algorithm for the health score will evolve as we fine-tune the weighting of Precision's different cleanup and insight scores on the final health score, but keep aiming for that 100% |
# Client Health Score Over Time
The health score over time feature tracks the changes to a client’s health score and displays this as a graph on the client overview page. The data range and time resolution (i.e. view by month, week, or day) can be changed, and for accessibility, there is a table view.
This brand new chart on the Client Overview shows you historical health scores over the last days, weeks and months to see trends over time. Hovering your mouse over a point on the graph will show the health score at that time.
Use the table view to export the data, and share with your clients the impact of your team’s hard work.
Clicking on Table View will replace the graph with a table of the data. In the table view, you can right-click to export to CSV format, compatible with Excel or Google Sheets. Clicking Graph View will return you to the graph view.
You can choose the date range by clicking on the drop-down menu and choosing a date range. By default, the date range shown is the one that corresponds to the period set for the Client Overview.
# Client Visibility
Dext Precision provides three options for determining who in your team can view a particular client's data. The following options can be selected from the Client Settings view:
|
WARNING Team Owners and Admins can see all clients, regardless of Client Visibility settings in Precision. |
For Xero clients
Whole Team: everyone on your Precision team can view this client's data.
Xero Users Only: only the users linked to the Client in Xero, with the Xero role of either Adviser or Standard will be able to view the client's data in Precision. Precision uses the email you log into Precision with to match to the user in Xero.
If Xero Users Only is selected, this view will show you which of your Precision team members are eligible to view the Client, and will also list the users in Xero that are not part of your Dext Precision team yet - you can choose to invite them from here. Clients with Xero Users Only will also show a different visibility icon on the Client List.
Specific Users Only: only the users you have selected to view this client will be able to view the data in Precision.
|
TIP The default visibility setting for clients is Xero Users Only. However, if you are importing a client and your email address does not match the user you have signed into in Xero, the default setting will be Specific Users Only, and you will be asked to select those specific users in a popup before the client can be imported. |
For QBO clients
Whole Team: everyone on your Precision team can view this client's data.
Specific Users Only: only the users you have selected to view this client will be able to view the data in Precision.
|
TIP The default visibility setting for QBO clients is Whole Team. |
# Client Tags
Dext Precision provides the ability to set tags for your clients, to help you organise your practice.
You can allow tags to be created on the fly within individual clients, or control them from only the team area. Tags can be set centrally from the Team sidebar under Configuration > Tags, where you can add, delete, and assign tags to multiple clients at once. (See screenshot above for Team-level Tag Management).
To assign tags to clients in bulk, from the central Tags view click on a purple tag to select it. You will be able to see below how many clients are associated with that tag. Click to open the list of clients associated/not associated with that tag, and search or select from the list to add or remove clients. Then click the Update button to set those tags.
To set tags against a client at the client level, from the Overview sidebar select Configuration > General. You'll see the option to search and select tags to apply to that client.
Tags are visible on the Client List, Client Overview and in the Practice Dashboard. In both the Client List and the Practice Dashboard, you can use tags to search and filter your clients.