Understanding Reports and Dashboards

Overview

Reports and dashboards transform your firm’s data into actionable insights. Whether you need to track client portfolios, monitor advisor productivity, or analyze business trends, these tools help you visualize the specific records that matter most to your practice.

Within Practifi, reports and dashboards leverage Salesforce’s native functionality. This means the platform provides a stable, proven foundation for your data analysis needs, though customization options remain within Salesforce’s standard capabilities. This article explains how reports and dashboards work, what you can accomplish with them, and important considerations for implementing them effectively at your firm.

For step-by-step instructions on building these tools, see our articles on Creating Reports and Creating Dashboards.

• Reports
  • What Is a Report?
  • Report Types
  • Report Functionality
• Dashboards
  • What Is a Dashboard?
  • Dashboard Functionality
• Additional Considerations

Reports

What Is a Report?

A report generates a list of records that meet the criteria you define. Think of it as a filtered view of your data that answers specific questions about your business. For example, you might create reports to identify clients with upcoming review dates, track opportunities in your pipeline, or analyze assets under management by advisor.

Reports live in folders that control who can access them. You can configure folders to be public (available to everyone), hidden (restricted access), or shared (available to specific users, roles, or groups). This folder structure gives you precise control over who sees which data, helping you maintain appropriate confidentiality across your firm.

Report folders organize and control access to your firm’s data analysis.

Report Types

Report types serve as templates that determine which data is available when you build a report. Each report type is based on a primary object (such as Contacts or Accounts) and may include related objects to provide a complete picture of your data relationships.

For instance, the Contacts & Entities report type allows you to analyze contact information alongside the entities they’re associated with, making it easy to understand household relationships or client organizational structures. Practifi includes a comprehensive set of standard report types designed for wealth management workflows. You’ll find report types for contacts, entities, opportunities, activities, assets, and liabilities, as well as many other objects essential to advisory practices.

If your analysis requires data combinations not available in the standard report types, you may need a custom report type. Custom report types can include additional fields or more complex object relationships. However, given the technical complexity involved, we recommend consulting with your Client Success Manager before pursuing custom report types. They can often identify simpler alternatives or help coordinate with our Support team if a custom solution is truly necessary.

Report Functionality 

Reports offer several capabilities that make data analysis flexible and accessible across your team.

• Filtering forms the foundation of every report. You define criteria to narrow results to exactly the records you need. This precision ensures your team members see relevant information without sifting through unnecessary data.
• Charts add visual elements to your reports, making it easier to spot trends and patterns at a glance. Visual representations can help you communicate insights more effectively during team meetings or client presentations.
• Editing remains available after you initially create a report. As your business needs evolve, you can adjust filtering criteria, modify the fields displayed, or refine how information is organized. This flexibility means your reports can grow and adapt alongside your practice.
• Exporting addresses a common need across many firms. Some team members prefer to work with data in Excel, where they can apply their own filters, create custom charts, or perform calculations not available in standard reporting. Reports support exporting results directly to Excel, giving these users the flexibility they need.

• Subscriptions provide automatic updates for reports your team references regularly. When you subscribe to a report, you receive updates via email according to the schedule you set. This feature works particularly well for monitoring metrics that require consistent attention, such as client review schedules or pipeline activity. Note that reports must be saved in public folders for the subscription feature to be available.

  

  Reports support charts, exports, and subscriptions to meet different workflow needs.

Dashboards

What Is a Dashboard?

A dashboard consolidates multiple data visualizations into a single view, providing an at-a-glance understanding of key performance indicators for your firm. Each visualization on a dashboard (called a widget) draws its data from an underlying report.

The relationship between dashboards and reports is straightforward: reports can exist independently, but every dashboard widget requires a report as its data source. This design gives you flexibility in how you analyze and present information. A single report can power multiple widgets on the same dashboard, each displaying the data in a different visual format. For example, you might show new client acquisition data as both a bar chart and a pie chart within the same dashboard.

Similarly, you can combine widgets from different reports into a single dashboard. This capability proves particularly valuable when you want to monitor related metrics together. A sales performance dashboard might include widgets for pipeline value, close rates, and activity metrics, each pulling from its own specialized report but displayed together for comprehensive oversight.

Dashboards combine multiple visualizations to provide comprehensive business insights.

Dashboard Functionality

Dashboards share several functional characteristics with reports while introducing some unique considerations around data visibility.

• Folder-based access works similarly to reports. Dashboards stored in folders inherit those folders’ access controls. If users have access to a dashboard folder, they can view the dashboards stored there. However, viewing a complete dashboard requires access to both the dashboard itself and the underlying reports that power its widgets. This layered permission structure ensures that users see only the data they’re authorized to access.
• The running user is a critical concept for dashboard configuration. Every dashboard has a designated running user whose security settings determine what data appears in the dashboard. This matters because dashboard viewers see data based on the running user’s permissions, not their own.
  • You have two approaches to configuring the running user:
    • Specific user dashboards designate one person as the running user. All viewers see data according to that person’s access level, regardless of their own permissions. This approach requires careful consideration of who you select as the running user. For example, if you designate a team manager as the running user, their team members will see dashboard data for their own team but not for other teams the manager might oversee. This configuration works well when you want consistent visibility across a defined group.
    • Dynamic dashboards automatically set the logged-in user as the running user. This means each person sees dashboard data based on their access level. Dynamic dashboards provide the most secure approach when record visibility is a concern, as they prevent users from seeing information they wouldn’t normally access. They work particularly well in organizations with strict data access policies or when different advisors should only see their own client data.
• Editing capabilities allow you to refine dashboards after creation. You can add new widgets as your monitoring needs expand, remove widgets that are no longer relevant, or adjust the layout to prioritize the most important information. This flexibility ensures your dashboards remain valuable as your firm’s priorities evolve.

• Subscriptions work for dashboards just as they do for reports. Team members can subscribe to receive dashboard updates via email on a regular schedule. Like reports, dashboards must be saved to public folders for subscription functionality to be available. This feature helps ensure key stakeholders stay informed about critical metrics without needing to log in to check dashboards manually.

  Additional Considerations

  As you implement reports and dashboards at your firm, keep these essential points in mind:

• Data accuracy depends on the quality of information entered into Practifi. Reports and dashboards can only work with the data available in your system. Establishing good data entry practices across your team ensures your reporting remains reliable and actionable.
• Performance can be affected by overly complex reports or dashboards with many widgets. If you notice slow loading times, consider simplifying your reports or reducing the number of widgets displayed simultaneously.
• Training helps your team get the most value from reporting capabilities. While the tools are intuitive, showing team members how to access, interpret, and act on report data maximizes the return on your configuration efforts.
• Regular review of your reports and dashboards ensures they continue to meet your firm’s needs. As your business evolves, periodically assess whether your existing reports still provide the insights you need or if new reports would better serve your current priorities.