---
title: Reading your Syft business dashboard
description: Reading your Syft business dashboard
---

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# Reading your Syft business dashboard

## Understand the key sections in Syft and how often data updates within the software

The Syft dashboard gives you a live view of your company's financial performance drawn from your Xero data. Understanding what each section shows helps you get value from it quickly.

### Key Tools sections

**Visualize:** shows you the picture. This is where your numbers are turned into charts and graphs. Rather than reading rows of figures, you can see at a glance how your sales, costs and cash are moving over time. It is the quickest way to get a feel for how your business is doing.

**Financials:** gives you the formal reports. It holds your core financial reports, such as your profit and loss and balance sheet. These are the formal statements that show what your business has earned, what it has spent, and what it owns and owes. They are drawn directly from your Xero records, so they are always up to date.

**Analyze:** explains the story behind the numbers. It digs a little deeper. It looks at trends, ratios and comparisons - for example, how this month compares with last month, or how much of every pound of sales is left as profit. It helps answer the question "why do my numbers look the way they do?"

**Plan:** looks at what comes next. This section about looking forward rather than back. This is where budgets, forecasts and cash flow projections live, so you can see where your business is heading and test what might happen if, say, sales grow or a big cost lands.

### How often data updates

Data refreshes in Syft every few hours. You can also prompt a refresh by clicking the "Refresh data" option in the bottom left-hand corner of the page. This also tells you when data was last refreshed.

💡 **Good to know:** The most useful habit with Syft is checking the dashboard at the start of each week. A quick glance at the trend charts takes less than two minutes and will flag any significant movement in revenue or costs that warrants investigation.

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