The agency KPI dashboard
Built in Fathom on QuickBooks data, updated with every closeIf you have five minutes, what's the happy face, sad face, how are we doing financially?
That question is the design brief. The dashboard exists so a five-minute look tells you whether the month is fine, and a twenty-minute look tells you why.
It's built in Fathom, sitting on QuickBooks Online as the single source of truth, and it updates with each month-end close. It's included on Growth and Scale, and it's a $200 a month add-on on Starter.
What's on it
| Group | Metrics |
|---|---|
| Revenue | Month actual, target, rolling 12-month average, prior month, and mix by service line |
| Profit | Gross profit margin, operating profit margin, break-even point, margin of safety |
| People | People cost in dollars and as a percentage of revenue, with a rolling average |
| Cash | Cash on hand, operating cash flow, months of fixed-cost runway |
| Receivables | Accounts receivable balance and AR days |
| Comparison | Year to date this year against last year against forecast |
People cost as a percentage of revenue, with a rolling average next to it. One client watched that line bend down from the high 50s toward the low 50s purely because revenue grew while the team cost held flat. The dollars went up 13%. Revenue went up 22%. The percentage got better, and the chart is what made it obvious.
The standard dashboard is a starting point
The useful ones get modified. Here's what clients have actually asked for, and what got built.
A service-line share chart
One agency's video work was running 41% of year-to-date revenue against a 40% target, and the share swung a lot month to month. So the dashboard got a chart showing that one line as both dollars and a percentage of total revenue, tracked against the target.
A mini P&L for billable pass-throughs
Same agency, different problem: client travel, client meals, client advertising, billable expenses and production expenses were all being spent and rebilled, and nobody could tell whether the rebilling covered the spend. We built a consolidated view putting all of it against the matching income, with monthly and annual totals.
It paid for itself fast. The aggregate view showed a margin wide enough that the owner decided to audit his own billing internally to make sure the team wasn't marking up things it shouldn't. His words: "I want to make sure that we obviously are, um, have integrity, so I'll check into this, too."
Owner, 10-person creative agency
A gross-profit-only report for a manager
One owner wanted to put a team member on a gross profit margin KPI with an incentive at 60%, but couldn't give him QuickBooks access without exposing owner compensation. Locking down visibility wasn't enough, because anyone who can see the P&L at all can work backward.
So the report stops at the gross profit line. A high-level PDF plus a granular sheet underneath it, monthly, so he can see how the number was built without seeing anything below it.
A weekly report, for the clients who want one
On the Scale tier the dashboard is joined by a weekly financial report. One version runs income, cost of goods sold, total expenses and net income across four discrete weeks with a four-week total and average, plus 15 itemised expense lines, an open-invoice snapshot and a contractor payments tab.
Per-project margin from tracked hours
For a client whose work is project-based, the monthly pack includes margin by client built from time entries rather than estimated: hours, time cost, fixed cost, invoiced amount, margin and margin percent, for every engagement. Sixteen engagements, each with its own margin line, built from more than 3,700 hours of tracked time. The spread between the best and the worst turned out to be wide enough to change which work they chase. That engagement is written up here.
A dashboard nobody reads is decoration
So it doesn't ship alone. Growth clients get a quarterly financial health call plus a Loom walkthrough in the months between. Scale clients get a call every month. The Loom is the part clients mention most, because a ten-minute video you watch on your own time beats a meeting you have to prepare for.
One client on the reporting: "the detailed reporting and dashboards are easy to understand."
Owner, B2B video agency
Access and setup
You get your own Fathom login. The dashboard gets built during the OS Audit month, alongside the forecast, so the targets on it are the ones you set in session 1 rather than defaults. Targets get updated when your goals change, which in practice happens two or three times a year.
Questions
The ones people actually ask on the first callWhat software do you build the dashboard in?
Fathom, reading from QuickBooks Online. QuickBooks stays the single source of truth and the dashboard is the reporting layer on top of it. You get your own login rather than a PDF.
How often does the dashboard update?
With each month-end close. On the Scale tier it is joined by a weekly financial report covering income, cost of goods sold, expenses and net income week by week.
Can the dashboard track metrics specific to my agency?
Yes, and the ones that get used usually do. Clients have added a service-line revenue share chart against a target, a consolidated view of billable pass-through spend against the income that covers it, and per-project margin built from tracked hours.
Can I give a team member access without showing them owner pay?
Not through permissions alone, because anyone who can see the P&L can work backward to owner compensation. The approach that works is a separate report that stops at the gross profit line, which is what we build when a manager owns a margin target.
Is the dashboard included at every tier?
It is included on Growth and Scale. On Starter it is a $200 a month add-on, because agencies under $500K usually need clean books and a clean tax handoff more than they need a reporting layer.
Next step
A 30-minute call, and you will know whether this fitsMonthly bookkeeping, a Fathom dashboard, and fractional CFO advisory for marketing and creative agencies doing $300K to $5M. Logan works every account.