Executive KPI Dashboard

What this tool does

CM8-12 is a lightweight executive dashboard: define the KPIs your business tracks, enter one actual per KPI per month, and get an instant management view — latest value, variance to target, month-on-month movement and a 12-month trend for every measure — plus a clean printable board pack.

Everything runs inside this single HTML file. No installation, no account, no network requests — your KPIs and figures never leave your computer.

Quick start

1. Open KPI setup and define your measures (or press Load example KPIs to explore with clearly-marked fictional data).
2. Pick a month with the period selector in the top bar, then enter that month's actuals on Data entry. Repeat for past months to build trend history.
3. Review the Dashboard — switch between tile and table views, and step through months with the ‹ › buttons.
4. Fill in Report settings at the foot of the Dashboard, then use Print Report for meetings, Export CSV for spreadsheets, and Export .json for backup or sharing between computers.

Defining KPIs well

• Name — short and unambiguous ("Gross margin", not "Margin stuff").
• Unit — currency, percent, plain number or hours. The currency selector in the top bar is a display label only; it never converts values.
• Direction — tells the tool which side of target is good. Revenue and yield are higher-is-better; cost, complaints and turnover are lower-is-better. Variance colouring, status and the ▲▼ movement colours all respect this.
• Target — the monthly value you commit to. If your target changes during the year, edit it; status is always evaluated against the current target.
• Warning band % — how far past target still counts as "warning" rather than "off target". 5–15% suits most measures; use a wide band (e.g. 50%) for small-number KPIs like complaints where one unit is a large percentage.
• Display order — sorts KPIs within their category (lowest first). Leave blank to append at the end.

Status logic

For each KPI and month, the actual is compared with the target in the KPI's favourable direction:

Status is always shown as a text label (On target / Warning / Off target / No data) as well as a colour, so it stays readable in greyscale print and for colour-blind readers. A KPI with no value for the selected month counts as "No data" — it is never silently treated as zero.

Reading the dashboard

• Summary strip — counts of on-target / warning / off-target / no-data KPIs for the selected month.
• Tiles — grouped by category. Each tile shows the latest value, target, variance to target, movement vs the previous month (▲ up, ▼ down, ▬ flat — coloured by whether the move was favourable), and a 12-month sparkline. The dashed line on the sparkline is the target.
• Table view — the same information as a compact list; better for twenty-plus KPIs or line-by-line review.
• Period selector — the dashboard always shows the selected month, so you can step back through history exactly as it was reported.

Board pack (printing)

Press Print Report in the toolbar (or Ctrl/Cmd+P). The board pack is rebuilt from your current figures each time it is printed, so it always matches the reporting period selected in the top bar. Choose "Save as PDF" in the print dialog to circulate it.

The pack contains, in order:

• Header — report title, company, reporting period, preparer and print date, taken from the Report settings card on the Dashboard tab.
• Executive summary — five tiles: counts of on-target, warning and off-target KPIs, plus the best- and worst-performing KPI by direction-adjusted variance.
• Charts — status-mix donut, spotlight 12-month trend and the variance-to-target ranking.
• KPI detail — every KPI tile with its value, target, variance, movement and 12-month sparkline, grouped by category.
• Commentary — your closing notes, printed verbatim.

Report settings are saved with everything else, so the same header and commentary come back next time you open the file and travel with an exported .json project.

Saving your work

• Autosave — every change is stored in this browser's local storage (when the browser allows it) and restored next time you open the file. The timestamp in the top bar confirms each save.
• Save — writes to this browser immediately and flashes Saved ✓ with the time, for when you want to be certain before closing the tab. It does not produce a file.
• Export .json — downloads the complete state as a file: KPI definitions, all monthly history, currency, view, period and report settings. Import it on any computer with this file.
• Export CSV — the full KPI history table (one row per KPI, one column per month) for spreadsheets and BI tools.
• Reset — wipes KPIs, history, report settings and the autosave after confirmation. Export a project file first if in doubt.