Explorer Charts turn the same ledger behind your Financial Reports into six interactive visual views. Where a statement gives you the figures, a chart shows you the shape of the business, and every node, bar or cell is a door back into the transactions underneath it.
- The six chart views and what each answers
- How depth and minimum share control how much detail a chart shows
- How drill-down, breadcrumbs and jump-to-ledger work
- How Explorer Charts relate to Financial Reports
The six views
- Flow: a Sankey diagram tracing revenue through to net profit, in either Profit and Loss or Cash mode. Cash mode traces opening cash through operating, investing and financing activity to closing cash.
- Movement: a waterfall comparing this period's net profit against the prior period, one bar per line item, so a swing is traceable to the exact line that caused it.
- Composition: a zoomable treemap sizing revenue, cost of sales and expenses by amount, so the shape of the business is visible in one screen.
- Trend: a multi-series line chart plotting revenue, cost of sales, expenses and net profit over time, with a zoomable, scrollable timeline.
- Receivables: an aging view bucketing what is owed by how overdue it is, and a Pareto view showing how concentrated the outstanding balance is across customers.
- Activity: a calendar heatmap of daily cash movement, so seasonal patterns and spikes are visible without reading a transaction list.
How it behaves
Depth and minimum share shape the chart
Flow and Movement can be shown at three depths, Groups, Detailed or Fine, and a minimum share filter (Tidy, 0.5% or All) hides the smallest lines so the chart stays readable. Turning every dial to its widest setting is rarely the most useful view: the point of a chart is what it leaves out as much as what it shows.
Drill down, then jump to the ledger
Clicking a node or bar rescopes the chart into that group, with a breadcrumb trail back out. A modifier click (Ctrl or Cmd) on a leaf line jumps straight to the ledger transactions behind it, the same shortcut used across the reference.
Export, print and save a view
Any chart can be saved as an image or printed as a standalone page with its key figures alongside it. A particular combination of period, depth and filters can be saved as a preset, the same saved-view mechanism used elsewhere in reporting.
How this differs from Financial Reports
Explorer Charts and Financial Reports read the same ledger, they are two lenses on one set of numbers, not two sets of books. Financial Reports gives you the formal statement, Trial Balance, Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, in the tabular shape you would print or file. Explorer Charts gives you the interactive, visual shape of the same period, built for spotting a driver or an outlier fast, then drilling into it. Reach for a report when you need the figures; reach for a chart when you are looking for the story behind them.
Worked example
Net profit is down against last month. Open Movement: the waterfall shows every line that moved, and one expense bar stands out well past the others. Ctrl-click it to jump straight to the ledger transactions behind that line and confirm the cause, all without leaving the chart or re-running a report.
Edge cases and good practice
- Finance only, for now. Explorer Charts covers the Accounting ledger. Other modules do not yet have a chart-based explorer.
- A sparse Cash Flow view is expected. A period with no investing or financing activity renders as a single Operating band, which is correct, not a rendering issue.
- Widen the filters gradually. Moving straight to Fine depth and All share on a busy ledger can produce a hairball; step up from Groups and Tidy only as needed.
Related
- Reference: Financial Reports
- Reference: Chart of Accounts
- Reference: Using Reports