Financial Dashboard Sheet - Everything You Need to Know

Once you set up your bank account connections and added your manual accounts to Nordveld Flow, the next place you want to go to is your Financial Dashboard Sheet. Why?

Because it gives you a complete overview of the most fundamental parts of your personal finance. Whether you use Nordveld Flow as a person or a family budget app you definitely need to pay close attention to the Financial Dashboard sheet.

However, you may feel overwhelmed by the amount of data present on this sheet.

If you aren’t sure of the meaning and purpose of certain fields don’t get discouraged.

In this guide, we will walk you through everything you need to know to gain the maximum benefits out of your Financial Dashboard Sheet.

Your Net Worth, Savings and Investments

At the upper part of the sheet, you will see multiple fields, that give you important information synthesised from other sheets.

The first thing you’ll notice is your current Net Worth. It is the combined result of all your assets and liabilities at the current moment that is summed by our budget calculator. On the right side of your Net Worth, you will see fields named Savings Rate and Target Savings Rate. Savings Rate refers to the amount of your net income you are saving to build a nest egg, usually for retirement. Net income simply means your gross income minus any applicable taxes. For example, let’s assume your monthly net income is €3,000, you spend €2,250 each month and set aside €750. That means your savings rate expressed in percentages is 25% (€750/ €3,000 x 100) which, by the way, is an awesome savings rate. The Target Savings Rate field is used just for your reference. For instance, if your current savings rate calculated by Nordveld Flow is 9.5% and you aim to reach 15%, just type 15 in this cell to set your savings goal. Next up there are two pie charts titled “Your income planning target” and “Your regular income spending”. These refer to information from your Income Planning Sheet, which is crucial to your personal finance plan. So if you haven’t filled your Income Planning Sheet yet, hurry to go there and do it.

These fields provide an overview of how you currently use your money vs how you want your money behaviour to look. By the way, if you select any of these charts and click the three dots at the upper right corner of the field, you can customise them to your liking. You can click “Edit” and change the style to a bar chart or whatever works best for you.

The field titled “Spending this month” shows you how much money you’ve spent this month and the total amount of money you are left with (total budget left) based on the expense cap you set in your Income Planning sheet.

“Assets vs Liabilities” chart gives you an excellent visual representation of your possessions that store and generate money and the things that cost money.

Naturally, as time passes by, you want to increase the value of assets and decrease the value of liabilities. You can track your progress through the “Net worth over time” graphic. To review how your net worth changed over a given period of time, just click the little arrow and select your desired horizon, e.g. 3 months 2 years, or all time.

Are You Meeting Your Spending and Savings Goals?

When you scroll down on the Financial Dashboard page, you’ll see a few more fields emerging. The “Current savings rate” is simply a visual representation of your savings rate we already discussed. But what does the adjacent field mean?

The “Runaway (m) based on NW” is the number of months you can survive if you stop receiving income due to job loss or for any other reason. It’s based on your net worth. As you become better with your personal finance, the runaway number should gradually increase.

The graphic “Spending per category” can show you where your money has gone in the last three months. Here you can easily identify bad sending behaviours. For example, you can notice 15% of your income is in the “Restaurants” category while you thought you don’t spend much on dining out.

Your “Top 10 Categories Spending” shows your biggest expenses for the current month. You can set a budgeting goal for each category by visiting the Categories sheet and filling in the “Spending guideline” field of the corresponding category.

Then you will have a convenient visual representation of your budgeting limits for these categories. You will see how much money you spent this month, your budgeting Goal and whether you have some Buffer left to spent or you already went above your set balance. And there you have it. Your finances at a single glance, in a single personal budget template. Easy. Automated. Effortless.