Executive dashboard
An executive dashboard you’ll actually read.
An executive dashboard is one screen with the few numbers that show a CEO or founder whether the business is on track, and why something moved. Here’s what to put on it, three examples, and the quickest ways to build one.
Updated November 4, 2026
What goes on an executive dashboard
Eight numbers cover most businesses. Each one answers a question you’d otherwise have to go and ask someone.
| Number | The question it answers | Where it usually lives | How often to look |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue or MRR, against last period | Are we growing? | Stripe or your billing tool | A daily glance |
| Money out | What is it costing us? | Cards, bank, AI and hosting bills | Weekly |
| Margin | Are we keeping any of it? | The two above, together | Monthly, or weekly if AI is a big cost |
| Cash and runway | How long can we keep going? | Your bank | Monthly |
| New customers or signups | Is demand holding up? | Product analytics or CRM | Daily |
| Churn | Are we keeping them? | Your billing tool | Monthly |
| Where customers come from, and what they cost | Which growth is worth paying for? | Search Console, GA4, ad accounts | Weekly |
| The one thing off track | What needs me today? | Nowhere. Someone has to write it | Daily |
The test for anything else: if this number moved 20% tomorrow, would you do something different? If not, it belongs on a team’s own dashboard, not yours. That usually rules out pageviews, follower counts, and campaign-level detail.
Three executive dashboard examples
The numbers are made up. The layout is the point: each one fits on a phone screen and ends with what to do.
One SaaS product
- MRR $42,100, up 3.1%
- 186 new trials this week
- Churn 2.4% a month
- AI and hosting at 18% of revenue
- Runway 14 months
- Off track: trial-to-paid fell from 14% to 11% after the pricing page changed
A founder with several products
- Relay: $8,420 MRR, 71% margin
- Sprout: $3,180 MRR, 44% margin
- The Signal: $1,240 MRR, 82% margin
- All together: $12,840, up 4%
- 1,120 search clicks, 348 signups
- Off track: Sprout’s AI bill is 38% of its revenue, up from 22%
A small business with a few brands
- Studio: $31,200 in, $18,400 out
- Shop: $14,900 in, $11,700 out
- Services: $9,300 in, $2,100 out
- Ad spend $4,800, returning 2.1×
- Cash covers 5 months of costs
- Off track: the shop’s Meta ads returned 0.8× this month. Pause them?
How to build one
| Option | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| A spreadsheet | One business, a handful of numbers, updated by hand each week | It goes stale in your first busy week |
| Looker Studio | Free, and good with Google data: GA4, Search Console, Google Ads | Stripe and most others need third-party connectors, often paid. Building it and keeping it working is on you |
| Power BI or Tableau | Larger companies with an analyst and a data warehouse | Too much if there’s nobody to run it |
| Databox or Geckoboard | Teams that want KPI screens, including on an office TV | You choose and arrange the metrics, and working out why they moved is still your job |
| Glow | Founders with one or several products. Connect read-only keys and it builds the view and writes what changed | It isn’t a BI tool: it reads its own set of connections, with no CRM or bank balances today |
What you see
The numbers above, per product
Revenue, MRR, costs, margin, signups, search clicks and ad spend, for each product and all together.
Why it moved
A one-line caption on every chart, written from your data, so nobody has to go and find out.
The one thing off track
A morning briefing with what changed and the one thing worth doing about it.
Someone to do it
Approve the fix, and an agent does the work or hands it to Claude Code or Devin.
What it sounds like
Up from 22% last month · one key tripled on Tuesday · a cheaper model scores the same
How it works
Connect read-only keys
Stripe, your AI providers, Google, Cloudflare and your bank or cards. Each one takes a minute, with the steps on the card.
Glow maps them to products
It suggests a product tree from what it finds: which Stripe prices, API keys, domains and projects belong to which product.
Read one briefing a day
Every morning: what changed, why, and the one thing worth doing about it. Ask Glow anything in between.
What it connects to
Related
Questions, answered
What is an executive dashboard?
A single view of the handful of numbers a CEO, founder or leadership team uses to judge whether the business is on track: usually revenue, costs, margin, cash, customers and where growth is coming from. It’s for deciding, so it stays short and leaves the detail to each team’s own dashboards.
What should a CEO dashboard include?
Revenue or MRR, money out, margin, cash and runway, new customers, churn, where customers come from, and a plain statement of what’s off track. A CEO dashboard and an executive dashboard are usually the same thing.
How many KPIs should it have?
About eight. Past that, people stop reading it. If two numbers always move together, keep one.
What’s the difference between an executive dashboard and a KPI dashboard?
A KPI dashboard can track anything, for any team, in any detail. An executive dashboard is the short version for whoever runs the company. How Glow builds a KPI dashboard.
How often should it update?
Daily is plenty for most businesses. Glow syncs through the day: payments and ad spend about hourly and the rest every few hours, and it writes the morning briefing from the fresh data.
Do I need a data warehouse?
Not unless you have an analyst and data from a lot of internal systems. A small company’s numbers already live in Stripe, its cards and its analytics tools, and you can read them directly.
Does Glow cover all eight numbers?
All but cash and runway: Glow doesn’t read bank balances today. Costs come from Ramp, Cloudflare and OpenRouter, so spending that doesn’t go through those won’t show up.
See every product lit up.
Sign up on the web, connect Stripe and one AI key, and see every product’s money in, money out and AI bill in about a minute.