1. CORE Help Center
  2. Using CORE
  3. Insights (Beta)
  4. Using CORE Insights

CORE Insights: Dashboard Builder

Updated

Overview

Dashboard Builder in CORE Insights allows you to create fully customized dashboards and charts using CORE data. Dashboard Builder enables designated users to design dashboards from scratch, create charts and tables, and share them with other users within the company.

Dashboard Builder provides a self-service insights and reporting experience directly within CORE, reducing the need for external reporting tools or complex integrations. Builders can create interactive dashboards using datasets such as Projects, Time Entries, Expenses, and Invoices, and then publish them for company-wide use.

Dashboards are created using a grid-based workspace where charts can be inserted, configured, and arranged to present meaningful business metrics. When published, dashboards become available to other users for viewing and filtering.

Check out the CORE Insights FAQs.

Key features include:

  • Prebuilt and configurable dashboards
  • Custom dashboard and chart creation
  • Dashboard sharing within the company
  • Custom calculations and formulas
  • Interactive visualizations

Pre-Built Dashboard Collections include:

  • Accounts Receivable (Aging, Client Aging, Invoice Register)
  • Project Metrics (KPIs)
  • Time & Expense

Advanced Dashboards

Field Descriptions

How To

Create Dashboards

Insert Charts

Manage Dashboard Charts

Manage Dashboard Status

Mark Screen as Favorite

Advanced Dashboards

Insights Description
Accounts Receivable

Accounts Receivable dashboards help you monitor unpaid invoices, overdue balances, and collection performance using interactive charts and detailed transaction views. These dashboards allow you to analyze receivables by aging period, client, and invoice details so you can better manage cash flow and outstanding balances.

  • Aging

    The Aging Dashboard provides a consolidated view of unpaid and overdue invoices grouped by aging periods. You can review balances across standard aging ranges and quickly identify overdue amounts.

    The dashboard includes visual charts showing aging by invoice date and due date, summary KPI charts for accounts receivable balances, and a detailed table of unpaid invoices. Filters allow you to refine results by client, project, or project manager to focus on specific receivables.

  • Client Aging

    The Client Aging Dashboard displays aging balances segmented by client, allowing you to compare outstanding receivables across your client base.

    You can view aging trends through interactive charts that break down balances by client and aging period, along with summary indicators showing total outstanding and past-due balances. A detailed client A/R summary table provides invoice-level visibility, helping you identify clients that require follow-up or collection action.

  • Invoice Register

    The Invoice Register dashboard provides a detailed transactional view of invoices across the company.

    You can review invoice records including client, project, invoice status, invoice and due dates, billed amounts, paid amounts, and remaining balances. Built-in filters allow you to narrow results by client, project, payment status, or date ranges, making it easier to analyze invoice activity and payment history.
Project Metrics

Project Metrics dashboards help you monitor project performance, profitability, and billing trends using key performance indicators (KPIs) and visual summaries. These dashboards combine financial and operational data so you can evaluate project health, track progress over time, and identify areas that require attention.

  • Billed Contract Analysis

    The Billed Contract Analysis dashboard helps you monitor contract performance by comparing billed amounts, remaining contract values, and unbilled work across projects. You can review cumulative billed contract values over time through visual charts that display billing activity by project and project manager. These visualizations help you understand how contract revenue progresses and identify projects approaching contract limits.

    Summary charts provide quick visibility into key contract metrics, including billed contract totals, remaining contract value, and unbilled contract amounts. A detailed project table allows you to review contract information at the project level, including billed and unbilled services and expenses.

    Filters allow you to refine results by client, project group, project manager, project status, and contract type, helping you focus on specific segments of contract performance. This dashboard helps you track billing progress, monitor remaining contract value, and identify projects that may require billing or contract adjustments.

  • Cumulative Project Details

    The Cumulative Project Details dashboard provides a detailed view of project performance by displaying project-to-date metrics across projects and phases. You can review cumulative progress information, including project phases, percent completion, and contract values, helping you understand how work is progressing over time. The dashboard presents project and phase-level details in a tabular format, allowing you to analyze performance across clients, projects, and delivery stages.

    Summary indicators provide additional insight into overall project health, such as gross margin and labor performance metrics, while filters allow you to refine results by client, project, phase, project manager, project status, contract type, and reporting period.

    This dashboard helps you monitor ongoing project progress, evaluate performance at the phase level, and identify areas that may require operational or financial attention.

  • Unbilled Management

    The Unbilled Management dashboard helps you monitor and manage unbilled project transactions by providing visibility into unbilled services and expenses across projects.

    You can review unbilled balances over time to understand billing backlog trends and identify work that has not yet been invoiced. The dashboard highlights total unbilled amounts along with separate summaries for unbilled services and expenses, helping you quickly evaluate potential revenue that is pending billing.

    Detailed project-level data allows you to analyze unbilled activity by client, project, and project manager, making it easier to identify delays in billing workflows or projects requiring attention. Filters enable you to refine results based on project attributes such as client, project status, contract type, and manager.

    This dashboard helps you improve billing efficiency, reduce revenue delays, and maintain better control over work completed but not yet invoiced.
Time and Expense

The Time & Expense dashboard collection helps you monitor employee time activity and project-related expenses within your company. These dashboards provide visibility into recorded time, expense transactions, and approval workflows, allowing you to track operational performance and maintain accurate billing data.

  • Employee Time Metrics

    The Employee Time Metrics dashboard helps you evaluate employee performance and productivity based on recorded time entries. It provides visual insights into how employee hours are distributed across activities, how billable work compares to non-billable time, and how billing values trend over time.

    You can use this dashboard to understand workload distribution, identify highly utilized employees, and monitor billing efficiency across your organization. Interactive charts allow you to analyze employee activity breakdowns, compare billable amounts by employee, and review billing performance trends.

  • Expense Entry Details

    The Expense Entry Details dashboard provides a centralized view of expense transactions recorded in CORE. It allows you to review expense entries across projects, resources, and vendors, helping you monitor costs and verify expense activity in one place.

    You can use this dashboard to track submitted expenses, review approval or workflow status, and analyze expense records associated with specific projects or resources. The tabular layout makes it easy to locate individual transactions and evaluate expense data without running separate reports.

  • Time Approval Workflow

    The Time Approval Workflow dashboard provides visibility into the time entry approval process across your company. It helps you monitor submitted, pending, and approved time entries so you can quickly identify bottlenecks and ensure time records move through the approval workflow efficiently.

    You can use this dashboard to track approval status by resource, approver, and billing impact, allowing managers and administrators to understand where approvals are delayed or require attention. The dashboard combines visual summaries with detailed transaction data to support both high-level monitoring and detailed review.

  • Time Entry Details

    The Time Entry Details dashboard provides a detailed view of time entry transactions across your company. It allows you to review individual time records, helping you analyze recorded work, validate billing data, and monitor workflow status.

    You can use this dashboard to examine time entries by resource, project, activity item, and date range. The dashboard combines flexible filtering with a comprehensive transaction table so you can quickly locate specific entries and investigate discrepancies or billing questions.

Field Descriptions

Field Name Field Description
Advanced Dashboards > Create Dashboards >
Dashboard Name Name for the dashboard. This name appears in the dashboard list and helps you identify the dashboard later.
Dashboard Description Displays additional information describing the purpose or contents of the dashboard.
Collection Specifies the dashboard collection in which the dashboard is organized. Collections group dashboards into categories to help you access and manage them more easily.
Advanced Dashboards > Create Dashboards > Canvas Menu >
Canvas The canvas is the main design area where dashboard components are placed and arranged. The canvas uses a grid layout that automatically aligns elements as they are added or resized.

Toolbar:

 

Undo and Redo

The toolbar provides options to insert and manage dashboard components, including charts, text, images, buttons, containers, and filter controls. It also includes layout and editing tools such as undo and redo.

Reverses or restores recent changes made to the dashboard layout or configuration. Supports standard keyboard shortcuts and allows undoing or redoing multiple actions.
Insert Chart Opens the Chart Builder to add a new chart to the dashboard. By default, the inserted chart is created as a duplicate, allowing you to modify it without affecting the original chart.
Image Inserts an image element into the dashboard. You can use the Image panel to upload an image using a URL or local machine and adjust the aspect ratio (Contain, Cover, or Fill).
Text Inserts a text element that can be used for titles, descriptions, or informational content. Text formatting options are available in the Text panel.
Button Inserts a new button to navigate to another URL. You can use the Button panel to set its URL.
Container Inserts a new container, which groups and holds dashboard assets so they can be moved, deleted, copied and pasted at the same time. 
Filter Controls Inserts a filter control for end-users. Options include Date Picker, Multi-select List, and Input Box. The configuration panel updates to display filter control options.
Margin

Specifies the spacing applied around the selected dashboard element or layout section. The margin value controls the amount of empty space between components on the dashboard canvas, helping improve visual separation and alignment.

Margins are adjusted using a numeric selector. Increasing the value adds more spacing around the selected element, while decreasing it reduces the space between dashboard components.
Column

Determines the number of columns used within the selected layout row. Columns define how dashboard content is arranged horizontally across the canvas.

The column value is adjusted using a numeric selector. Increasing the number of columns divides the row into additional sections, allowing multiple charts or elements to be placed side by side. Reducing the number of columns merges available space into wider sections.

Columns follow the dashboard grid system and automatically align elements within the layout.
Download

Exports dashboard data or content in supported formats. Available export options include:

  • CSV – Exports data in comma-separated values format.
  • PDF – Exports the dashboard view as a PDF file.
  • Excel – Exports data to a Microsoft Excel file.
Preview  Allows you to view the dashboard as it will appear to end users without publishing the changes. In the preview mode, you can interact with dashboard elements such as filters, controls, and buttons to verify behavior and layout before making the dashboard available to other users.
Discard Changes Allows you to revert the dashboard to its state at the last Publish.
Publish Applies the latest dashboard changes and makes them available to users. 
Unpublish Removes the dashboard from user access and returns it to the Draft status. The dashboard can be published again later.
Dashboard > Create a Chart > Chart Builder
Data Panel

Displays the datasets available for creating charts. The panel is located on the left side of the Chart Builder and lists all datasets accessible to the user. You can use the search field to quickly locate a dataset. When a dataset is selected, its fields become available for chart configuration.

Datasets can include items such as Project Metrics, Time Entries, Expense Entries, Invoices, and other available CORE data sources.

Fields from the selected dataset can be dragged to the Category or Value area.
Category Fields Displays text or date-based fields used to group data within a chart. Examples include client, project manager, or invoice date. Adding a category field organizes chart data into groups.
Value Fields Displays numeric fields used to measure data. Examples include totals, counts, or monetary amounts. When added to a chart, value fields are automatically aggregated using a default calculation such as Sum or Count.

Chart Builder Toolbar:

Default Labels

The Chart Builder toolbar provides options to configure chart behavior, calculations, and display settings before saving the chart to the dashboard.

Allows you to define how chart labels appear by default. These labels control how field names and values are displayed within the chart visualization.
Internationalization Provides localization options for chart content, including number and date formatting based on regional or language settings. This ensures charts display values according to selected formatting standards.
Buckets

Buckets allow you to group numeric data into defined ranges or categories by creating a new derived column. This helps summarize large datasets by organizing values into logical intervals, such as aging ranges, date periods, or numeric bands.

When a bucketed column is created, it becomes available as a new field that can be used in chart categories or series to simplify analysis and improve readability.
Formulas Enables creation of calculated fields using existing dataset columns. Formulas can be used to derive new metrics or perform custom calculations directly within the chart.
Filters Allows filters to be applied at the chart level. These filters limit the data displayed in the chart without affecting other dashboard components.
Save Chart Saves the configured chart and adds it to the dashboard canvas. When saved, the chart becomes part of the dashboard layout and can be resized, moved, or further configured.

Create Dashboards

Whether you are monitoring company performance, tracking KPIs, or analyzing operational data, creating a dashboard allows you to organize charts and insights in one place. A dashboard provides a workspace where you can add visualizations, filters, and layout elements to present CORE data in a meaningful way. Newly created dashboards open in Configuration (Design) mode and remain in Draft status until they are published.

To add a new dashboard, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Advanced Dashboards screen from the side menu > Insights.


     
  2. From the Dashboard Collections screen, click Create Dashboards on the top-right.
  3. On the Create Dashboard dialog, you can enter the required information. Check the Field Description table above for details.
    • Dashboard Name
    • Dashboard Description
    • Collection
  4. Click Create.

The dashboard opens automatically in Configuration mode, where you can add and arrange charts. Newly created dashboards are saved in the Custom collection.

Insert Charts

Creating a chart allows you to visualize CORE data using datasets and configurable chart types. Charts update dynamically as fields and settings are adjusted, allowing you to refine the visualization before saving.

To insert a chart, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Advanced Dashboards screen from the side menu > Insights.
  2. Open the dashboard in Configuration (Design) mode.

  3. Click Insert Chart on the toolbar, and the Chart Builder opens with a bar chart selected by default. Next, select a Dataset from the Data panel to define the chart data source.

  4. Drag fields from the Data panel into the chart configuration areas:

    • Drag a field into Category to group data (for example, Client or Project Manager).

    • Drag a numeric field into Value to calculate totals or measurements. 

      Note: The chart updates automatically as fields are added.

  5. Select a different visualization from the Charts panel on the right.
  6. Add additional configurations such as Buckets, Formulas, Filters, etc. Check the Field Description table above for details.
  7. Use the Configuration panel to adjust styling, sorting, formatting, or layers as needed.
  8. Click Save Chart. The chart is saved and added to the dashboard.

Note: When adding more than four fields to a Table chart, use the field menu to reorder or remove fields.
 

Manage Dashboard Charts

After a chart is saved, it appears on the dashboard. You can modify, organize, or manage charts to adjust how information is presented on the dashboard. These actions allow you to update visualizations, control layout, and manage dashboard content without recreating charts. Check out Understanding charts in CORE Insights for more.

To manage charts, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Advanced Dashboards screen from the side menu > Insights.

  2. Open the dashboard in the Configuration (Design) mode. Select the chart you want to manage.
  3. Use the chart options menu to perform available actions, such as:
    • Edit the chart configuration
    • Duplicate the chart
    • Resize or reposition the chart on the dashboard
    • Apply or modify chart-level filters
    • Download or export chart data
    • Delete the chart from the dashboard
  4. Changes are applied automatically in the Design mode. Publish the dashboard when you are ready to make the updates available to users.

Manage Dashboard Status

After designing a dashboard, you can review how it appears to users and control its availability. The Preview mode allows you to test dashboard interactions before making changes visible. Publishing makes the dashboard available to users, while unpublishing removes access and returns the dashboard to Draft status.

To manage dashboard status, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Advanced Dashboards screen from the side menu > Insights.
  2. Open the dashboard in Configuration (Design) mode.

  3. To review the dashboard before publishing, click Preview. 

  4. Interact with the filters and charts to verify layout and behavior. 

  5. Next, exit the Preview mode to return to the Configuration (Design) mode.
  6. To make the dashboard available to users, click Publish. To remove user access, click Unpublish.

Changes made in the Configuration mode remain in the Draft status until the dashboard is published.

Mark Screen as Favorite

You can mark or flag the most-often used and important screens in CORE as your favorites up to a maximum of ten. These favorite screens then display separately on the side menu under the Favorites list. You can manage all your favorite screens in CORE from User Settings.

To mark this screen as your favorite, watch this video or follow these steps:

  1. Open the Advanced Dashboards screen from the side menu > Insights.


     
  2. In the list view, click favorites.png on the top-right.
  3. You can access this screen from the side menu under Favorites.

You can also check the detailed video on marking screens as favorite in CORE.

Related articles