Financial Dashboard and Budgeting App

What problem it solves and for whom

The usual picture before a project: every month someone exports data from the bank and the accounting system, stitches it together in a spreadsheet, fixes categories by hand and emails the file to management. Each version calculates slightly differently, nobody knows who changed the sales assumption, and the cash forecast is out of date before anyone reads it.

We build two kinds of product:

• B2B — a CFO console, budgeting for a group of companies, liquidity forecasts, reports for investors and banks, and products that accounting firms or SaaS platforms offer to their own clients;
• B2C — a personal budgeting app with bank account connections, spending categorisation and savings goals.

If you mainly need charts over data from an existing warehouse, BI dashboards may be the simpler option. A dedicated financial application makes sense when planning, scenarios, entity-level permissions or a client-facing product are involved.

Application modules

Accounts and categories

Mapping of the chart of accounts and bank accounts to management categories, transaction categorisation rules (for example by counterparty) with optional suggestions, multiple currencies and multiple entities with consolidation rules.

Budgets and scenarios

Budget versions, base, optimistic and pessimistic scenarios, driver-based planning (for example headcount, or price times volume), approval workflow and period locking.

Actual versus plan

Variance analysis with drill-down to individual transactions, period comparisons, a rolling forecast and a cash-flow forecast, for example over thirteen weeks.

Alerts and explanations

Thresholds and notifications for budget overruns, balances dropping below a minimum or unusual spending. For every figure you can see where it comes from: data source, retrieval date, the formula applied and the assumptions.

Exports and audit history

Export to Excel, CSV and PDF, scheduled reports and a change log of assumptions and budgets showing who changed what and when.

Permissions

Access by entity, department and role, read-only views for the board or investors, and SSO sign-in.

Data sources and integrations

• Bank data — via a licensed account information service provider under PSD2 (open banking), or by importing MT940, CAMT.053 and CSV statements.
• Accounting systems and ERPs — via API or exports: Xero, QuickBooks, Sage and, for Polish companies, Comarch ERP Optima, Symfonia, enova365, wFirma or inFakt.
• KSeF — invoices from Poland's national e-invoicing system as a timely source of receivables and payables data.
• Payroll, CRM and sales — data for planning staff costs and forecasting revenue.
• Exchange rates — for example National Bank of Poland tables or ECB reference rates, with a documented rate-selection rule.
• Identity and notifications — SSO, email, chat tools.

Synchronisation runs on a schedule with retries. When a source is unavailable, the app shows the date of the last valid data instead of pretending the figures are current.

Architecture and technology options

The web interface is built with React/Next.js or Vue and charting libraries such as ECharts or Recharts; a B2C edition can add a mobile app. A Node.js, .NET or Python backend stores data in PostgreSQL using decimal types. The calculation engine is a separate module of pure functions, tested independently of the interface. Large volumes add a data warehouse and materialised aggregates, and integrations run as separate queued jobs. With many sources, it pays to design them as reusable ETL connectors.

If the dashboard is to become a product for many companies, such as the clients of an accounting firm, we design for multi-tenancy: isolated data per client, separate bank and accounting connections, distinct roles for the firm and its clients and, optionally, your own branding in the interface.

Security and compliance

Calculations are deterministic and tested, while data access, consent, reconciliation and error states are spelled out in the specification. In practice:

• access to bank accounts in the EU requires the user's consent given to a licensed provider; consent expires and must be renewed, so the app sends reminders in advance;
• direct account access without such a provider would require your own registration as an AIS provider, which is rarely justified;
• personal financial data is processed in line with GDPR: minimisation, encryption, restricted staff access;
• a B2C app presents information but does not give personalised investment advice — a lawyer should review any recommendation wording;
• changes to budgets and assumptions go to the audit log.

Delivery process

1. Discovery — a metric dictionary: for each KPI the formula, sources, owner and frequency.
2. Data and calculation specification — worked examples and reference datasets the results are compared against.
3. Design — dashboard prototypes on realistic data, because empty charts verify nothing.
4. Build — data ingestion first, then the calculation engine with comparison tests against the current spreadsheet, then dashboards, planning, alerts and exports.
5. Testing and acceptance — reconciliation with closed accounting periods and sign-off by the finance owner.
6. Launch — historical data migration and user training.
7. Maintenance — source API changes, new entities and accounts, report development.

The timeline depends most on the number and quality of data sources, the number of entities and currencies, planning complexity and the time needed to agree metric definitions.

Price and cost drivers

The indicative budget starts from $12,000 excluding VAT for a focused release — for example budget versus actual for one or a few entities with one accounting system and bank data. The price rises with the number and quality of sources, the number of entities and currencies, scenario complexity, a B2C mobile app, the permission model and historical data migration.

Discovery costs $490–$1,500 and the proposal comes in Essential, Recommended and Scale options. Banking-data provider subscriptions, accounting API fees, BI tool licences and cloud costs are excluded. Maintenance starts from $249 per month; more on the pricing page.

What the client provides

• current spreadsheets and financial models;
• metric definitions and the management category structure;
• access to sandbox environments of the accounting systems and the banking-data provider;
• sample anonymised data covering several periods;
• a finance owner who signs off the results;
• for B2C, an owner for the terms of service and content.

Dashboards pair well with credit scoring software, payment applications and invoicing and billing systems. Category overview: fintech software; to start a project, use the contact form.

Related services

Frequently asked questions