Your dashboard

The dashboard is the screen you land on after signing in. It answers one question: what needs a person today. Everything on it is a shortcut into the module where the work actually happens — nothing is edited here.

The first time you open it, the app offers a short walkthrough. Take it — it points at the panels in the order you will use them.

If you are the person who opened the firm's account, that first visit also brings a small Set your firm up box. It names the few details still missing — your firm's name and address, your signature, your departments — and says how many are done, as in 0 of 10 done. Start setup walks you through them one at a time. I'll do this later closes the box, and so does the cross or the Escape key; whichever you use, it is shown once and never again. Nothing on that list is compulsory and nothing on the dashboard is locked until you finish it — the same list waits under Settings › Firm Setup, ticked off as far as you have got, and the left menu carries a Firm Setup link with the number of steps still to go.

Before you start

Nothing. The dashboard works from your first day; the panels simply read zero until there is something to show.

Reading the top row

Five counters run across the top, one per part of the firm.

• Proposals — how many are with clients, what they are worth, and how many of your recent ones were approved.
• Leads — new enquiries this month, how many are waiting on a follow-up from you, and how many became clients.
• Businesses — your client count, how many are active, and how many joined this week.
• Onboarding — clients whose signed proposal is ready to be turned into a live engagement, and any that have stalled.
• Invoices — billed this month, sent this month, and queued to go out.

Every number opens what it counted

Each card carries three numbers, and each one is its own link. Click Active on the Businesses card and the client list opens showing your active clients only — not the whole list for you to filter yourself. Click Pipeline on Proposals and you get the proposals that add up to that figure. The chip above the list names the narrowing that was applied, and Clear all beside it takes you back to everything.

Where a number covers a period — billed this month, new this month, sent in the last 7 days — the list opens over the same period, so it holds exactly what the number counted. Choose a filter by hand after that and the period is dropped, because you are now asking a different question.

A few figures are not links, and deliberately so: an average, such as Avg time to approve, has no set of records behind it to open. Percentages do have one — a win rate opens the deals that were won.

The same is true one level in. Open the Proposals, Leads, Invoices, Tasks or Emails tab above the panels and every tile there works the same way: the number takes you to the records it is counting, over the period the tab is set to.

Needs attention

This panel is the one to work from. It gathers, from every module, the things that will get worse if left: a proposal about to expire, a filing due this week with documents still missing, an invoice past its due date, a task nobody has picked up.

1. Read the row — it names the client first, then the reason underneath.
2. Click it to open the record itself. You are never sent to a list to go hunting.
3. Deal with it, and the row disappears on the next load.

The same list appears inside each module's own tab, and there too every row leads with the client it belongs to — so a column of rows that share a reason, such as five overdue GST filings, still tells you at a glance which five clients are affected.

The panel has room for a handful of rows at a time. View all at its top right opens the whole list in a side panel, grouped into Urgent and Attention — so somebody carrying eight late filings sees all eight there, not only the first few. The tasks it holds are your own: the work assigned to you, plus your team's and anything you review if people report to you.

When it says All caught up, there is genuinely nothing outstanding — it is not a placeholder.

The tabs

Above the panels are tabs — Overview, Proposals, Leads, Invoices, Tasks and Team. Overview is the summary you land on. The rest are focused views of the same day: only proposals, only invoices, and so on. Use them when you want to work one area without the others in the way.

Tasks calendar and Team

The calendar shows the month with a mark on days that carry work. Rest your pointer on a marked day and it names what is on that day — each task with its client and the person it is assigned to, and any online meeting with its time. Click a name in that list to open that task straight away, or a meeting to open its join details. Click the day itself, or Full view, for the whole task calendar.

A meeting opens with the people invited to it and, when one of them is a client of yours, that client's name across the top. The name is worked out from the invitation itself: PracticeStacks reads the email addresses on it and looks for a client whose contact — or whose company email address — is among them. Your own team is left out of that search, so a meeting with nobody outside the firm on it shows no client name at all, and the reminder before it calls the meeting internal. If a call has people from two different clients on it, one of the two is named.

In the full calendar you can narrow what you are looking at with the filters at the top, and a Reset button appears once any of them is set. An administrator gets four — Priority, Assignee, Client and Status. A team member gets three: the calendar already holds nothing but their own tasks, so there is nobody else to filter by, and their Client list offers only the clients they actually have work for.

Tasks without a due date

A task nobody has given a date to cannot sit on any day of the month. Rather than dropping those out of sight, the calendar keeps a single line for them just above the grid, reading 5 tasks without a due date — with however many you have in place of the 5 — next to a small Not overdue label. A red dot on the right marks the line so it does not slip past you. The dot means these are waiting on a date from you; it does not mean anything is late.

The line stays shut so it never comes between you and the month. Click Set dates on the right to open it, and Hide to put it away again.

Open, each task takes one row: its name, its client, who it is assigned to, and the stage it has reached. The most urgent come first. Click the name to open the task in full, the same as any task on the grid.

Each row also carries a Set due date button. Click it, pick a day, and the task moves onto the month grid at once — the row goes, and the count drops by one. You never have to open the task to give it a date. When every task has a date, the line is not shown at all.

The small calendar on the dashboard counts the same tasks in a grey chip reading 5 without due date. Click that chip to open the full calendar.

A day with more work than fits its cell ends with a link like +14 more on a busy day. Click it — or click the date number itself — and a panel opens over the month listing everything due that day in full, each with its client, the person it is assigned to and its status. Click any line to open that task, the cross or anywhere outside the panel to close it.

On a phone the full calendar shows each date with small coloured dots instead of task names — red for overdue, amber for due, green for done. Tap a date and a panel opens over the month listing that day's tasks in full, each with its client and the person it is assigned to; tap one to open the task, or tap outside the panel to close it. Dates with nothing due do not respond, so a tap that does nothing means that day is clear. On a computer there is room for the task names inside the month grid itself, so they are shown there.

The Team panel answers "who is busy, who is free", so you can see who can take the next job before you assign it. The four buttons across its top change what it lists — Loaded (busiest first), At-risk (anyone with overdue work), On-time and Free.

The panel follows your reporting lines instead of listing everyone in one run. Anyone who has people reporting to them comes first, with their level and how many people report to them shown under their name, and their team listed underneath. That figure is the size of their team and does not change when you press a different button; beside it you are told how many of them the button kept, as in 5 people reporting · 4 at risk.

Click the arrow on the left of a manager's row to fold that team away, and again to bring it back. Every team starts open, whatever the size of your firm, so the names you can count always come to the same number as the button above them. A long list scrolls inside the panel rather than folding itself away. Clicking the name rather than the arrow — a manager's or a member's — opens that person's own workload in a side panel, which is what every name in the panel has always done.

A manager whose own work does not answer the button you pressed still heads their team, but as a grey heading — Aditi Deshmukh's team — instead of as one of the names. On Free, for instance, a manager carrying plenty of work labels their team without being counted among the people who are free. The heading says how much of that team the button kept, such as 1 of 5 free.

Under the list, one line states what you are looking at in both units — 5 people at risk · 15 overdue tasks. The number on a button is always people. The number beside a name is that person's tasks. The two are meant to differ, and this line saves you working out which is which.

The count at the top right of the panel — 21 people, or whatever your firm's number is — is a button. Click it and the whole team opens in a side panel: everybody, in name order, with their level, their department, who they report to, and how much work they are carrying. It holds the people the four buttons leave out, such as somebody on leave with nothing open or a member who has left, so the number and the list always agree. Search at the top to narrow it by name, level, department or manager — typing a manager's name brings up that manager and everyone reporting to them — and the line under the box says how many of the team you are looking at. Click anyone to open their workload, the same side panel their name opens on the panel itself.

Anyone who has not been given a manager yet is listed together at the end under No manager yet. To set that, open Team from the left menu and edit the member: a Reporting Manager field appears for members at associate level, and the people you can choose from are the ones set to manager level. So the reporting lines the panel draws follow from the levels you give people on the Team page. Until a firm sets any of them the panel is simply one plain list, exactly as before.

If you are a manager

You get the same panel, headed My team, holding the people who report to you and yourself — nobody else in the firm. Everything on it is counted the same way: the four buttons, the totals and the Team tab all describe your team rather than the practice. The count at the top opens your team in full, and holds nobody outside it.

Your own work card sits underneath it, so the panel does not come at the cost of seeing what you are carrying yourself.

Clicking a name opens that person beside the dashboard: their clients, every open task they hold with its client, status, due date and priority, and how much of it is late. That side panel is the whole view — a manager does not have the Team page in the left menu, and does not need it. Who appears here is set by an administrator on the Team page, in the Hierarchy view or on the member's own record.

If you are a partner

Your Team panel covers the whole firm rather than one team, and it has the right-hand column to itself — there is no personal work queue underneath it. Partner-level work is carried by the people you oversee, so that queue read as empty every morning and took space the team panel needed. Anything assigned to you by name is on the Tasks tab, alongside every other task in the firm.

What the system does on its own

• Every counter recalculates on load. There is no refresh button to remember and no overnight report to wait for.
• Needs attention is assembled fresh each time. An item you resolve stops appearing without you dismissing it.
• Your daily and weekly digests are sent by email and WhatsApp separately — the dashboard does not replace them, and you do not have to open the app to learn something is overdue.

What you cannot do (and what to do instead)

• You cannot edit anything from the dashboard. Every tile is a link. Click through to the record and make the change where it belongs, so the history stays with the record. Setting a due date from the calendar's line of undated tasks is the one exception, and it exists because the alternative was opening each task to type one date.
• You cannot see a module your firm does not have. If Notices or Emails is missing from the left menu, it is not switched on for your firm rather than broken. Your firm administrator can turn it on; some parts are paid add-ons, listed on Billing & Subscription.
• You cannot rearrange the panels. The order is fixed so that everyone at the firm is looking at the same screen when they talk about it.
• You cannot bring the setup box back. It is shown once. Everything it listed is under Settings › Firm Setup, which is open to you at any time.
• You cannot pick a meeting's client by hand. It follows the email addresses on the invitation. Add the person's address to the client under Businesses and the meeting picks it up on the next refresh.
• As a manager you cannot look up somebody outside your team. The panel holds your own people, and opening a colleague's page by editing the address is refused rather than merely hidden.

Common questions

A box about setting my firm up appeared once and I closed it. How do I get it back?

You cannot, and nothing is lost. It is shown once, whichever way you close it — the button, the cross or the Escape key. Everything it listed lives under Settings › Firm Setup, ticked off as far as you have got, and you can carry on from there whenever you like. The left menu also carries a Firm Setup link showing how many steps are still to go.

Do I have to finish the setup steps before I can use PracticeStacks?

No. Nothing is locked and nothing is held back. The steps exist so that proposals and invoices go out with your firm's name, address and signature on them — until you do them, those documents simply go out plainer. Add your clients, log leads and raise tasks from day one if you would rather.

Only three steps were named but it said ten. Where are the rest?

The box names the few that matter most and counts the remainder, as in …and 7 more, all optional. Open Settings › Firm Setup for the full list with a tick against each one already done.

I clicked a number and landed on the list. How do I get back to everything?

The narrowing is shown as a chip above the list — Active 4, or the period the number covered. Click the cross on the chip, or Clear all beside it, and the full list comes back. Nothing is remembered between visits.

The list I landed on holds fewer rows than the number I clicked.

Check whether you have changed a filter since arriving. Picking a status by hand clears the period the number brought with it, and picking a period clears the status — you are asking a new question, so the old narrowing is dropped rather than quietly stacked on top. Click the number again from the dashboard for the original list.

Nothing happened when I clicked a number.

A few figures have no list behind them. An average — Avg time to approve, Avg first response — is worked out across records rather than being a set of them, so there is nothing to open. Every count, every money total and every rate does open something.

The numbers look wrong — is it out of date?

It is read live. The usual cause is scope: a member sees their own work, a manager sees their team, an administrator sees the whole firm. Check who is signed in before assuming a number is wrong.

The Team panel says somebody has 8 overdue, but their own dashboard shows fewer.

Both are counting the same tasks — the ones assigned to that person. What differs is how many fit on screen: Needs attention lists a handful and keeps the rest behind View all at its top right. Click that and all eight are there. A manager's own dashboard is wider than the number beside their name, not narrower — it also carries their team's work and anything they review — so if you are checking one person's eight, sign in as them or open their name on the Team panel.

Why is a client I just added not counted?

"New 7d" on the Businesses card means the last seven days counted back from now, not the calendar week. A client added eight days ago has dropped out of it, even if that was the same week. The client is still on the full list — click Total instead.

Can my team see the same dashboard?

They see the same layout, filled with what they have access to. Someone who has only been granted Leads and Compliance sees those panels and not the rest.

I am a manager and my Team panel is short. Where is everyone else?

It is showing your team, which is what it is for. It holds the people whose reporting manager is set to you, plus yourself. If somebody you manage is missing, their record does not name you yet — an administrator sets that on the Team page.

I am a partner and my own task queue has gone from the dashboard.

It was taken off the partner's dashboard on purpose: it stood empty because partner-level work sits with the people you oversee. The Team panel now uses that space. Open the Tasks tab for anything assigned to you.

There is a red dot on "5 tasks without a due date" — am I late on something?

No. The dot is there to catch your eye, nothing more. Those tasks have never been given a date, so there is no deadline to have missed — which is why the line also carries a Not overdue label. Work that really is late has a date that has already passed and shows on the month grid marked overdue.

How do I give one of those tasks a date?

Click Set dates at the right of that line to open it, then Set due date on the task's row and choose the day. The task moves onto the calendar as soon as you pick it, and the count drops by one. You do not have to open the task to do this.

The line of undated tasks will not stay open.

It opens only while you are working through it and starts shut on each visit, so it never sits between the filters and the month. Click Set dates to open it again; Hide closes it.

Can I open a task straight from the small calendar?

Yes. Rest your pointer on the day, then click the task's name in the list that appears — it opens the task itself. On a phone or tablet there is no pointer to rest, so tap the day to open the full calendar and pick the task from there.

A day says "+14 more" and I cannot see the rest.

Click the "+14 more" link, or the date number above it. The day opens as a list over the month with every task on it — client, assignee and status on each line — and clicking a line opens that task. Close it with the cross or by clicking outside it.

A meeting is showing the wrong client, or no client at all.

The client is matched from the email addresses on the invitation, so it is named only when somebody on that invite is saved against a client — as one of the client's contacts, or as the client's company email address. Anyone who signs in to PracticeStacks at your firm, and anyone whose address is on your firm's own email domain, is read as a colleague rather than as the client, whatever else their address happens to be saved against. If the client's own people joined from an address you have not saved, no name appears. Open the client under Businesses, add that address as a contact, and the meeting picks the name up the next time the calendar refreshes. Meetings more than a week in the past are left as they are.

A meeting has two of my clients on it. Why does only one show?

A meeting carries one client name, so PracticeStacks names one of the two and does so consistently — the same call will not swap between them from one refresh to the next. Everyone invited is still listed in the meeting's own details, so the second client is not lost.

I cannot find the Assignee filter in the full calendar.

It is not shown to team members, and nothing is missing. That calendar already holds only the tasks assigned to you, so filtering by assignee would have one answer on every row. Administrators, whose calendar covers the whole firm, still get it.

The Client filter does not list one of the firm's clients.

As a team member you are offered only the clients you hold work for — picking any of the others would have emptied the calendar. If a client you expect to work on is missing, ask your administrator to assign you a task for them.

On my phone the calendar shows dots, not task names — where did they go?

Nowhere. A phone screen is too narrow to fit seven days of task names side by side, so the dots stand in for them. Tap the date and the full names open in a panel over the month.

The Team panel says 21 people but I can only count 11 names.

The list underneath follows the button you have chosen. Loaded holds only the people with open work, so anybody free, on leave or no longer with the firm is left out of it. The count above is the whole team. Click the count itself and the full list opens, with everyone on it.

At-risk says 5, but the overdue numbers beside the names add up to far more.

They are counting different things, and both are right. At-risk 5 is five people. The 8 overdue beside a name is that one person's eight late tasks. Five people between them can easily hold fifteen. The line under the list states both, so you never have to guess which a number is.

I can count more names in the list than the button says.

Count only the names with a face beside them. A grey heading such as Aditi Deshmukh's team is a label for the group underneath it, not somebody the button has picked — it appears when the manager themself does not answer that button. The faces always come to the number on the button.

Somebody in my firm does not appear under any of the four buttons.

Anyone with nothing open is missing from Loaded and from At-risk, and someone who is on leave or has left is missing from Free as well, so a person can fall between all four. Click the count at the top of the panel to open the full team — they are there, with a label saying why they are not on the working list.

A manager I opened in the Team panel shows fewer people than I expected.

The panel lists the people the button at the top is asking about. On At-risk, for example, a manager's group holds only the members who actually have overdue work. The heading of that group gives you both figures — how many the button kept and how many are on the team altogether, as in 4 of 5 at risk — so you can see how much of the team the view is leaving out. Switch to Loaded to see the whole team again, or open the count at the top and search that manager's name to see everyone reporting to them at once.