CRM dashboard for a small business: six numbers worth checking every Monday and how to read them
A CRM dashboard for a small business needs six numbers, not sixty: new requests, time to the first reply, the stage where requests get stuck, the share that book, where requests come from, and repeat contacts. Check them on Monday morning, when last week is closed and nothing is half-done. Start in a spreadsheet, and build a proper dashboard once typing the numbers by hand has become the weakest link. We name no "good" values here, because what counts as a quick reply depends on the trade. The comparison that matters is this week against your own last week.
Why six, and why Monday
Dashboards grow. Somebody asks for one more tile, then another, and a year later there are thirty and nobody opens the page. CRM KPI lists tempt you in the same way: there are dozens to choose from, and most of them change nothing you do on Tuesday.
Our rule is that a number earns its place only if you can finish the sentence "if this moves, I will...". Six numbers passed that test for an owner who handles requests personally or with one or two colleagues.
Monday works because the week is closed. Midweek figures are half-written and tempt you to react to a dip on Tuesday that Thursday erases. Compare this Monday with the last one and look at the direction, not the decimals.
The six numbers
| Number | How to count it by hand | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| 1. New requests | Rows with a received date in the last seven days | Whether the top of the funnel is alive. Read it against last week. |
| 2. Time to first reply | Reply time minus arrival time for each request, then the middle value | How long a typical customer waits, and who waited longest. |
| 3. Where requests get stuck | Open requests per stage, plus the oldest date in each stage | The stage where somebody is waiting for somebody. |
| 4. Share that book | Requests that reached the next paid step, divided by all requests of that week | Whether the requests you get are the right ones, and whether you close them. |
| 5. Source of requests | One "where from" column, counted per value | Which channel brings requests, and which brings the ones that pay. |
| 6. Repeat contacts | Requests from a phone number already in your sheet | People who came back, or people who had to ask twice. |
Number 2 is the one that hurts. Take the median, the middle value when you sort the waits, rather than the average. A request that landed on Saturday night and was answered on Monday drags an average up and hides that most people heard back quickly. Then do the opposite and look at the single longest wait, by name. That customer may already be talking to somebody else. If replies are slow because one person answers calls and chats and also does the work, an assistant can take the first reply: we wrote about what a WhatsApp chatbot can do for a small business.
Number 3 is a count per stage with the oldest date next to it. A stage with a pile of old dates is where a quote, a document or a callback is stuck. It is usually one stage, and once you can see it, you know whom to phone.
Number 4 needs a definition of "book" that fits your business: a booking, an order, a payment, whatever you count as a win. Use a week that has had time to finish. For a trade with long decisions that means the week a month ago, not last week, otherwise last week always looks bad because its customers have not decided yet.
Number 5 is a single column, filled in at the moment a request arrives: phone, website form, Instagram, a friend who sent them, a flyer. Filled in later, it is guesswork. If you pay for ads, divide the spend by the requests from that source and you have the cost of a request.
Number 6 has two readings, both worth knowing. Customers come back because they liked what you did, or they write twice because nobody answered the first time. Read it next to number 2 to tell which.
Counting them in a spreadsheet first
One row per request, six columns: received (date and time), source, phone, first reply (date and time), stage, booked (yes, or blank). That is enough for all six numbers.
Google Sheets has a function for the counting. COUNTIFS "returns the count of a range depending on multiple criteria" (Google Docs Editors Help), so =COUNTIFS(B:B,"Instagram",F:F,"yes") gives you the booked requests from Instagram when source sits in column B and booked in column F.
The sheet breaks in three places. The first-reply column is the one that never gets filled, because nobody wants to stop and type a time after answering a customer. It breaks when two people edit the same row. And it breaks when the numbers you need live in three places at once: the ad account, the CRM and the till. If your CRM does not record the time of the first reply, number 2 cannot come out of it at all.
Before you pay anyone, open your CRM's report page. It may already count requests by stage and by source, and if it does, you do not need a separate dashboard for those two.
What a dashboard changes
A dashboard does not invent numbers. It takes the same six from where they are born, so nobody types them, and puts them on one screen that opens on a phone. Where it earns its keep is CRM reporting across several systems. The ad account counts one number of requests, the CRM another, the sheet a third, and the Monday meeting turns into an argument about which one is right. The fix is to decide once how each number is calculated and write it down. After that, the argument is over, and CRM analytics becomes a screen you read instead of a report you dispute.
Here is how that looks in a restaurant. This is our Tostada work, a restaurant with delivery in Valencia; the site itself is in Spanish.
The screen shows sales hour by hour, yesterday against the same day last week, with a switch to the last seven days. Below it sit the dining room, the restaurant's own delivery and the delivery platforms side by side, as revenue before and after the platforms' commissions. Then come the five dishes ordered most and the dishes with the most cancellations. Short AI notes sit on the chart. One of them says that cancellations in the evening peak were three times the usual, that 11 of 14 were for one dish, and that the kitchen had put it on its stop list. The owner opens the screen from a button in the morning report, and the decision about what to do stays with management.
A restaurant has no first-reply problem, so Tostada does not show number 2. The rest maps across. Sales by hour is number 1 split by time of day. Net revenue by channel is number 5 counted in money after fees. The dishes with cancellations are number 3: the place where orders fall through. Same logic, different trade. Open the Tostada work to click through it, or see all our work.
What to do today
- Make a sheet with one row per request and the six columns above. Twenty minutes, no formulas yet.
- Fill in the last two weeks from your chats, calls and notes. Stop at two weeks; older history is not worth the pain.
- From today, write the "where from" value into every new row at the moment the request arrives.
- Put a fixed Monday slot in the calendar, fifteen minutes, with the sheet open.
- Next to each number write the decision it changes. Delete any number for which you cannot.
If you want, we'll do this for you
Our service for this is Dashboards and analytics, from €380, launch in 3-5 days. In the price:
- a call before we start, fifteen minutes on video or WhatsApp, to settle which decisions you make from the numbers and where the data lives;
- a dashboard built around your metrics, not from a template, opening on phone and computer and styled to your brand;
- connection of your sources: ad accounts, CRM, till, Google Sheets or Excel;
- every metric's calculation described in writing, and a check of the figures against your own accounts at acceptance;
- auto-reports and alerts on WhatsApp: a summary for yesterday or the week, or a message when the cost of a request rises or requests stop;
- access for you and your staff, which you can revoke at any time; the data stays in your systems;
- free revisions until you accept the work, and free bug fixes for 6 months after launch.
The dashboard shows figures and sends alerts. It does not change your advertising; that decision stays with you. Payment is 50/50, with the second half after acceptance, and you get the price and timeline in writing before we start. The price is lower than you might expect because our experienced specialists work faster with AI tools. Prices exclude VAT.
Tell us which figures you collect by hand now, and we will show you how they will look on one screen.
Sources
- Google Docs Editors Help: COUNTIFS, checked October 2026.