Limitations
Known Limitations
Two P&L sources
Xero's P&L Report API covers roughly the trailing 12 months. For those periods the dashboard uses the official report directly — Xero's own accrual-correct statement, including entries that exist only as system journals inside Xero's ledger.
Periods older than the report window are covered by a P&L assembled from transaction-level data: invoices (revenue), supplier bills (costs), manual journals (adjustments), bank transactions, and credit notes. This covers the full transaction history, but it does not include Xero's system-journal-only entries, so it can differ from what the official report would show for the same period.
Two checks keep the sources honest:
- Continuous reconciliation. For every month where both sources exist, the transaction-built figures are compared against the official report. The comparison is published on the Trust Dashboard; material differences are flagged there, not adjusted away.
- Month-end alignment gate. Report data is checked at load time: report periods that do not end on a true calendar month-end are refused rather than loaded.
What it means: P&L, margin, and expense figures for the most recent 12 months come from Xero's own P&L report. Older periods rely on the transaction-built P&L, with the reconciliation showing how closely the two sources agree where they overlap. Client-level metrics (retention, churn, cohort analysis) are built from invoices directly and do not depend on either P&L source.
No CRM or campaign data
This dashboard is pure Xero financial data. There is no visibility into:
- Lead pipeline or conversion rates
- Marketing campaign performance
- Client engagement or operational activity
What it means: Client analysis shows who left and when, but not why. CRM data or exit interviews would be needed to identify root causes.
No customer acquisition cost (CAC) data
Marketing and sales spend is not itemised by client in Xero. Without CAC, LTV:CAC ratio and payback period cannot be calculated.
What it means: Unit economics analysis covers revenue per client but cannot assess acquisition efficiency.
Partial month excluded
All invoice, payment, and credit note metrics exclude the current incomplete month. This prevents misleading comparisons but means the latest data point is always last month.
Revenue classification is heuristic
Where revenue is classified as retainer vs project (or recurring vs one-time), the classification is based on invoice patterns (amount, cadence, contact), not explicit tagging in Xero. Explicit tagging in the source system would improve this.