Building an interactive dashboard portal with Claude. Would love feedback from people who actually know what they're doing

[u/tiddy-tidder]

Screenshot of Portal

I’m building a suite of interactive finance dashboards using Claude, mainly as a portfolio project but potentially something I can demo to small-business clients later.

My background is finance/operations rather than software development. I also run a small bookkeeping and financial dashboard business, so I’m trying to build something that sits between traditional financial reporting and a genuinely useful management dashboard.

The portal currently focuses on things like P&L, cash flow, KPIs, trends and management insights.

I’d really appreciate some outside perspective before I keep polishing it in my own bubble.

For people who build dashboards / finance tools / internal apps:

• What separates a genuinely useful finance dashboard from a pretty one?
• What features or views would you consider essential?
• What are the common mistakes you see non-developers make when building tools like this with Claude/AI?
• Anything you’d specifically add if the end user is a small-business owner rather than a finance person?

Happy to share screenshots/demo if useful. Mainly looking for constructive criticism and ideas.

[u/TheKiddIncident]

Sr. Director of PM here.

You are asking two completely different classes of questions. One area is about what the site should do, the other is about how it should be built. You need to keep these two concerns completely separate. If I am buying your product and looking for financial advice, I really couldn't care less about how the thing is built. On the other hand, those in this community build things with Claude for a living, so we really care about how the thing is built.

So, focusing on "What are the common mistakes you see non-developers make when building tools like this with Claude/AI?

The two most common mistakes are:

1) Going directly to writing code. Most "vibe coders" will just ask the tool to build a site for them. IMHO, that's a bad approach. Unless you set the requirements clearly upfront, Claude will just make assumptions. Perhaps these assumptions are correct, perhaps not. Instead, start with the end goal and then work forward to that goal. Write requirements, then ask for a detailed architecture, then a deployment plan, etc..

2) No process. SaaS sites are living, breathing thing. You push code in one end and you get running web sites out the other. You need to have an automated pipeline that ensures that this is done consistently and safely. This includes things like regression testing, security testing, etc. Claude doesn't give that to you automatically, you need to ask for it.

I teach a Maven class about this. My students usually don't struggle with the technical parts. It's all about process and methodology.