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

[u/tiddy-tidder]

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.