The External (Spend) Dashboard gives you an immediate, interactive view of your organisation's legal spend. It includes an 80/20 analysis to surface where costs are concentrated, rich filtering tools to slice the data by firm, engagement, category, business unit, and more, and a suite of charts covering invoiced amounts over time, fees versus disbursements, invoice status, matter spend, and a strategic complexity quadrant. No configuration is required to get started.

Go to Analytics in the top navigation bar, select Dashboards from the drop-down, then choose the External (Spend) tile to open.

Four summary tiles across the top give you an at-a-glance snapshot of spend for the selected period:

Click the filter icon in the left-hand sidebar to open the Filters panel. The filters are rich and let you precisely control which data is shown across the entire dashboard.

Select the currency to apply across all charts and totals. The dropdown shows each available currency alongside its invoice count, so you can see at a glance which currencies have data. All amounts are converted to the selected currency.

Choose a preset to control which invoices are included. Available presets: Prior 6 Months, Prior 12 Months, This month, Last month, This quarter, Last quarter, and This year.

Toggle between using the invoice date or the date the invoice was entered into Xakia when applying the time period filter.

Choose which cost types to include in all totals and charts. Each component can be toggled on or off independently:

Filter by invoice status using a multi-select checklist. Each status can be individually included or excluded. Available statuses: Not Applicable, Draft, Pending, Approved, Ready to Pay, Processed, and Rejected. All statuses are selected by default.

Expand this section to add extra filter dimensions to the sidebar. Adding a dimension creates a new filter control. Available dimensions include: Category, Category / Sub-Category, Division, Division / Sub-Division, Fee Type, Firm / Office, and Group.

The 80/20 analysis applies the Pareto principle to your legal spend — surfacing what percentage of your providers (or other dimension) account for 80% of your costs.

The panel shows a pie chart alongside a statement such as "80% of invoiced costs ($55.5M) come from 2% (1) of Engagements", followed by a ranked breakdown table showing Name, Invoiced amount, percentage share, and rank.

Use the grouping dropdown to change the dimension being analyzed. Options include:

The 80/20 analysis starts with all items selected, showing the full dataset. Click individual rows in the breakdown table to narrow the view. Each selected item appears as a dismissible tag above the pie chart — click the x on a tag to remove it. The dashboard and all charts update immediately to reflect only the selected items.

The right-hand side of the dashboard contains a suite of charts. All charts respond to your filters and update together when you interact with any element on the dashboard.

A bar and line chart showing invoiced amounts over time. Hover over any bar to see a tooltip with the Invoiced Amount, Number of Invoices, and Number of Engagements Invoicing for that month.

A bubble chart that positions your firms (or other selected grouping) on a grid by their average Strategic importance (x-axis, 1–10) and average Complexity (y-axis, 1–10). Bubble size represents the total invoiced amount. Hover over a bubble to see a tooltip showing the firm name, Average Strategy, Average Complexity, number of Matters, and Invoiced Total (e.g. "Collins Law Firm-1 | Average Strategy: 4.8 | Average Complexity: 3.3 | 4 Matters | Invoiced Total: $452.2K").

Use this quadrant to understand whether your highest-spend firms are handling proportionately complex or strategic work.

A grouped bar chart showing the fee and disbursement breakdown per firm (or other selected dimension, selectable via the chart dropdown). Hover over any bar to see a tooltip showing the firm name, Professional fees, Adjustments, Disbursements/Non-Taxable Disbursements, and Total Fees.

A bar chart breaking down total invoiced amount by each invoice status: Not Applicable, Pending, Approved, Ready to Pay, Processed, Draft, and Rejected. Hover over any bar to see the exact amount for that status. This chart always shows all invoice statuses regardless of the Invoice Status filter.

A treemap where each rectangle represents a matter, sized proportionally by its invoiced total and colour-coded by priority — blue for Low, orange for Medium, and red for Critical. Each rectangle displays the matter name and invoiced amount. The breadcrumb below the chart shows your current drill-path (e.g. All > Priority).

Click any rectangle to drill down into that matter's detail view (see Step 4).

Two side-by-side horizontal bar charts show invoiced totals broken down by a selectable dimension. Each chart has a dropdown to change the dimension — for example, Business Unit, Division, or Firm — as well as icons to switch to a timeline or table view. Both charts update in real time as you apply filters.

A bubble chart plotting engagements by Amount Invoiced (x-axis) and Number of Engagements (y-axis). Bubble size represents the average total invoiced. The grouping dimension can be changed via the Firm dropdown on the chart. Hover over a bubble to see the firm (or other dimension) name, Total invoiced, Engagements count, and Average invoiced (e.g. "Lenny Law Firm USA | Total: $345.8K | Engagements: 1 | Avg: $345.8K").

A histogram showing how invoiced amounts are distributed across engagements, with upper and lower extremes excluded by default. Use this to understand whether spend is concentrated in a few large engagements or spread across many smaller ones.

The dashboard is fully interactive — clicking any element filters the entire dashboard to that selection. To drill into a specific matter:

With filters applied and a dimension selected, the dashboard provides a complete view of applied dimensions. All charts update simultaneously, so you can explore the data quickly without building separate reports.

Need help?

If you have any questions, please contact us at support@xakiatech.com or reach out to your Customer Success Manager.