Charts and dashboards
Reporting screens built around the decisions they support, rather than every number the database happens to hold.
Data visualisation
Chosen per project
Maintainable handover
Most business dashboards fail in the same way: they show everything measurable, arranged by how easy it was to query, and nobody can tell from a glance whether today is going well. A useful dashboard answers a small number of questions somebody actually asks each morning.
Chart.js is a sensible default for building them — light, canvas-based and quick to render — provided the aggregation happens on the server. Sending fifty thousand rows to the browser to draw a line is the usual reason a reporting screen feels slow.
What we build with Chart.js
Management dashboards for sales, stock and collections
Operational screens showing today’s position at a glance
Customer-facing usage and billing charts
Reports that were previously assembled in a spreadsheet each week
Where it fits — and where it does not
Good fit when
Standard chart types — lines, bars, pies, stacked comparisons
Dashboards embedded in an existing application
Screens that must load quickly on a mid-range phone
Consider something else when
Complex bespoke visualisations, where D3 gives more control
Analysts needing to build their own reports — a BI tool fits better
Picking the right chart
Most dashboard confusion comes from four common mismatches.
Change over time
Line chart — never a pie.
Comparing categories
Bar chart, sorted by value.
Part of a whole
Stacked bar; pie only for two or three parts.
A single number
Show the number, large, with its trend.
How we work with Chart.js
Start from the question
Each chart earns its place by answering a question somebody actually asks, and is removed if it does not.
Aggregate server-side
The API returns points ready to plot, not raw rows for the browser to summarise.
Readable without colour alone
Labels, patterns and direct values, so the chart works when printed or seen by a colour-blind reader.
Numbers alongside
A table beneath the chart, because managers copy figures into messages and reports.
Our typical Chart.js setup
| Concern | What we use |
|---|---|
| Library | Chart.js for standard charts; D3 where bespoke visuals are needed |
| Data | Pre-aggregated by the API, with sensible cache headers |
| Interaction | Date range and filters that update the URL so views can be shared |
| Accessibility | Data table alternative and non-colour-dependent encoding |
| Export | CSV and print-friendly layout where reports are circulated |
Frequently asked questions
Usually because it queries raw tables on every load and aggregates in the browser. Pre-aggregating on the server, and caching where the data only changes hourly, generally fixes it without new hardware.
If the audience is your own users inside your application, build it in. If the audience is analysts who need to create their own reports, buy a BI tool — building that is a much larger project.
Yes — scheduled PDF or CSV delivery is a common addition, and often more used than the dashboard itself.
Topics people search for
Services built with Chart.js
Web Application Development
Applications that run in the browser, handle real workloads and hold up when several departments depend on them at once.
Enterprise Software Development
Systems for organisations where several departments, sites and approval chains all have to work from the same data.
ERP Software Development
One system for inventory, purchasing, production, sales and accounts — built module by module so the business keeps running throughout.
SaaS Development
Building a software product means building a business system around it too — tenancy, billing, onboarding and support tooling.
Tell us what you are trying to build
Describe the problem in plain language and we will tell you what it would take to solve it — the approach, the moving parts and the sensible order to build them in. No obligation either way.