Tomorrow Tribe: Financial Dashboard

Monthly financial planning for a multi-retainer operation usually means a spreadsheet only its author can read. We wanted the opposite: a tool where you can ask 'what happens if we lose this retainer?' or 'what if we trim subscriptions?' and see the answer move in front of you. The brief was a single screen that turns the business's finances into something you can play with, not just read.

1. 01

   Scenario planning in a spreadsheet means cloning tabs and rewiring formulas. We wanted the what-ifs to be one toggle, not a copy-paste exercise.

2. 02

   The cost side of the business is layered (tiers of fixed and variable spend) and a flat list hides the structure. It had to be expandable: glance at the totals, drill into the detail.

3. 03

   There's a real vendor backlog to pay down. The tool had to show progress, the remaining gap, and what short-term financing it implies, not bury it in a cell.

4. 04

   It had to load instantly and run anywhere, including behind networks that block CDNs, so the vendor libraries are self-hosted and there's no build step at all.

The whole thing is a single-file React app: no build step, all state in hooks. Each retainer is a toggle, so income scenarios are one click. Costs render as an expandable Tier 1–6 waterfall. Subscriptions and family payouts are levers you slide. A vendor-backlog tracker shows progress, gap, and the short-term loan it implies. Everything feeds a live P&L: surplus and margin recalculate the instant you change anything. React and Tailwind are self-hosted so it runs anywhere; it's connected to Vercel so pushes to main auto-deploy.

Live on Vercel and used for monthly financial planning. The business's finances stopped being a spreadsheet only one person could drive; now anyone can open the dashboard, toggle a scenario, and see the consequence in real time. It's the satellite-dashboard pattern we've since reused for other internal command centers: single file, no backend, honest numbers, instant load.