Start with a workspace
Choose an industry template when your workspace is set up. It gives you a starting board before a source is connected. Pick the closest fit, then change or remove the metrics as you refine what matters to your company.
Connect a tool and check its status
Find your tool in the integrations directory. Each guide lists the credential type, collection cadence and whether metrics are selected individually or collected automatically.
Use the requirements shown for the source when entering credentials. Choose Save and test to check the connection. Save for later does not establish that a test passed. Check the result, then check whether business readings have arrived: a successful connection check alone does not establish that they have.
Choose and verify a metric
For a source labelled Pick the metric, connecting the tool and choosing what to read are separate steps. Select the metric and source, then inspect the test reading for the last complete period before saving. Sources using automatic collection use their configured collector without that per-metric selection step.
Compare the definition, unit and reporting period with the same number in the source tool. Do not compare a complete month with month-to-date activity, or a cash balance with revenue. The metric-checking reference explains the context to inspect.
Bring a number from another source
If a number lives in a spreadsheet, a database export or a tool Sondola does not read, an owner or manager can type it in: open the metric and choose Add a reading. The reading is labelled Typed in and sits in the same history as collected readings, so check its unit and period as you would any other. Sondola does not import numbers from a sheet.
Deciding how to run your review? Sondola or a spreadsheet? compares the workflows and the checks each needs.
Investigate missing or old data
First check the source's connection status and last check. Then look at its data-through date and the metric's reporting period. These are separate signals: a connection may succeed while no usable reading is available.
Next ask whether a new value is due. A completed monthly figure is not late the next morning, because its next completed month has not arrived yet. A collection schedule also does not remove a reporting delay in the source tool.
If the connection succeeds but the metric is empty, confirm that the intended metric is connected to the intended source and that data exists for the complete period you need. A missing result does not mean zero. Data freshness: a worked example shows these checks using disclosed demo data.
Review alerts and delivery
Alert rules cover thresholds, changes in a metric, anomalies against its history and data that has stopped arriving. Use them alongside the period and source context rather than treating every alert as a new business event.
Individual alerts appear in the app and can arrive by email. Slack is a delivery destination for the weekly digest only. It is not another source of business metrics. The one thing Sondola sends is the digest you choose to post to Slack.
See where the money goes
Connect QuickBooks, Xero, Mercury or Brex, then open Finance, Spend. A closed month uses your books. The current month uses your bank and cards until your books close it.
To move a vendor, press its category. The change applies to every month, past and future. Set a line on a category to see when the month is on pace to go over.
Spend alerts arrive by email the next day and never block a payment. AI lines in an investor update are off unless you tick them, per update. OpenAI, Google Cloud billing and AWS costs, in beta, add AI spend by model, project and key. The AI spend guide explains what counts.
Investigate a changed or unexpected figure
Open the metric and compare its definition, source, unit and reporting period. When a reading has a recorded correction, inspect its previous value, replacement value and reason. Product-wide fixes and improvements are published on the corrections page.
If the figure still differs from the source, record the metric, period and the difference you found. Keep credentials and private customer details out of screenshots or reports you share.
Download everything with Open Books
Open Settings, then Your data, and choose Download. The owner gets the whole workspace. A member gets the metrics their access lets them see. The zip holds readings-by-month.csv for spreadsheets, readings.csv with the source, collection time and run behind every reading, corrections, metric definitions, goals, notes, investor updates and archive.json with all of it for scripts.
README.md inside lists a SHA-256 for every file. Keys and tokens are never included. Each download is logged under Your data, and the owner of a locked workspace, including one scheduled for deletion, can still download it from the sign-in screen until the deletion date.