Is the answer always a dashboard?

Not always. Sometimes the answer is consolidating where status lives rather than adding a visualisation layer on top. A dashboard built on inconsistent inputs inherits the inconsistency. The first move is usually standardising fields and source, then visualising.

How small does the company need to be for manual reporting to still be fine?

There is no universal threshold, but the practical signal is per-project lead time spent on status. When that time crosses a couple of hours per week per lead and is repeated across many leads, the cost is usually larger than the cost of switching.

What is the cheapest first step?

Standardise the fields used to describe project status across project leads, even before introducing any new tooling. Most of the value of a reporting system comes from shared definitions, not from the visualisation.

Why Service Businesses Outgrow Manual Status Reporting

An insight on why service businesses outgrow manual status reporting from CodeCraft Enterprise.