---
title: "Phone or web dashboard: which screen for which job"
source: https://www.lskhata.com/blog/phone-or-web-dashboard
category: "Running a shop"
language: en
published: 2026-09-04
reading_time: 8 min
---

# Phone or web dashboard: which screen for which job

_The app sells; the dashboard corrects. Which of the four Khata surfaces suits which job, what the dashboard genuinely adds, and when it is not worth asking for._

## In short
- Four surfaces: the Android app, the iPhone and iPad app, the web dashboard, and the staff portal. Only the first two are free.
- A phone is better than a desktop at the counter and worse at everything involving a hundred rows at once.
- The dashboard's real advantage is bulk correction — a grid where you edit many rows and save once.
- If you have never wanted to fix fifty prices in one sitting, you do not need it, and asking for it would be a waste of your time.

Khata runs on four screens, and they are not four versions of one thing. Each is good at a job the others are bad at, and choosing badly between them is how people end up doing an hour of work that should have taken five minutes.

_[Figure: The phone finishes one sale at a time and does it offline. The dashboard changes a hundred rows at a time and needs a connection. Neither substitutes for the other.]_

### The four surfaces

| Surface | Who opens it | Best at | Price |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Android app | The owner, at the counter | Selling, offline, scanning, printing | Free |
| iPhone & iPad app | The owner, at the counter | The same, on iOS | Free |
| Web dashboard | The owner, at a desk | Bulk edits, long lists, a big screen | On request |
| Staff portal | Staff, with an ID and PIN | Their own tasks and attendance | Sign-in only |

**There is no Windows or Mac application.** The dashboard is a website you open in a browser. If a page anywhere offers you a Khata desktop installer, it is not ours.

### What a phone is genuinely better at

It is easy to assume the desktop is the serious one and the phone is the convenient one. At a shop counter that is backwards.

- It finishes the sale without a connection. A browser cannot.
- The camera is the barcode scanner, so there is no second device to buy or charge.
- It pairs with the Bluetooth printer already sitting on your counter.
- It is in your hand when a customer asks what they owe, which is when you need the answer.

### What a desk is genuinely better at

Every job in this list has the same shape: many rows, one decision. That is what a phone is worst at, because a phone is built for one thing at a time.

- A supplier raises prices and forty products need updating in one sitting.
- An import came in dirty and needs cleaning before it is trusted.
- You want to read a year of takings on a screen wide enough to see the shape of it.
- You are working through a long list of old balances, deciding which to chase and which to write off.

The dashboard presents these as grids — spreadsheet-style, keyboard-driven, edit many and save once. That is the whole argument for it, and it is a good argument only if the paragraph above described your week.

### When not to ask for it

If you have never wanted to change fifty things at once, the dashboard will not improve your day. It is a different shape of tool for a different shape of problem, and a shop that sells, collects and counts on a phone is not missing anything by staying there.

**One thing the dashboard does not fix.** It is the same data, so it inherits the same limits. It will not give you batch numbers, expiry dates, product variants, or several branches under one business, because none of those exist in the product on any surface.

### A reasonable way to decide

1. **Run entirely on the app for a month** — Almost every shop finds this is enough. If it is, you are done, and it costs nothing.
2. **Write down the job that made you want a bigger screen** — Not 'I want the dashboard' — the actual task. 'I re-price 60 items every quarter' is a reason. 'It feels more professional' is not, and will not survive contact with the extra login.
3. **Ask, and say what the job is** — Access is arranged per business through the contact page. Describing the task lets us tell you honestly whether the dashboard solves it, and sometimes the answer is that it does not.

## Common questions

**Does Khata have a web version?**

Yes — a web dashboard at panel.lskhata.com, which runs in a browser on a laptop or desktop. It is a separate commercial product from the free mobile app, there is no public sign-up, and access is granted on request. There is also a staff portal at captain.lskhata.com, which staff sign into with an ID and PIN created by the shop owner.

**Do I need the web dashboard to use Khata?**

No, and it is worth being clear about this: the mobile app is complete on its own. Nothing is held back from it to sell the dashboard. The dashboard exists for back-office work that is painful on a phone, and most shops never need it.

**What can the web dashboard do that the phone app cannot?**

Its real advantage is editing in bulk. It presents your data as spreadsheet-style grids where you can change many rows and save once — correcting a supplier's prices after a rate change, cleaning up a product import, working through a long list of balances. On a phone that is the same job one tap at a time.

**Does the web dashboard work offline?**

No. The mobile app completes a sale with no connection and tells the server afterwards; the dashboard and the staff portal both need a connection. That is the correct trade for each — the counter cannot wait for a network and a back-office session can.

**How do I get access to the dashboard?**

Ask us. There is no sign-up form, because access is arranged per business rather than bought from a checkout. The contact page is the route, and it helps to say what back-office job you are trying to do — that is what decides whether it will actually help you.