Want an easy way to display the amount of Customers, and order on the admin index page?
Read on ....

You need to edit a few files, this are very easy to achieve.

Open file admin / includes / modules / index / orders.php

find line 23

  $orders_query = tep_db_query("select o.orders_id, o.customers_name, greatest(o.date_purchased, ifnull(o.last_modified, 0)) as date_last_modified, s.orders_status_name, ot.text as order_total from " . TABLE_ORDERS . " o, " . TABLE_ORDERS_TOTAL . " ot, " . TABLE_ORDERS_STATUS . " s where o.orders_id = ot.orders_id and ot.class = 'ot_total' and o.orders_status = s.orders_status_id and s.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "' order by date_last_modified desc limit 6");

change the "limit 6" to a figure you want to show, in this case we put 20, save the file log into your admin you will now be showing the latest 20 orders, 

for the customers side, open file admin / includes / modules / index / customers.php

find line 20

  $customers_query = tep_db_query("select c.customers_id, c.customers_lastname, c.customers_firstname, ci.customers_info_date_account_created from " . TABLE_CUSTOMERS . " c, " . TABLE_CUSTOMERS_INFO . " ci where c.customers_id = ci.customers_info_id order by ci.customers_info_date_account_created desc limit 6");

Save the files and thats it!