Management reporting
Profit is up. Cash is down. Your report should explain why.
From closed accounts to a reviewed executive performance pack.
An illustrative workflow, shaped around your systems, records and approvals.
A typical manual workflow
Your team prepares,
checks and produces.
Assemble the figures
Pull the accounts, budget, cash movements and supporting schedules.
Work out what changed
Investigate margins, costs and why cash moved differently from profit.
Write the explanation
Ask managers for context and draft the commentary.
Build and review the report
Copy figures into slides, check them again and agree the actions.
With Octopi systems
Prepare the numbers and investigate the movements.
- Brings together the profit and loss, cash movements and balances owed by customers and to suppliers.
- Breaks down changes such as wages growing faster than sales, lower job margins or a one-off cost distorting the month.
- Drafts the commentary and presentation, linking explanations to the figures and flagging questions the data cannot answer.
Confirm the story. Decide the response.
You or your finance lead check the explanation with the people running the business. A lower margin might reflect a deliberate investment in a customer, rather than poor delivery.
Inside the system
The tools, instructions
and checks behind it.
01Refresh approved reporting dataRules + data
Gather the approved accounts, budget and cash movements; check the same reporting period and reconcile totals.
Accounting API or export · Structured reporting tables
- Input
- Closed-period actuals, approved budget and source schedules.
- Output
- A validated reporting dataset with period and version references.
- Checks and human role
- Reconcile totals and flag incomplete periods before reporting.
02Calculate trusted metricsRules + calculations
Calculate changes in sales, margins, wages and working capital so the profit and cash movements can be explained.
SQL or calculation engine · Metric definitions
- Input
- Validated reporting tables and approved metric definitions.
- Output
- Reconciled KPIs and material variance tables.
- Checks and human role
- Calculations are defined and testable. AI does not invent the numbers.
03Draft the performance narrativeAI assistance
Draft commentary on the material movements using the figures and confirmed business context, then assemble the presentation.
Claude or ChatGPT · Financial review instructions · Executive report template · Presentation template · Reusable instructions: Executive financial review
- Input
- Calculated metrics, source IDs and confirmed business explanations.
- Output
- A draft executive pack with commentary linked to its supporting figures.
- Checks and human role
- Separate observed movements from verified causes and untested hypotheses.
Example instructions
Explain the supplied profit and cash movements using reconciled results and confirmed business context. Consider sales volume, price, sales mix, direct costs, overheads, unpaid invoices and supplier balances where data is available. Identify one-off items separately. Cite source references. Distinguish a measured movement from its verified cause. If job mix, pricing or operational reasons are unknown, ask a specific question rather than inventing an explanation. Draft concise commentary and proposed discussion points for the owner or executive team.
04Review, finalise and distributeHuman approval + system
The reviewer confirms explanations with the business, resolves open questions and approves the report and proposed actions.
Finance reviewer · Presentation template · Versioned report output
- Input
- Draft commentary, source-linked metrics and review changes.
- Output
- An approved management pack and a record of edits.
- Checks and human role
- Retain human commercial judgement and approval before distribution.
Illustrative workflows after setup. Your existing automation, systems and processes determine the work removed. People provide context, resolve exceptions and retain agreed approvals.
What could change for your business?
Spend less on finance.
Get more from it.
Tell us what is taking too much time, costing too much or leaving you without the information you need. Let's explore what the right systems could change.