Cut your reporting time in half (at least)

In FP&A there are 4 unique things we can do to add value: reporting, analysis, forecasting, and consulting. As a rule of thumb, your time should be balanced between those 4 with a slight favor towards the last 2.

Some FP&A teams can spend 80% of their time reporting. What can happen is FP&A can become too responsive to needy management and respond to every reporting request.

Since management wants both reporting as well as the insights that come with it, many FP&A teams spend the majority of their month producing bespoke reporting to fit unique needs.

There has to be a better way, right?!

Of course there is.

If you find yourself rebuilding reporting every month to serve different audiences, or spending all month producing your reporting, this framework is for you.

This is extremely common in a large company where you have dozens of key stakeholders all with different opinions. Instead of taking orders from all of them, focus on developing a reporting system that works for you and them.

Here is the system that I use to ensure my reporting time is minimized each month (feel free to steal it):

The 2×2 Matrix

This grid balances 2 dimensions of all reports:

1. Standardized v Customized

2. Automated v High-touch

A report that is more standardized will not change over time. Whereas a customized report will change every month as the business needs change.

A report that is automated is produced with little or no human intervention. Whereas a high-touch report will require a lot of manual attention.

Here is how I use this matrix to drive reporting efficiency using 3 hypothetical management reporting packages each month:

1. Early results reporting (an early monthly meeting to review monthly KPIs with business leaders)

2. Forecast review reporting (a mid-month meeting to review how those results changed our forward-looking expectations)

3. ELT reporting (a summary of what happened, why it matters, and what business decisions are being made as a result)

Don’t worry if your company doesn’t use these reporting package names or exact reporting cadence. I’m sure you can use these principles to draw a connection to how your team operates.

Early results reporting

Early in the month, I aim to automatically produce reporting that won’t change for the next 10 years. Think of this as a holistic operating review package that I use to evaluate company performance.

It has every metric that the business should be looking at monthly to assess overall health. And it is full of standard financial ratios and industry-specific metrics.

Picture 100 pages of graphs and KPIs in a pdf that gets emailed out each month.

The goal with this material is to make it automated and standardized so it’s largely set-it-and-forget-it.

This will serve as the foundation for the next 2 reporting suites.

Forecast review reporting

Once you have had a chance to meet with leadership in the early results meeting, you likely spent time understanding the root cause of out of pattern results and how those results will affect your forecast.

Instead of producing a forecast review deck from scratch, leverage the early results reporting material (the 100 page pdf) as the backbone.

Grab the graphs from the early results reporting that help to tell the story of what you saw that needed to be re-forecasted (recycled material).

Then, use the analysis you did through the month to supplement what your new forecast picks will be (recycled material).

The moral of this one is that you aren’t building the deck from scratch. It has a predictable flow and uses primarily recycled materials.

It’ll take a bit of work to craft the storyline, but you shouldn’t be building a bunch of graphs from scratch.

ELT reporting

If you just spent your whole month producing custom reporting, then your team has little energy and patience left for the reporting that matters most.

Unfortunately, this often leads to low quality work and half-explained storylines.

Your ELT reporting might include some standard views from your early results reporting, but that is likely going to be the exception instead of the rule.

Instead focus on crafting a solid results narrative using hand-crafted visuals that give just the right amount of context.

This is your chance to really drive understanding across the leadership group and show how talented your team is.

By automating your early results reporting and streamlining your forecast review reporting, you really free up your team’s brain power to crush the ELT reporting.

In Summary:

Most FP&A teams spend the majority of their month compiling basic reporting.

This ensures they have very little time and energy for what matters (analysis and ELT reporting).

Flip that on its head by automating your basic reporting package. Then steal as much as you can from that to reuse in other reporting packages.

How will you take action on this?

See you next Saturday.

Whenever you are ready, there are a few ways I can help you:

1. Join the waitlist for Next Level FP&A, the course teaching you to grow your career by mastering the critical skills I used to go from Analyst to Director in 8 years.

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