Management reporting
The monthly pack is rarely hard to read. It is slow to build: exports from three systems, a spreadsheet one person understands, a weekend gone before the board meeting. An AI agent can gather the figures on the day you set, check them against last period and draft the report. You read it, question it and decide.
The role in brief
Collects the agreed figures from your systems on a schedule, checks them against the last period and drafts the report for a person to review.
The systems the figures live in: a job or ticket system, an accounts package, a spreadsheet. It delivers the report in Microsoft Teams.
The managing director, finance manager or operations manager who owns the report. Figures that do not reconcile, and any pack for a client or a board, go to them first.
Reports delivered on the agreed day, gaps flagged before issue, and figures corrected after issue.
Where the monthly pack comes from now
Usually the finance manager, the operations manager or the owner builds it, in the first week of the month. They export from the job system, the accounts and the CRM, paste into last month's workbook, mend the formulas and write a few lines of commentary. When that person is busy or away the pack is late, and decisions are made on old numbers or on instinct.
The pack that arrives too late
A report on March that lands in the third week of April describes a business that has already moved on. The job running over, the service level slipping or the customer who stopped ordering is found a month after anyone could have acted.
Two systems, two answers
The job system says one thing and the accounts say another, because they count different things on different dates. With no routine check, the meeting is spent arguing over whose number is right, not over what to do about it.
One person holds the spreadsheet
The pack depends on a workbook one person built and only they can repair. When they are on holiday it does not go out. When they leave, the definition behind every figure leaves with them.
How each report is built and checked
The agent gathers, checks and drafts to a timetable. Your people own the figures and the conclusions. Before the first report, each figure's definition and the report's format are written down with you.
Gather
Pulls each agreed figure from the system it lives in, on the day you set, using the definitions written down with you at the start.
Nothing.
Check
Compares every figure with the last period and with the other systems. Marks what is missing, what does not reconcile and what has moved more than usual.
The correction. A gap is shown as a gap, never estimated. The owner of the figure puts it right.
Draft
Sets the figures out in your format, with a short plain summary of what changed since last time and which items need a person's attention.
The commentary and conclusions in any pack for a board, a lender or a client.
Delivery
Posts the internal report to the people you name on the agreed day, and keeps each issue so that any figure can be traced to its source.
Anything sent outside the business. A named person reads and approves it first.
Reports delivered on the agreed day
The share of scheduled reports that went out on the day set for them, counted from the delivery log. Reviewed with you each month.
Gaps flagged before issue
How many missing or unreconciled figures the agent raised with their owners before the report went out, and how many were put right in time.
Figures corrected after issue
How many figures in an issued report were changed afterwards, and why. A problem should be caught at the check, not by the reader.
MSPs and IT support
Each client's monthly service report or quarterly review pack, with tickets and SLA results drawn from a PSA such as HaloPSA, for the account manager.
Manufacturing
The weekly order book, on-time deliveries and stock position drawn from the MRP system, such as MRPeasy, ready for the production meeting.
Facilities management and cleaning
Each client's KPI pack of site audit scores, attendance and reactive jobs closed, assembled for the contract manager to check before it goes out.
Questions owners ask
Is this a dashboard or a reporting tool?
Neither. A dashboard waits for someone to open it and notice what has changed. This role is a worker that builds the report on the day it is due, checks the figures against last period and puts it in front of you with the items that need attention marked.
Who decides what each figure means?
You do. Before anything is built we write down each figure with you: the system it comes from, what is counted and on which date. The agent uses those definitions every time, and a change to one is yours to approve. That is what stops two people reading the same number differently.
What happens when a figure is wrong or missing?
The report says so. A figure the agent cannot find is shown as missing, and one that disagrees with another system is shown with both values. It never estimates to fill a gap. The person who owns the figure corrects it at the source.
Can it send reports straight to our clients?
It can prepare them. Anything that leaves the business, such as a client's service report or a pack for a lender, waits for a named person to read and approve it. Internal reports can go out on a schedule once you are happy with them.