Making Monthly Reports Worth Reading

(118 customer reviews)
by

World class finance functions produce monthly reports that managers actually read. This course enables you to delight your audience by setting clear objectives, creating compelling visuals and creating monthly reports that drive business improvement.

€175 +VAT

4 CPD hours

365 days’ access

Use ACPD101 for 10% off any purchase.

Making Monthly Reports Worth Reading

(118 customer reviews)

€175 +VAT

4 CPD Course

365 days’ access

Use ACPD101 for 10% off any purchase.

Making Monthly Reports Worth Reading

(118 customer reviews)

This course is not currently available. To find out more, please get in touch.

This course will enable you to

  • Clearly outline business strategies and relevant KPIs in your monthly reports
  • Know what to report on, helping to lay the foundations for effective reports
  • Align your business strategy with your reporting
  • Cater for different audience needs including understanding the best way to present data
  • Design and format monthly reporting dashboards
  • Help users interpret your reports
  • Use your reports to identify performance issues and provide solutions

About the course

Preparing monthly reports is a task we are all familiar with. But could you be doing more to use these reports to drive business and find the root causes of problems?

To use your monthly reports to inform business strategy, you need to understand who you are reporting to, what they need to know, and how to share that information in the most coherent way.

Setting clear objectives, creating compelling visuals, and identifying and finding solutions for problems ahead of time – this course looks at ways to improve the effectiveness of your reporting. You will look at organisational strategies, KPIs, and presentation methods, as well as learning how to structure and design your analysis, making your reports worth reading every time.

Contents

Deciding what to report

What’s in a report?
Monthly reports matter
Developing a strategy
The importance of context
The hierarchy of KPIs
Choosing KPIs

Following best practice

The principles of effective reporting
Reading the room
Your audience
Thinking styles
It’s all in the presentation
Bad presentation
Good presentation
Presenting performance and cost

Using dashboards

Getting the tech right
What is a dashboard?
Designing a dashboard
Structuring your dashboard
Additional comments
Commentary
A born presenter

Reacting to the monthly report

Improvement cycles
Root causes
The best solution
Reviewing improvement progress
Receiving feedback
Feedback
Key points

Author

Ross Maynard

Ross Maynard

Ross has worked as a consultant and trainer for over 20 years, specialising in finance processes, management information and performance measurement. He supports organisations to understand their processes; facilitates improvement teams; and supports staff to work together as a team to deliver tangible and sustainable improvements.

118 reviews for Making Monthly Reports Worth Reading

  1. Christine Landers –

    Very easy to understand and had good tips.

  2. Catherine Yaxley –

    This is an excellent course, really thought provoking and informative. There is a lot of information to take in and it requires re-reading to help fully understand it, but I found it very interesting and useful

  3. Leena Jawahir –

    It helps with putting “report formatting” into perspective

  4. Mireia Corredor Marcos –

    Good course and excellent refresher. Thank you.

  5. Andrew Lane –

    great course

  6. Elena Genovese Potter –

    A good refresher

  7. Grace Thompson –

    very good

  8. James Priest –

    Good structure and clear information given. Some helpful insights and examples of what makes a good monthly report and dashboard.

  9. Muhammad Ali –

    good learning

  10. Mariam Paul –

    It is an ok course

  11. Agnes Luigiparana –

    insightful

  12. Nicola Taylor –

    Good logic path to explaining the importance of planning and focusing your reporting. I was hoping for a few more real world examples of actual report formats and styles to give me ideas.

  13. Deliwe Lesedi Willie –

    Super

  14. Kishan Gajjar –

    Great content

  15. Pauline Borg –

    Very well structured course

  16. Gail Steers –

    Useful course, a reminder that monthly reports should always be relevant and that finance staff should not be complacent.

  17. Ramil Aliyev –

    Useful and informative

  18. Anthony Lau –

    Excellent content; some new and useful tools that can be applied to my situation.

  19. Lydia Hakeney –

    This was a very interesting, detailed look at the reporting process. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is new at preparing reports or anyone who needs to improve their reporting but doesn’t know where to start!

  20. David Kelly –

    was good thanks

  21. Vanessa Cameron –

    Easy to follow and the techniques can easily be applied. Great speaker. Have found this very useful and look forward to implement in my day-to-day work.

  22. Warwick Pettigrew –

    Well structured, good mix of text, video, own experience, answering questions and testing of knowledge.

  23. Doug Muttitt –

    Excellent Course – How to get more out of monthly reporting and add more value to the business

  24. Claire Phillips –

    A good mix of video and articles

  25. Emma Hatcher –

    Really useful information

  26. Elizabeth O Donnell –

    didnt mean to skip

  27. Maryanne Spring –

    Very useful for taking action

  28. Janet Bamisaye –

    great

  29. Bhavna Naik –

    loved this. it is going to help my company a great deal

  30. Delilah Thobias –

    Best tips on monthly reporting

  31. Kathleen Gibb –

    Its useful to pick up hints and tips. I can see much more valid for a manufacturing business though.

  32. Nick Rudderforth –

    Very useful, new concepts not previously used/heard about.

  33. Rowland Browne –

    I found it somewhat verbose and difficult to follow for that reason, even though it was very well presented as usual. The summary at the end was excellent. Should have started with that and worked backwards to filling in the padding where needed. I always have a problem with time on these course. They take me about 50% longer than the allocated time, which I believe is needed to really benefit from the course. Also have a problem with volume of Presenter voices even using speakers. This problem just applies to these Courses. Not the Bites nor the monthly discussions. Please rectify this

  34. Stella Lenia –

    I enjoyed this course so much because it is directly in line with what I do. I like the detail and simplicity of the content in it. Great job! Thank you for this!

  35. Dawn Thompson –

    Easy to follow, very informative, great for beginners to the world of management account reporting, pinpoints the main criteria for successful reporting for successful decision making leading to business success.

  36. James Brammeld –

  37. Toni Hunter –

    some nice summary tools to apply going forward. Appropriate focus on communicating to your audience

  38. Wallace U Cheng Lao –

    better than expected

  39. Chi Irozuru –

    Very insightful

  40. John Strachan –

    Good

  41. Keith Holmes –

    Provided some useful and practical techniques, really enjoyed

  42. Allan Young –

    Some useful tools identified, reinforced what I already knew.

  43. David Martin –

    Very practical, easy to follow and invaluable

  44. David Willder –

    very knowledgeable good life experience examples

  45. Philip Austin –

    Excellent course Wide coverage of the issues easy to follow

  46. Ivett Hirling –

  47. Ben Barrett –

    Covered a lot of principles in the course. Would have liked to have seen a bit more on real life examples of dashboards and how they have been out together.

  48. Edwin Parr –

    The course takes you through best practice for developing and monitoring management reporting.

  49. Malcolm Comerford –

    An excellent course that has really helped me

  50. Glyn Barker –

    I produce a lot of reports for different audiences and this has given me other options to think about

  51. CHARLENE EDWARDS –

    Learnt a lot about putting together my monthly reports

  52. Mark Quinn –

    .

  53. Trevor Watson –

    Confirmed what I thought I knew and gave me new knowledge/thinking

  54. Wendell Scantlebury –

    Gave me some food for thought on how to structure and analyse monthly reports.

  55. Sanaa Choudhry –

  56. Camille Merritt –

    Showed alternative methods that I may not have considered to present data.

  57. Eve Langford-Smith –

  58. Rupal Bhindi –

    Was very general

  59. Linda Godfrey –

    Lots of ideas and tools to improve monthly reporting

  60. Nataliya Osokina –

    Structures the knowledge

  61. Hayley Camilleri –

  62. William Bradshaw –

  63. Huey Yng Lai –

    This course explained the point on how to prepare a good report for user to easy understand.

  64. Sophie Chen –

  65. Rachael Harrison –

    Clear guidance on how to develop clear, concise monthly reports that will help report against the strategic goals.

  66. Carmela Pastore –

    Relevant to what i do monthly for report preparation

  67. Claire Le Brun –

    idea generation

  68. Deborah Irwin –

  69. Michael Davis –

    Practical examples and very clear guidelines

  70. Catherine Byrne –

    Good simple and straightforward system for designing the reporting layout.

  71. Muhammad Saqib Kesodia –

  72. Ana Niculae –

  73. Sanaa Choudhry –

  74. Marie Gallagher –

  75. John Cronin –

  76. Temesgen Chinie –

  77. Aglaia Marami –

    Im my organization we have a sophisticated reporting system so I was familiar with the processes. But it serve as an excellent reminder and will help me re-set few of my reports. More importantly I plan to have this in my mind for my overall communications, written or verbal

  78. Karin Rigiani –

  79. Laurence Symonds –

    Whilst I work for a small firm I found the techniques interesting and will use some of the suggestions immediately!

  80. Angela South –

    It was very helpful and reinforced some things I already know but I also learned others

  81. Darren Roche –

  82. Jane Gregs –

    A lot of content which I found hard to digest and work through. Would have preferred some videos to be able to listen to some of the explanations and theory rather than reading it all.

  83. Kieran Burdon –

  84. Mcedisi Giyane –

    As an accounts officer i have to make monthly reports.

  85. Keng Yat Chan –

  86. Fereday Culley –

    It helped me focus on making my contribution a positive one

  87. Amanda Ferguson –

    It answered all of the questions that i had about how to produce effective reports and was very easy to understand. The questions and tests were great as a way to memorise the data.

  88. Pamela Seesahai –

    I am the recipient of several monthly reports which require feedback and the content covered several areas I was not aware of in terms of asking the right questions

  89. Elizabeth Smith –

    I spend a lot of my time producing reports and this course has shown me ways I can make improvements

  90. Rex Sepiso Mubu –

    It enhanced my skills of management report writing.

  91. Mary Carroll –

    that it was split into sections

  92. Brenda Marowa –

    Some of the information provided was new and I can apply to my organisation

  93. Gowry Baskaran –

  94. Letlhogile Ranna –

  95. Peter Dale –

  96. Mariana Anton –

    useful information, real tips on how to make an useful and worth reading report+good practice

  97. Fok Yue Hung –

  98. Jieying Zhu –

  99. Andrea O Keeffe –

    Given me ideas to work towards for board meetings and weekly HO meetings

  100. Miriam O Mahony –

    Gave me some new ideas, charts, analysis

  101. Svetlana Shvechikhina –

  102. Chi Man Wong –

    Bring up new idea

  103. Ann Kiely –

    I need to review the monthly pack

  104. Joanne Villiers –

    Relevant to my current role, and gave me plenty of food for thought as I redesign the management reports for the business

  105. Nilima Vashi –

    The whole course was useful

  106. Cara Brosnan –

    Good background to reporting, why we create reports and how we can better them.

  107. Sarah Woolcott –

    Feel really invigorated to implement the ideas presented

  108. Katarzyna Kielak –

    Reporting is part of my job, it is important to do it right way

  109. Claire Cullen –

    I would have thought there was an audio talk with course

  110. Lyndon James –

    Highlighted areas needed to look at in reports AND ways at driving at possible remedies for decision making.

  111. Sharon Rose Ramcharan –

    I learnt about run charts, pareto and control charts and a few items i met for the fist time.

  112. Aleksandar Todorov –

  113. Brendan O’Callaghan –

  114. Dickson Chan –

  115. Adebola Kinfeosi-Oke –

    It helped to identify areas I need to work on in my monthly reports

  116. Malgorzata Kostecka –

    as a management accountant I prepare management reports

  117. Xin Lewis –

    I am trying to make better management reports.

  118. Suzanne Currell –

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