In this week's episode of the I Hate Numbers podcast, we continue our exploration of Management Reports, delving specifically into their design, presentation, and content.

Setting the Stage

Welcome to I Hate Numbers, the podcast that aims to make you and your business more profitable, financially literate, and stress-free. Let's dive right in and discuss the key elements of effective management reports.

Design for Engagement and Accessibility

To ensure maximum engagement and accessibility, it's important to avoid jargon and cater to readers who may not have a financial background. Additionally, consider the specific stakeholder group and management level that the report targets, tailoring the content accordingly.

Shape and Structure

A well-crafted management report begins with an eye-catching cover page that restates your organization's mission and objectives. Furthermore, it is essential to include an executive summary at the beginning, highlighting key achievements and challenges.

Contextualize Financial Data

Remember, numbers alone hold little meaning. It is crucial to provide context by comparing financial performance against budgets and previous years. Highlight any significant variances and provide comprehensive narratives to explain them.

Visuals and Non-Financial Data

Enhance your management reports with visual aids such as charts and graphs to effectively summarize trends and comparisons. In addition to financial data, consider incorporating non-financial information to gain deeper insights into your organization's performance.

Key Takeaways

Summarize your main findings and insights concisely, allowing users to easily grasp the key points. Also, consider including comments on risk and major risks if relevant to your organization.

Share Your Thoughts

We value your input! We invite you to share your thoughts on management reports, including any additional elements you believe should be included. How do you currently utilize management reports in your business? Let's engage in a meaningful discussion. Stay tuned for more valuable insights on I Hate Numbers.

The future depends on what you do today. Those are the words as spoken by Mahatma Gandhi. in this week's podcast on I Hate Numbers, I'm going to be talking to you about management reports, a continuation from last week's podcast, but specifically, I'm going to be looking at their design, presentation and content.

You are listening to the I Hate Numbers podcast with Mahmood Reza. The I Hate Numbers Podcast mission is to help your business survive and thrive by you better understanding and connecting with your numbers. Number love and care is what it's about. Tune in every week. Now, here's your host, Mahmood Reza.

Hi folks. Welcome to another weekly podcast on I Hate Numbers. This is the podcast that has a mission and that mission is to make you and your business more money to increase your financial literacy and understanding, reduce your stress and anxiety. As well as your tax bill and for you to have the business that you aspire to.

That's got to be a great combination, if you ask me. Let's crack on with the podcast now. Management reports are essentially your financial story and they provide amongst other things, valuable insights into your organisation's financial and non-financial performance. Now to create a meaningful and impactful report it’s really critical that you consider the design, the presentation, and content.

And before we dive deeper, there are a few general things that we've got to take on board, and those general things are that you want to make sure that you engage your readers, make the information accessible and informative. Leave the jargon at the front door, having your holster, that anti-jargon ray gun, and make sure that you appreciate that the majority of your readership, the majority of your management team, are not going to be formally financially trained individuals.

You do not want glazed eyes around that meeting table. In addition, your management report has got to be designed such that it caters for the stakeholder group, the reader group, and the type of information that they require to be able to discharge their management functions, to make those informed and effective decisions.

And we have to take into account the level of management, the type of management that we're aiming this report at. So for example, if our report has too much operational detail, too much transactional detail, that's not appropriate for presenting as senior management and board level. If we go up to strategic and board level here, information's going to be more aggregate, more outward-looking, less focused on the nuts and bolts of the organisation, more about big picture stuff, and giving that idea about what's going on in an aggregate. Those typical levels of management,

control and planning tend to be broken down into three groups. There's the strategic planning side of things, and this is concerned with making sure you have, a future, a course that you've set out for your organisation, how it's going to cope with the environmental issues, how it's going to cope with the outside world.

And we want definitely more big picture, more aggregate information that's presented. We then have management that's involved with the control - achieving those targets that are set out by the senior management team, the directors, the trustees, and the operational level is about the day-to-day running of the organisation.

All of those different levels of management, all of those management types are really important for the success of the organisation, but they each have different requirements, both in information needs and the responsibilities they have to discharge. Now, what should the shape, what should the look of our management report be?

It’s always nice to start off with a good-looking cover page. Reiterate, restate what your organisation's mission is. What's your raisons d'être? What are your objectives? What's the big-picture stuff? Because everything we do has to go towards achieving our mission, achieving our vision, and meeting our objectives. An executive summary at the start, which highlights the key achievements, the financial highlights, and the key challenges should always be presented at the beginning of the report so everybody knows

what the main issues arising are. And when it comes to actual content, the content should be a blend. There's the usual financial data that we need to include. That's a vital and critical component of your management reports. So typical things like the cash flow for your organisation, for your business, the income and expenditure

and possibly not always, not exclusively, you may want to put balance sheets in there as well. Now, context is vital. Numbers in their own right are effectively useless and pointless. So we need to have a way that we look at that financial performance and we measure against a yardstick of some description.

It could be against your budget, and if you're thinking of Mahmood, I don't have a budget for my organisation, well, drop me a line. Check out the show notes for links here, but it's really vital that you have one. So what is your expectation? What does your future plan and budget look like? Monitor your performance against that budget.

Use last year as a marker as well. Make sure you have those key KPIs, those essential financial ratios, such as cash flows, profitability, and solvency. When you are assessing your performance against budget and last year, highlight any material, significant variances or deviations, and make sure narratives and explanations are provided.

You want to focus at looking your organisation through the windscreen and not through the rearview mirror. The past is important, but the past is, as it implies, has gone. It's finished. We can learn less and certainly, it will help shape our future, but the future is where our priorities lie. That is what we can alter.

That's what we can impact. What are our challenges financially? What are our challenges in terms of staff savings, staff efficiency, recruitment of staff, retention of staff cost saving initiatives. Can we introduce scenarios and sensitivity analysis to demonstrate the different impact on the different strategies that we're adopting?

Your management report should focus on what's gone before as well as the implications for the future. Visuals and charts are a fantastic way to present your trends, your comparisons, and variances over a period of time. The great thing about visuals and charts is they can summarise copious amounts of data into a very easily digestible format.

It gives us an overview, gives us a feeling, puts things into context, and it makes it more accessible for the wide range of users that we have. Apart from financial data, it's really critical that we include in our management report non-financial data. Now, non-financial data gives us insights into things that our financial data may not necessarily reveal.

What's our client and audience engagement? What's our client satisfaction, our KPIs there? What are they telling us? Use qualitative and quantitative data to measure our success. Now we're coming up to the conclusion of this podcast folks. Here, let me talk about briefly KPIs. Now we need to use KPIs that are relevant to us,

not to anybody else. Those KPIs could be things that look at a balanced performance of the organisation, both in terms of its productivity, its customer engagement, what customers think of us, if they're satisfied at innovation, our growth, as well as the usual financial performance as well. It may be worthwhile to include in the report a comment on risk, where the major risks are if you have got a risk register.

So much the better get it updated. Report on your major risks. If you don't have a risk register perhaps is the time to consider one. Lastly, summarise your main findings and insights from the management report. A user should not have to do the work to understand what's going on. Certainly, they can ask questions so that they should ask questions, but the report should give them a magnifying glass and an insight into the operations of the organisation.

Use that blend of financial, non-financial data. Identify areas for improvement and strategies to take your business forward. Folks, I hope you found this podcast useful. I'd love it if you could share it with those who you feel could achieve something with it. Let me know your thoughts. Would you add anything to the ideal composition of a management report?

Do you use management reports yourself in your own business? How do you find them? What would you add as an area of improvement? And until next week, folks, I'll see you on the other side. We hope you enjoyed this episode and appreciate you taking the time to listen to the show. We hope you got some value.

If you did, then we'd love it if you shared the episode. We look forward to you joining us next week for another I Hate Numbers episode.