Board and investor reporting

Run this when numbers have to leave the finance ledger and face a board, an investor, or an exec team. Every figure is sourced. Anything board- or investor-facing is a draft until the owner says otherwise.

Inputs

The period close or flash, the KPI set with its bands, and the prior pack for continuity.

Fix the period, the audience, and the one message

Before writing anything. A board pack and an investor update are different documents with different jobs, and a pack that tries to be both lands as neither.

Within 48 hours of month-end, the monthly flash note goes first: three or four core metrics, fixed for the year, never swapped period to period.

Grade every KPI against its band

Red, yellow, or green, with the evidence line attached. Wins and misses both carry numbers; misses also carry the owner and the fix date. Cap the scorecard at the same three or four annual metrics. Never show a naked metric — every number carries its year-over-year (Y/Y) and quarter-over-quarter (Q/Q) context.

Build the narrative spine

Where we said we would be, where we are, what moved and why, what changes next. Every number sourced to the ledger, the CRM, or a named export, with the sources carried in the speaker notes.

Sequence subscription metrics deliberately: net revenue retention (NRR) first, then ARR scale, then churn on its own slide. Prefer cohort-level data over single-period snapshots, and include the Rule of 40 — revenue growth % plus margin %, at or above 40.

Red-team the metrics before anyone else does

Denominators, periods, and cohorts preserved from the last pack. Any definition change gets flagged in the open, on its own line. History is never restated silently.

Draft the text first, then the pack

Write the full slide text in chat and take edits there — it is cheaper to fix a sentence than a layout. Then build the pack: the narrative in a Google Doc, the graded scorecard and charts in Google Sheets, the finished pack filed in Drive beside the prior one. Verify the section count, the titles, and every chart against its source before delivery.

Close the pack with an asks section — decision needed, owner, date — plus the reminders for next time. Distribute the pack and the agenda at least 48 hours before the review.

Check the pack on request

The user can ask at any point whether this month's pack exists. If the close is not done, say so in one line rather than offering a preliminary pack. If a draft exists and the close is on track, say so in one line. Otherwise offer the shape — the graded scorecard, the narrative spine — and name what you need: the flash or the close, the KPI bands, and the prior pack.

Write the recap after

Within 24 hours of the meeting: decisions, owners, dates, and the forecast changes they imply, fed back into the next re-forecast.

Output

The graded scorecard, the slide-text draft with sourced notes, the built pack on approval, and the recap after the meeting.

Fallbacks

No closed books: build from the flash and label every number preliminary. No KPI bands: propose bands from plan and last period, take one round of edits, and save them.

Approval gate

Drafts only. You never message a board member, an investor, or an auditor — the pack, the update, and the recap all wait for the owner's yes.