Written by Nils R. | Aug 7, 2020 7:00:00 AM
What is
a
Narrative Profit & Loss Report
? Narrative Financial Reports are considered easy-to-read financial summaries and are often used by Financial Analysts and CFOs to provide end users with a very easy-to-read, newspaper-like cover page for their Profit & Loss and other number-intense reports. One key functionality in this type of innovative report updates all the text, inserted numbers and charts automatically. All the user has to do is run the report for the desired month and the text will refresh with the right data. Even adjectives in headers and text will change based on business rules. The underlying numerical report is presented on the second tab. You will find an example of this type of innovative report below.
Purpose of
Narrative Financial Reports Companies and organizations use Narrative Financial Reports to give executives and managers that are not financial experts a very easy and user-friendly format to interpret financial results. When used as part of good business practices in a Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) Department, a company can improve its ability to drive interest and analytical capabilities outside of the finance team, as well as, reduce the chance that other departments and executives miss the monthly financial highlights.
Narrative Financial Report
Example Here is an example of an automatically generated Narrative Profit & Loss Report with the detailed financial statement on the second page.
You can find hundreds of additional examples
here.
Who Uses This Type of
Innovative report
? The typical users of this type of innovative report are: Board Members, Executives and Department Managers.
Other
Innovative report
s Often Used in Conjunction with
Narrative Financial Reports Progressive Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) Departments sometimes use several different Narrative Financial Reports, along with financial statements and other management and control tools.
Where Does the Data for Analysis Originate From? The Actual (historical transactions) data typically comes from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like: Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC), Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Sage Intacct, Sage 100, Sage 300, Sage 500, Sage X3, SAP Business One, SAP ByDesign, Acumatica, Netsuite and others. In analyses where budgets or forecasts are used, the planning data most often originates from in-house Excel spreadsheet models or from professional corporate performance management (CPM/EPM) solutions.
What Tools are Typically used for Reporting, Planning and Dashboards? Examples of business software used with the data and ERPs mentioned above are:
- Native ERP report writers and query tools
- Spreadsheets (for example Microsoft Excel)
- Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools (for example Solver)
- Dashboards (for example Microsoft Power BI and Tableau)
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Cloud Solutions and More Examples