Management reporting for FP&A
Précis brings actuals, plans, financial definitions and reporting structure together before the review begins. Statements, comparisons, variance tables and draft commentary arrive grounded in the same governed figures, with every number traceable to source. Your team challenges the story, makes the judgement and signs off what the business sees.
Actual vs budget · €K · NovaTech sample data
The reporting cycle
A recurring management report may look settled by the time it reaches the leadership team. Getting it there is less settled: actuals from the ERP, budget and forecast from the planning model, operating drivers from somewhere else, and the reporting logic held together in Excel.
01
Pull actuals, plans and operating drivers from the systems that own them.
02
Align periods, entities, cost centres, scenarios and versions before a comparison can be trusted.
03
Rebuild tables, charts and commentary, then repeat the checks when a source number changes.
Précis takes on that preparation layer. It does not remove finance from the reporting cycle; it gives the team a better place to begin it.
A governed starting point
Précis prepares the recurring elements of management reporting from approved definitions:
The result is not a finished opinion. It is a coherent reporting draft on which finance can exercise judgement.
| Line / driver | Actual | Budget | Vs budget | Prior year | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 7,420 | 7,650 | −230 | 7,110 | +4.4% |
| Direct costs | (4,560) | (4,440) | −120 | (4,320) | −5.6% |
| Gross profit | 2,860 | 3,210 | −350 | 2,790 | +2.5% |
| Gross margin % | 38.5% | 42.0% | −3.5pp | 39.2% | −0.7pp |
| Operating costs | (1,240) | (1,280) | +40 | (1,180) | −5.1% |
| EBITDA | 1,620 | 1,930 | −310 | 1,610 | +0.6% |
| EBITDA margin % | 21.8% | 25.2% | −3.4pp | 22.6% | −0.8pp |
| Billable hours | 62,840 | 64,200 | −1,360 | 60,910 | +3.2% |
| Realised rate | €118.1 | €119.2 | −€1.1 | €116.7 | +1.2% |
| Utilisation % | 74.8% | 76.0% | −1.2pp | 73.5% | +1.3pp |
| Avg FTEs — billable | 142 | 140 | +2 | 137 | +3.6% |
| Avg FTEs — overhead | 40 | 40 | — | 39 | +2.6% |
| Avg FTEs — total | 182 | 180 | +2 | 176 | +3.4% |
Governed by design
Management reporting becomes fragile when the definition of revenue, gross margin or utilisation is recreated in every workbook. Précis keeps the definition below the report: metric rules, hierarchies and statement layouts in a governed catalogue over semantic SQL views.
A figure in a statement, a drill-down, an Excel cell and an answer to an ad-hoc question can resolve through the same approved logic. When a definition changes, the change is made in the governed layer rather than copied across a collection of reports.
Finance can hold different approved views where the business needs them. The important point is that each view is explicit, named and applied consistently.
What is a finance semantic layer? →
Finance remains accountable
A management report does more than repeat what happened. Finance decides what is material, which movements need explanation, what the business should pay attention to and how uncertainty is described. Those decisions stay with the team.
Précis prepares the underlying evidence and a draft reporting structure. The analyst can interrogate a movement, change the cut, revise the narrative and decide whether the evidence supports the conclusion. The Finance Director or CFO signs off the report through the organisation's existing governance.
Précis prepares; your team decides.
The movement is concentrated in two engagements now scheduled for Q2. The underlying plan assumptions remain unchanged pending finance review.
Source context · Actuals through March · FY26 budget v2.1 · Engagement detail available
In the spreadsheet
Management reporting does not need another campaign to remove Excel. Finance uses spreadsheets because they remain the most flexible place to inspect, adjust and present recurring work.
The Précis Excel add-in brings live, read-only statements and metrics
into the grid with functions such as =PRECIS.STATEMENT(…)
and =PRECIS.METRIC(…). The results use the same governed
definitions as the rest of Précis, refresh on demand and remain
traceable to source. The workbook stays recognisable; the manual
copy-and-paste layer does not have to.
Across the systems already in place
The ERP remains the source of actuals. The planning or EPM system can remain the source of budget and forecast. The warehouse and BI layer continue to serve the reporting already built there. Excel remains available for the work finance wants to keep in the grid.
Précis sits across those sources and prepares the management-information layer: the retrieval, reconciliation, financial definitions and reporting structure that otherwise fall to the team between systems. It is deployed in the customer's environment and configured against the organisation's own financial model.
Questions finance teams ask
Management reporting is the recurring financial and operating information used by leadership to understand performance and make decisions. It usually combines financial statements, actual-versus-plan comparisons, operational drivers, variance commentary and the supporting detail behind material movements.
The preparation can be. Pulling figures, applying approved definitions, assembling recurring tables and drafting commentary can run through structured workflows. Judgement cannot be delegated in the same way. Finance still decides what is material, challenges the explanation and signs off the report. Précis is designed around that division of work.
No. Précis is built for the analytical work between those systems. It reads the actuals, plans and governed definitions needed for the report and prepares the output finance reviews. Existing systems continue to own the processes and data for which they were selected.
Figures resolve through governed definitions over source data. Responses carry the dimensions needed to trace a number—account, cost centre, period and scenario—and can be drilled to the detail exposed by the customer's semantic views and permissions. When the required data is not available, the system says so rather than estimating a number.
Précis is pre-General Availability and is working with a small number of design partners. The read-only Précis Finance MCP engine is source-available and can be self-hosted today.
Use one recurring management report to prove the model: connect the actuals and plan, define the reporting structure, run it alongside the current process and review every figure with the team that owns it.