--- title: "Management reporting automation for finance teams — Empty Spaces" description: "AI agents that update your existing management pack and board deck with current numbers, investigated variances and draft commentary for finance review." url: https://emptyspaces.ai/solutions/management-reporting language: en --- Management reporting # Stop rebuilding the same report every month. Our FP&A Agent updates your existing management pack or board deck with current numbers, refreshed charts, investigated variances and draft commentary, ready for finance review. Your reporting format. Your definitions. Your review process. [See a report prepared](https://emptyspaces.ai/contact-us) [Talk to us](mailto:m@rebasehq.ai) Illustration: the FP&A Agent preparing a finance team's September management pack in three joined stages. First, the team's existing files: Monthly Management Pack.xlsx, waiting for September's numbers, and Q3 Board Report.pptx. The agent reads them, and its run reads SAP S/4HANA, Snowflake and the FY26 operating plan: September actuals pulled, 12 KPIs updated, 4 material variances investigated, 6 charts refreshed and the executive commentary drafted, with 2 items left for review. Then it saves the same workbook as September's version, ready for review: revenue $26.5M, 2.7% above plan; gross margin 64.2%, 0.6 points above plan; operating expenses $15.6M, $1.6M above budget; EBITDA $1.4M, $1.0M below plan; and cash $41.6M, $1.1M up on August. It waits for Sarah Chen, VP FP&A, to review it. The reporting cycle ## The deck isn't the work. Everything before it is. Every month the same finance work happens before anyone opens the pack. Most of it is preparation, and the preparation is what the agent does. Illustration: the monthly reporting cycle as eleven steps in four phases. Prepare: pull actuals, update KPIs and reconcile figures, all done by the agent. Investigate: it investigates the movements, and the team asks business owners where it is required. Produce: the agent refreshes the charts, writes the commentary and updates the slides. Review: the team reviews, fixes and approves. Then the cycle starts again next month. ## Don't migrate the report. Give it to the agent. Finance teams already have reporting formats built around their company, board and management cadence. We work inside those structures instead of replacing them with another dashboard. Illustration: the team's own Monthly Management Pack.xlsx as it stood for August and, after the agent has read September's actuals from SAP S/4HANA, KPI tables from Snowflake, the FY26 operating plan and the pack's own KPI definitions, the same workbook saved as a new version for September, its format preserved: the same tabs, formulas and layout. Revenue moves from $25.9M to $26.5M, gross margin from 63.8% to 64.2%, operating expenses from $15.4M to $15.6M, EBITDA from $1.1M to $1.4M and cash from $40.5M to $41.6M. The agent works with Excel workbooks, PowerPoint decks, warehouse tables, KPI definitions and planning models. ## From source systems to management-ready reporting. Six steps the agent takes every cycle, in the order your team would take them, each leaving a record you can check. Illustration: the six steps the agent takes every cycle as one production line in three parts. Data: refresh the numbers from the September trial balance in SAP S/4HANA, and update the 12 KPIs from the definitions in the pack's KPI tab. Analysis: investigate the 4 variances over the ±$150K threshold. Report: refresh the 6 charts, draft the executive summary with every figure linked, and route 2 items to Sarah Chen, VP FP&A, for review. ## Reporting cycles the agent can prepare. The recurring reports finance rebuilds by hand, prepared in the files they already live in. - Monthly management pack — P&L, balance sheet, cash, KPIs and commentary. Monthly Management Pack.xlsx - Board reporting — Finance slides, charts and executive narrative. Q3 Board Report.pptx - Business-unit reporting — Performance by region, department or segment. One pack per region · same definitions - KPI reporting — Recurring operational and financial metrics. 12 KPIs · warehouse tables and the ledger - Quarterly business reviews — Performance, drivers and outlook. Q3 review · bridge, drivers, Q4 outlook - Budget vs actual reporting — Actual performance and variance commentary. Opex +$1.6M vs budget · line by line Worked example ## September management pack, from raw actuals to CFO review. Twenty minutes of the agent's run, and the pack it leaves for review. Every figure in the pack opens onto what is under it. Illustration: the agent's run on September's management pack, from 08:01 to 08:21: actuals pulled from SAP S/4HANA and Snowflake, 12 KPIs refreshed, 4 material variances found and investigated, 6 charts refreshed, the executive commentary drafted and 2 questions flagged for review. Beside it the pack, with operating expenses of $15.6M opened to its lines, payroll $7.3M, cloud infrastructure $3.2M, marketing $2.1M, professional services $1.6M and other $1.4M, and cloud infrastructure opened to its vendors, AWS $1.76M, Azure $800K, Datadog $350K and other $290K. ## Commentary you can challenge. Every claim in the commentary opens onto what it rests on: the calculation, the investigation, the records. Not a black-box paragraph. Illustration: the executive commentary the agent drafted for September's management pack, awaiting review: revenue finished 2.7% above plan while operating expenses remained above budget; higher personnel and infrastructure costs explain most of the variance. Each claim opens onto what it rests on. The 2.7% is revenue of $26.5M against a plan of $25.8M, $0.7M, divided by the plan. Personnel is payroll of $7.3M against a $6.6M budget, +$0.7M: account executives who started in July though budgeted from mid-December, the merit increase from July rather than January, analytics engineers who started in August though budgeted from January, support specialists who were not budgeted, and commissions on revenue above plan. Infrastructure is cloud of $3.2M against a $2.5M budget, +$0.7M, mostly AWS. Together they are $1.4M of the $1.6M operating expense variance. ## Prepared automatically. Published deliberately. The agent prepares the pack and says what it has verified and what it has not. A named reviewer approves it before anyone outside finance sees it. Illustration: September's management pack at Ready for review, the third of four states: drafting, needs input, ready for review and approved. In the pack, the headline figures, 12 KPIs and 6 charts are verified against the trial balance; the executive commentary is material and needs review; and other costs of +$0.2M need input, a question for the cost owner about 3 invoices with no department. Prepared by the FP&A Agent, with Sarah Chen, VP FP&A, as reviewer. Nothing reaches the board until finance approves it. Questions ## Where our agents start and stop. - ### Do you replace our existing management pack? No. Our FP&A Agent works in the templates and reporting structures finance already uses: the same workbook, the same deck, the same definitions. - ### Can your agents work with Excel and PowerPoint reports? Yes. Our agents build from your own workbook or deck as the template. A workbook keeps its tabs and formulas, a deck its slides, and the new month is the same file saved as a new version. - ### Do your agents investigate variances before writing commentary? Yes. Material movements are investigated first, so the commentary explains causes, with the figures and evidence behind them. - ### Do you send reports directly to the board? No. Our FP&A Agent prepares the pack and flags what needs a decision. A named reviewer approves it, and finance sends it. - ### Can every number in the report be traced? Each figure our agents prepare carries its source and the calculation behind it, so a reviewer can follow it down to the accounts and records it came from. [ The product — FP&A — The same agent that prepares the report can investigate the number behind it, update the outlook and answer what leadership asks next. Explore FP&A ](https://emptyspaces.ai/product/fpa) Other FP&A solutions - [ Explain performance — Investigate the number behind any figure in the pack. ](https://emptyspaces.ai/solutions/explain-performance) - [ Keep forecasts current — Carry what the month showed into the outlook. ](https://emptyspaces.ai/solutions/forecast-updates) - [ Model business decisions — Answer the question the pack raises. ](https://emptyspaces.ai/solutions/scenario-analysis) ## Bring your last management pack. We'll show you what the agent could have refreshed, investigated and drafted before your team opened it. [Book a working session](https://emptyspaces.ai/contact-us)