Accounting /Drafting interactive demo field guide · 8 min

Management Report Drafting Assistant

Drafts plain-English commentary from the client's management accounts — variances, trends, ratios, cashflow movements — with every statement tied to the figure behind it, so the advisor edits insight rather than building the report.

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theater/demos/accounting_management-report-drafter.html · sandbox · read-only

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FIG. 1

The live demo, running on fabricated data. Open it to step through the full flow — every output is shown for a person to approve before anything happens.

How it would work

Reads the reconciled management accounts, computes the variances and ratios, and drafts a sourced commentary — every line shown with the figure behind it for the advisor to approve before it reaches the client.

Input 01

The reconciled pack

Management accounts — P&L, balance sheet and cashflow — with comparatives (budget and prior period), the period's ratios, and any house-style notes or prior commentary.

Agent 02

Computes, then cites

Calculates variances against budget and prior period and the key ratios (gross margin, debtor days, stock turn), then drafts commentary where every sentence is tied to a figure — no figure, no claim.

Output 03

A draft, working shown

A draft commentary with every cited number traceable to the pack, plus a "needs advisor context" list of the why-questions, for the advisor to edit, add the recommendation, and approve before it goes to the client.

Where it works well

It narrates the numbers the same way every period, with each claim tied to its figure.

Done by hand it's an hour-plus per pack of table-building and re-typing the same kind of paragraph — the first thing rushed when a deadline bites.
Best for an advisor running recurring packs: monthly or quarterly management reporting where the structure repeats and the value the client buys is the interpretation.
Across a portfolio of reporting clients, the recaptured hours go back into the advice and the client conversation, not into building the tables.

The grind in a reporting pack is the assembly and the narration — pulling the figures, computing the variances against budget and prior period, and writing the same shape of commentary every month or quarter.

Where it works badly

It is confidently wrong when the accounts aren't reconciled — a clean narrative on a bad number.

It sees what moved, never why — it can say gross margin fell, not that a new supplier contract landed in March. On a client whose story is all context, the draft only describes the surface.
If most of your reporting is bespoke or narrative-led rather than figure-led, the draft gives you less than the judgement you already apply.

The honest test

If you cannot say, right now, that this pack is reconciled to the bank and control accounts — this tool makes your wrong commentary faster, not safer.

Point it at unreconciled or inconsistent figures and it drafts a polished, professional commentary describing movements that aren't real. The output reads more trustworthy than the data behind it. That's the trap.

What it doesn't do — and shouldn't

It drafts the description. The advisor adds the advice and approves. That line is deliberate.

WHAT IT DOES

Surfaces each variance against budget and prior period, and the ratio it computed

Shows the source figure behind every sentence in the draft

Flags the why-questions and states the assumptions it made

WHAT IT WON’T

Recommend what the client should do about the numbers

Send the report to the client or sign it off

Decide why a margin moved or what a one-off was

The advice — the recommendation and forward-looking judgement — is where the APES 110 obligations of professional competence and due care sit, and any tax-related advice falls under the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 Code of Professional Conduct. The accountable advisor stays on the decision because the consequence, and the registration, land on them — not the tool.

What your data has to look like

Reconciled management accounts with comparatives — the numbers have to be right before the words.

Typical readiness

across orgs we see, before the first job

Reconciled P&L, balance sheet and cashflow

Usual weak point

Comparatives — budget and/or prior period

Needs shaping

Figures as structured fields, not a flattened PDF

Needs shaping

A defined period and the right comparison base

Usual weak point

House style or prior commentary to match

Usually ready

The real first job

The reconciliation is the real first job — and it's bigger and more valuable than the drafting layer on top. The assistant sits on good numbers; it does not fix bad ones. Getting the month-end close clean and the comparatives consistent is what makes every pack after that faster and right by default.

Right fit if…

You run recurring monthly or quarterly management reporting packs

A portfolio of reporting clients where the commentary shape repeats

Your accounts are reconciled to bank and control accounts before reporting

Packs carry comparatives — budget and/or prior period — as structured figures

Walk away if…

Your reporting is mostly bespoke, narrative-led, or one-off

The accounts aren't reconciled until well after the pack is due

Figures only exist inside flattened PDFs nobody can trace back

You want a tool that writes the advice and signs it off for you

Open questions

The worried-buyer questions, answered straight

It can only describe what the figures show, because every sentence is tied to a figure — no figure, no claim. It computes the variances and ratios, cites the line behind each statement, and lists the assumptions it made; it never speculates about a cause it can’t see in the numbers. The why, and the recommendation, are the advisor’s, where the APES 110 due-care obligation sits. The tool surfaces the description; the person stands behind the advice.

Only as well as the accounts you give it. If the P&L, balance sheet and cashflow aren’t reconciled to the bank and control accounts, the draft will describe movements that aren’t real — confidently and in clean prose, which is the dangerous part. Getting the close reconciled and the comparatives consistent is the first piece of work, and the piece that pays off across every pack after it. The assistant sits on good numbers; it doesn’t fix bad ones.

No. It removes the assembly and narration grind — the table-building and the same-shape paragraph every period — so the advisor spends their time on the judgement: why the numbers moved, what to recommend, what the client should do next. The advice stays with the advisor, where the professional competence and due-care obligations sit. The capacity it frees goes back into the client conversation.

Current to the period being reported and consistent across the comparatives. A variance is only meaningful if actuals, budget and prior period are on the same basis, and prior quarter versus prior full year changes every number — the demo flags exactly that, comparing margin to the prior full year, not the prior quarter. The honest test: can you say, today, that this pack is reconciled and which comparison base each variance is drafted against?

A client’s management accounts are confidential information under the APES 110 confidentiality principle. Any deployment runs inside an environment you control via API — not a public chatbot — and client data is never used to train third-party models; access is role-based and every figure in the draft is traceable to its source. The demo here runs entirely on fabricated data; Riverbend Wholesale Supplies is not a real client.

Only the assumptions the tool can derive from the numbers, and it states each one explicitly so the advisor can correct it — for example, which comparison base it used, the rounding, and that no seasonality adjustment was applied. Business context — why a margin moved, what a one-off was — comes from the advisor and the client, not the tool. Nothing is hidden in the draft.

What it takes to build

3–6 weeks · 4 phases

Reused from template~65%

Bespoke to this skin~35%

stack · Ledger API · Claude · figure-citation layer · review UI

What it would cost

Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed dates.

Bite-sized first piece

One client's pack, low risk

Pilot build

Most builds land here

Embedded support

Scale across the portfolio

Considering this for your firm?

The honest place to start is a bite-sized first piece — one client's recurring pack, low risk. Tell us where the reporting grind hurts; we'll play it back, scope it, and show you what's possible.

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