Business systems · Case study
Accounts in. Understanding out.
Client accounts uploaded as Excel become reports, and nothing reaches a client before a publisher approves.
Situation
Monthly management accounts are prepared for 15 client organisations, each a different shape of business: a car rental group that reads its figures by country, a lifestyle business that tracks late commission, a group of several companies that needs them consolidated.
Challenge
Each client's monthly report had to fit its business and be approved before it went out.
Each month's report needed to fit the client's business, and to be approved by a publisher before it reached the client.
Our approach
We built the reporting process, not just the report, with the approval inside it.
Fifteen client organisations, each a different shape of business, each needing its report approved before it goes out. We recommended building the reporting process rather than the report: one process with the approval built in, and a template shaped to each client. Staff upload the client's Excel accounts and the report's sections, figures and charts are produced from them. Accountants write their commentary beside the figures, a publisher approves, and only then is the client told the report is ready, in a space of its own. A car rental group reads its figures by country, a lifestyle business tracks late commission, a group of companies sees them consolidated.
- Accounts uploadStaff upload the client's Excel management accounts and the report's numbered sections are built from them.
- Generated sectionsKPI cards, charts and P&L and cash-flow splits produced from the figures rather than assembled by hand.
- CommentaryAccountants write against the generated figures, in the report, rather than in a covering email.
- Approval before deliveryA publisher approves; nothing reaches a client before that step has happened.
- Per-client templates10 bespoke shapes (per-country, late-commission tracking, consolidated multi-entity) in one system.
- Client environmentsEach client organisation has its own reporting space, at its own web address.
- Journals and manpower logsRecurring client records kept alongside the monthly report, with shareable journal links.
- Access and auditPer-user access levels, staff assignment, lockout, and a record of every change.
How it works
One flow, start to finish.
Workflow
Select a stage to see what it does, what it receives and what it hands on.
Select a stage to see what it does, what it receives and what it hands on.
- Sources: Client accounts. Receives from: Nothing. Hands on to: Generated sections.
- Capture: Generated sections. KPI cards, charts and P&L and cash-flow splits produced from the figures rather than assembled by hand. Receives from: Client accounts. Hands on to: Commentary.
- Work: Commentary. Accountants write against the generated figures, in the report, rather than in a covering email. Receives from: Generated sections. Hands on to: Approval before delivery, Access and audit.
- Work: Approval before delivery. A publisher approves; nothing reaches a client before that step has happened. Receives from: Commentary. Hands on to: Client notified, Access and audit.
- Outcome: Client notified. Every client's monthly report runs through one process: nothing reaches a client before a publisher approves it, and each upload, comment, approval and client notification is on record. Receives from: Approval before delivery. Hands on to: Nothing.
- Control: Access and audit. Per-user access levels, staff assignment, lockout, and a record of every change. Receives from: Commentary, Approval before delivery. Hands on to: Nothing.
A month starts with an upload and ends with a client being notified. Between those, the report is a working document: generated sections on one side, commentary on the other, and an approval that has to happen before the client's view exists at all. The client sees a numbered report, its charts, and the journal that goes with it.
What changed · As at September 2026
Nine months of reports, each approved before release.
Every client's monthly report runs through one process: nothing reaches a client before a publisher approves it, and each upload, comment, approval and client notification is on record. Ten differently shaped reports run in the same system.
In production. 73 reports created, 535 sections and 108 commentary blocks written.
For technical teams
Engineering decisions
How it was built.
Build the reporting pipeline, not the report. The parser's numbered sections carry KPI cards, charts and P&L and cash-flow splits; accountants write commentary against the generated figures; a publisher approves before anything reaches the client. Each client organisation gets its own subdomain and its own template.
The system is a pipeline with a gate in it. Upload, parse, generate, comment, approve, notify: each step writes to the same report record, so the state of a month's reporting is a property of the data rather than something the practice tracks in its head. Templates are configuration over one rendering path, which is why a tenth client shape cost a template and not a fork. Every mutation is written to an audit log, including the ones that matter commercially: who published, who notified the client, who edited a figure's commentary after approval.
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