AI Reporting

AI Reporting turns a plain-English request into a presentation built from your live data. Slides render in the canvas with grounded commentary you can edit, hide, export, and share — without rebuilding decks by hand each cycle.

Key capabilities

• Ask for a report in the box at the top of the deck library (e.g. "Board pack for September 2026") and the deck opens when it's built, or ask Report AI in the side chat (Regent) when you want to talk through slides and audience
• The reporting period is read from the prompt: a month ("September 2026", or "September" for the latest one that has ended), a quarter ("Q3 2026", "last quarter"), "last month", "month to date", "YTD", or a year. Without one, a deck covers the last three months
• Executive summary with revenue, gross margin, net income and cash, each against the prior period, and What moved: the account lines that changed most, stated from the ledger (e.g. "Marketing rose 43.5% to $24,100, from $16,800.")
• Revenue by channel: revenue split by income account with each line's share and change against the prior period
• For the board slide drawn from the figures (runway under 12 months, the costliest unfavourable mover, collections more than 60 days late), never template text
• Deck library of everything you have generated, with New deck, a refresh-with-current-data button, and delete
• Slide canvas with thumbnail rail — navigate, hide or show slides, and edit commentary per slide
• Present button for full-screen presentation mode
• Slides grounded in current financial data (statements, KPIs, charts)
• Export to PowerPoint (.pptx) with editable text, tables and native charts, or to PDF with selectable text; a copy of each export is saved to Documents
• Share live link for view-only access, with a choice of expiry (24 hours, 7, 30, or 90 days), a copy button, and the ability to revoke links
• Quick-start prompts on the empty state for common deck types
• Auto-opens the Books chat panel so you get the full AI workflow (history, search, follow-up questions)

How it works

You describe the deck you need in chat. Report AI assembles slides from your books, stores the deck, and opens it in the AI Reporting canvas. Edits to commentary save back to the deck; exports render the visible slides.

flowchart LR
  prompt["Ask in chat"] --> build["AI builds deck"]
  build --> canvas["Review slides"]
  canvas --> export["Export PDF / PPTX"]
  canvas --> share["Share live link"]

How to use it

1. Open AI Reporting from the Reports area (or follow a deck link from chat). Your existing decks appear as cards.
2. To build a new one, type what you need in Ask for a report and click Build deck (or pick one of the examples under it). To work it through in conversation instead, click New deck, pick a quick prompt, or ask Report AI in the chat panel — e.g. "Build our Q3 board deck." Quick prompts include a board deck, an AR aging dashboard for sales, an investor update, and cash position with a 90-day forecast.
3. Open a deck and review slides in the canvas; use the thumbnail rail to jump between them.
4. Click Edit commentary on a slide to change its Slide title, optional Headline, Bullet points, and optional Recommendation.
5. Hover a thumbnail and use the eye icon (Hide slide / Show slide) to hide slides you do not want in the final package.
6. Click Export and choose PowerPoint (.pptx) or PDF, or Share live link for stakeholders.
7. On the deck list, use the refresh icon on a card to re-pull current numbers, or the trash icon to delete it (its live links stop working). A refresh keeps the deck's titles, order, hidden slides, commentary, and reporting period; only the data changes.

Pro tips

• Be specific in prompts — mention the period, audience (board vs. sales), and metrics you care about.
• Hide before export — hidden slides stay out of PDF/PPTX output.
• Follow up in chat — ask Report AI to add a slide or change the period without starting over.
• Share live links for async review and revoke them when the review is done; export when you need a static file for email attachments.
• Refresh before a meeting — a refreshed deck re-pulls current numbers into the same slides.
• For CFO Portal board packages, see also Board Deck — AI Reporting is the flexible, chat-driven alternative in Books.

In-depth guide

AI Reporting vs. Board Deck

Slide types

Decks can include a cover, executive summary, P&L summary, revenue by channel, cash position (with the 13-week forecast, and burn and runway when the business is losing money), AR aging, customer concentration (invoiced revenue by customer in the period), inventory and COGS, "for the board", and custom slides. Comparisons use the prior period of the same shape: a month against the month before, a quarter against the quarter before, any other range against the same number of days just before it. Each slide type pulls from the same live data as your Books reports, so numbers stay consistent with statements you already trust. Commentary edits keep existing source citations when the bullet text is unchanged.