Financial Analysis: A Controller’s Guide, Second Edition

Chapter 18. Financial Analysis Reports

Although a controller may be judged by his or her peers and managers on many fronts, such as personal integrity, communication skills, or technical knowledge, the controller’s reports have the greatest impact of all. This is because there is constant, daily reinforcement of the controller’s reporting skills with all of these people, since reports are issued constantly from the controller’s department and distributed all over the company. As far as the nonaccounting part of a company is concerned, financial analysis reports are the primary work product of the accounting department, and the controller is judged in accordance with the quality and layout of them.

This chapter reviews the layout, presentation, and accompanying explanations required for financial analysis reports.

Types of Financial Analysis Reports

Previous chapters in this book have focused on using the correct financial analysis to arrive at conclusions in various operating situations. Now it is time to put that information into a report format that is not only easily understood by the managers at whom they are targeted, but also provides them with the right information for making key changes in response to the information noted in the reports.

There are several considerations to make when summarizing a financial analysis into a report. One is the timing of the report. If the information to be presented is in response to a one-time request by a manager, then there is less need to ...