Are Your Financial Reports As Captivating As Crazy Cat Videos?
Published
Finally! Your financials are finished and ready to distribute. You cross your fingers and hope your board members will understand them. You hope your audience won’t ask so many questions that they (and you) aren’t able to get their own work done. You hope nobody is silently ignoring or overlooking key data—potentially causing them to miss vital indicators such as errant transactions or being near/over budget. You hope everyone will be as excited about your financial findings as are you and the entire financial team. You hope these financials will be the thrill of the fiscal quarter!
In reality—having worked with nonprofit accounting and finance departments for 20 years—I know that you likely will spend more time fielding questions after you publish your financial reports than you did creating them in the first place. I know your pain. Would you believe me if I told you, there’s a way to make your financials so vibrant, so easy to understand, and such exciting workplace viewing that they’ll rival the craziest of today’s trendy cat videos?
Creating reports that are universally understood by anyone who reads them can actually be easy to do. You just need to present them in a language understood by the intended audience. How do you create reports that transcend the financial language barrier? The secret is the Visual Chart Organizer, combined with the report parameter. If you’re thinking, “That’s the secret to every report I already create,” you’re half-right. The other half involves using some really cool chart organizer and report tools to translate your financial information into easy-to-comprehend financials, targeted to your specific audiences.
Ready to learn more about this? Blackbaud University’s new class, Financial Edge: Building Financial Reports for Specific Audiences is exactly what you need. This three-hour instructor-led class is highly interactive and brainstorming-focused. Come ready to pick apart your existing reports and design new ones, with your peers, while discussing different audience needs. Then get ready to build reports that will steal the show from those crazy video cats!
In reality—having worked with nonprofit accounting and finance departments for 20 years—I know that you likely will spend more time fielding questions after you publish your financial reports than you did creating them in the first place. I know your pain. Would you believe me if I told you, there’s a way to make your financials so vibrant, so easy to understand, and such exciting workplace viewing that they’ll rival the craziest of today’s trendy cat videos?
Creating reports that are universally understood by anyone who reads them can actually be easy to do. You just need to present them in a language understood by the intended audience. How do you create reports that transcend the financial language barrier? The secret is the Visual Chart Organizer, combined with the report parameter. If you’re thinking, “That’s the secret to every report I already create,” you’re half-right. The other half involves using some really cool chart organizer and report tools to translate your financial information into easy-to-comprehend financials, targeted to your specific audiences.
Ready to learn more about this? Blackbaud University’s new class, Financial Edge: Building Financial Reports for Specific Audiences is exactly what you need. This three-hour instructor-led class is highly interactive and brainstorming-focused. Come ready to pick apart your existing reports and design new ones, with your peers, while discussing different audience needs. Then get ready to build reports that will steal the show from those crazy video cats!
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ARCHIVED | Financial Edge® Tips and Tricks
03/07/2016 8:07am EST
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Thank you for your thoughts! Your process – providing a narrative to support the understanding of the financial statements is exactly what the class is geared toward. My hope is that we will provide valuable information about using the Visual Chart Organizer in ways that may not be immediately apparent…helping you give that narrative to your audience. During the class period we’ll talk about the tools in Financial Edge, but also discuss any reporting pain points and see how to use the software to ease those points. The financial reports can help tell the story – and help encourage stewardship – we’re hoping the class can guide everyone to use VCOs, attributes, and creativity to offer compelling reports that support the narrative.
Mary Aquino
Your financial statements tell you a story. I think it's helpful to write that story down so everybody else who you need to know the story can have it available for them. I know members of our Board have appreciated getting our financial information in a narrative format to help them properly discharge their fiduciary responsibilities. Perhaps yours would, too?
Bruce Kariya
Director of Finance & Operations
California Food Policy Advocates