Get accurate, intuitive financial reporting without the workload with our free financial reporting package template. Featuring the 3 main financial statements: an income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement, this package will help you create the reports you need to understand your financial health and plan for the future.
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What is financial reporting?
Financial reporting is an umbrella term that covers the preparation, presentation, and analysis of financial data and statements.
Typically, financial reporting is used to understand a business’s financial performance. If you want to understand your business’s profitability, assets, debts, or long-term prospects, you’ll want to look at your financial reporting.
There’s use for financial reporting outside of your operations. For example, if you’re looking for investment or credit, investors and lenders will want to see your financial reporting to understand how your business operates and how the money will be used.
Regularly updating your financial reporting is essential in understanding the ins and outs of your business. Set up a cadence for updates (or embrace automation) and dedicate a block of time to analyzing the documents.
What are the documents for financial reporting?
Financial reporting is broken up into three main financial statements:
The income statement (also called a profit and loss statement or P&L) is a summary of the money a business generates (revenue) and spends (expenses). The statement is broken up into expense categories so you can see how much money is being spent on what, perfect for analyzing spend and making budgeting decisions.
The balance sheet is a snapshot of what a business owns (assets), owes (liabilities), and has had invested (equity) at that point in time. This is where you’ll want to look to get insights like how the business is paying down debts, whether it can budget for new purchases, and what its runway is.
The cash flow statement is an overview of how cash has been coming into and exiting the business. It breaks down cash flow into operating activities (cash from your daily operations), financing activities (cash coming from or paying down debt), and investment activity (cash from investors, dividend payments, or external investment).
Each of these statements are important, but it’s how they work together that gives them the most value.
For example, if your income statement shows a profit but your cash flow statement shows negative cash flow, you can start to look at your debt payments with information from your balance sheet.
With all three statements in conjunction, you get the full picture of how your business is performing and why.
Why should businesses use financial report templates?
Accuracy and efficiency are key in financial reporting. You need to be able to make quick updates and have confidence in the numbers on the page before you start analyzing them for insights.
A financial report template gives you the confidence you need that your reports are structured correctly and ready for presentation to accountants, investors, lenders, and internal stakeholders.
Some of the benefits of financial report templates include:
Consistency: The more you use your financial reporting, the better you’ll get at knowing where to look for integral insights. The consistency of a template means you’ll know exactly where to begin and you can even develop KPIs (key performance indicators) based on the reports.
Complying with industry standards: Financial reporting is customizable, however, you still need to adhere to certain standards. This is especially true when using your financial reporting externally like when seeking investment or credit to grow your business.
Automation: Templates save time by turning basic financial data into financial statements. This saves time on updates so preparing financial reports isn’t the headache it usually is.
Accuracy: Our financial reporting package comes with pre-built formulas that handle all the necessary calculations for you. This cuts down on the possibility of making an error when generating your financial statements.
Surfacing essential insights: By showcasing some of the essential metrics business use to understand their financial health, you have the information you need to measure, benchmark, and contextualize your business’s performance.
How to prepare financial report templates
Download our financial reporting package to gain access to free Excel templates for balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement, and more.
You can find more detailed instructions on how to use each of our financial report templates upon download.
Who is responsible for preparing financial report templates?
Depending on the size of the business, preparing and maintaining financial reports is generally handled by someone on the finance team.
If your business doesn’t have a financial team, you need to assign someone to be accountable for their maintenance.
Remember, it’s less important who is maintaining the financial reports than making sure they’re being maintained at all.
Appoint somebody to be the point person for the business’s financial reports. They will be the ones accountable for keeping them up-to-date and ready for analysis.
Financial reporting package FAQ
What are financial reporting package best practices?
To get the most out of a financial reporting package, be sure to do the following:
Set up a regular update cadence: Whether it’s daily, weekly, monthly, or otherwise, there should be an expectation of when the financial reporting package will be updated.
Set KPIs: Define stats-based goals based on the information presented in the financial reporting package.
Embrace collaboration: Give trusted team members access to the financial reporting package and get insights you may have otherwise missed.
Store on the cloud for easy access: Keep a copy of your financial reporting in an easily accessible place.
Customize to surface key data: Make adjustments to how information is being presented with graphs, tables, additional metrics, or customized line items to suit your needs.
How often should a financial reporting package be prepared?
There’s no set standard for how often a financial reporting package should be prepared. How frequently you update your financial reporting package should reflect the volume of business usually conducted on a daily basis.
A small operation could get by on monthly updates. But with a higher volume of transactions and more activity comes a greater need to regularly update a financial reporting package.
What kinds of KPIs can be tracked with a financial reporting package template?
Some examples of KPIs measurable in a financial reporting package include:
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