There are a number of data cube and database packages on the market which take data at a specific time and produce predefined management reports. These are used to great effect but often do not produce presentable reports and some additional formatting is usually required. Often adjustments and corrections will mean running the data cubes again.
There are also many accountants who still take TB’s and extend with adjustments to produce a final TB then populate predefined formats using MS Excel to do calculations but adding together numbers off the TB and pulling out information from budgets and prior year data held in other spreadsheets.
It can, and often does, take up to two days to produce the management accounts from the Final TB stage.
This article is aimed at those accountants who take more than 10 minutes to produce the management accounts or who wish to find another way to produce good looking reports.
This article assumes that the accountant is familiar with formatting worksheets to prepare presentable reports.