Service · Board & committee packs
One governed set of pages — P&L and cash against plan, operating KPIs, headcount, pipeline, and a risks and covenants page — locked at an agreed as-of date and exported as a PDF your directors can read on a plane.
Representative dashboard — sample data
The artefact, not the refresh
Board packs fail in a specific, repeatable way. Five people export five things in the last week of the cycle, someone pastes them into a deck, the revenue figure on page 3 disagrees with the one on page 11 because two teams define it differently, and the whole thing is re-cut at 11pm because a journal posted late. The board reads it once, asks the same three questions every quarter, and nobody can answer them from the deck itself.
The fix is to treat the pack as the deliverable rather than a by-product of the close. We build a fixed set of pages, in a fixed order, on measure definitions your CFO has signed off, tied to one locked as-of date — then produce both a live version for the people who have to defend the numbers and a print-faithful export for the people who read it on a plane. If what you actually need first is the plumbing underneath — gateways, scheduled refresh, subscriptions — start with our guide to automating monthly reporting in Power BI; this page is about the pack that sits on top of it.
Pages we build into a board pack
The pack, page by page
Every pack is tailored, but this is the spine we start from — one page per recurring question, so directors learn where to look and stop asking for ad hoc extracts.
Revenue, gross margin, EBITDA and operating cash for the month, quarter and year to date, each against budget and against the last approved forecast — with the variance bridge that explains the gap rather than just sizing it.
The four to eight non-financial measures your board actually governs against — utilisation, churn, on-time delivery, safety, whatever the business runs on — each with a target, a trend, and a stated definition that does not drift between cycles.
Opening and closing FTE, hires, leavers and open requisitions by function, with fully loaded cost per FTE and people cost as a share of revenue — aggregated so the page can be shared without exposing individual compensation.
Weighted and unweighted pipeline against the next two quarters' plan, coverage ratio, win rate and slippage — the page that turns "sales feels soft" into a number the board can hold management to next cycle.
Covenant headroom calculated the way the credit agreement defines it, the top risks with owner and movement since last meeting, and any regulatory or audit items outstanding — on one page, not buried in an appendix nobody opens.
A plain-English page naming every measure, how it is calculated, which system it comes from, and the as-of date of the pack. It is the page that ends the "where did that number come from?" exchange before it starts.
The single biggest cause of a board pack losing credibility is two pages disagreeing about revenue. Before we build anything, we run a short definition session with your CFO or controller and write down what each headline measure means: which accounts roll into revenue, whether margin is stated before or after allocated overhead, which entities consolidate, and what the fiscal calendar does at period boundaries. Those decisions become governed DAX measures (opens in new tab) in one semantic model rather than formulas hidden inside individual visuals, so the same definition serves the pack, the management report and any drill-down a director asks for in the room. Deeper variance and forecasting work for the finance team itself lives on our Power BI for finance page.
A live dashboard and a board pack want opposite things. A dashboard should always be current; a pack must be frozen, because directors annotate a reading copy days before the meeting and will not forgive a figure that changed underneath them. We agree an as-of date with finance, snapshot the pack at that date, and stamp it on every page footer. When the pack is exported we take current values rather than default values so the filters and period selections in the reviewed version are exactly what lands in the PDF. A late journal posted after cut-off shows up in next cycle's pack with a note, not as a silent revision of a page someone already marked up.
Restatements are normal — a reclassification, a corrected accrual, an entity moving between segments. The failure mode is overwriting history so that this year's pack shows a prior-year comparative the board has never seen. We model the reporting period separately from the accounting period, which lets a page show as-reported and restated figures side by side, keeps last year's approved comparative intact, and carries a short restatement note on the affected page. Audit committees notice this; it is usually the first thing a new chair tests.
Power BI can export a report to PDF (opens in new tab) or PowerPoint straight from the service, which is enough for many packs. When the board expects a printed document — consistent page size, page numbers, headers that repeat across a long table, a table of contents — we build the pack as a paginated report in Power BI Report Builder (opens in new tab) over the same model. Two limits are worth knowing up front: a standard Power BI report cannot export to PDF beyond 50 report pages, while paginated reports have no such cap, and uncertified custom visuals do not render in a PDF export — so we design board pages using core visuals rather than discovering the gap the night before distribution. Sensitivity labels and their encryption settings carry through to the exported file, which matters when the pack leaves your tenant.
Most boards include people who have no account in your tenant. The clean pattern is to invite them as guest users with Microsoft Entra B2B (opens in new tab), publish the pack as an app, and give each director viewer access to one audience — never a role in the build workspace. Row-level security (opens in new tab) then decides what each guest resolves to, so an investor director sees the consolidated view while an operating partner sees their division. For operating partners managing day-to-day portfolio company performance and value creation milestones, our private equity KPI dashboard builds that operating-layer model. Two practicalities we cover in the handover: guests need either their own Pro or PPU licence or a workspace on Fabric capacity, and directors invited through a personal email address get browser-only access, not the mobile apps. Our step-by-step Power BI row-level security setup guide shows how the roles are defined and tested.
A working reference for the spine of the pack — the recurring question each page exists to answer, the systems we usually pull it from, and who owns the narrative that sits beside it.
| Board pack page | The question it answers | Typical source systems | Commentary owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| P&L and cash vs plan | Are we on plan, and where did the variance come from? | General ledger / ERP, budget and forecast files, bank feeds | CFO or controller |
| Operating KPIs | Is the operating engine improving or just the accounting? | Operational systems, CRM, service desk, production data | COO or function lead |
| Headcount | Are we hiring to plan and what is it costing per FTE? | HRIS and payroll exports, approved headcount plan | Head of people |
| Pipeline and bookings | Is there enough coverage for the next two quarters? | CRM opportunity and bookings data, sales plan | Chief revenue officer |
| Risks and covenants | How much headroom is left, and what changed since last meeting? | GL, credit agreement terms, risk register | CFO and company secretary |
Directors read differently. Some want the exported document and nothing else; others open the live pages during the meeting to answer a follow-up. The two formats have genuinely different strengths, so we build one model and two front doors rather than compromising on a single one.
| Consideration | Live Power BI report pages | Paginated report PDF pack |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Answering follow-ups in the meeting, drilling to the transaction | Pre-reading, printing, minuting, archiving with the board papers |
| Page fidelity | Reflows to the screen; page breaks are not guaranteed | Fixed page size, margins, page numbers and repeating table headers |
| Page count | PDF export is limited to 50 report pages | No comparable page-count limit |
| Access required | Guest account, licence or capacity, and RLS role assignment | A file — readable by any director, offline |
| As-of behaviour | Current unless deliberately snapshotted | Frozen at the export, stamped on every page |
We build these packs for CFOs and controllers at companies with an active board or audit committee, for chiefs of staff and company secretaries who assemble the papers, and for founder-led businesses that have just taken on institutional investors and suddenly owe someone a quarterly pack. Sponsors rolling several companies into one comparable view should start instead with Power BI for private equity, and advisors running the same pack across a client portfolio will find the standardised approach on Power BI for fractional CFOs closer to what they need. If the more pressing need is the weekly grid your leadership team reads in its Level 10 meeting rather than the papers your directors receive, start with our EOS scorecard Power BI dashboard build instead — different cadence, different audience, and usually built from the same model. Credit unions whose directors and supervisory committee read a packet built around member growth, delinquency and the quarterly Call Report ratios should begin with Power BI dashboards for credit unions. School boards are the same problem with a different vocabulary — enrollment, attendance, assessment results and site spending rather than revenue and margin — and that build is covered on Power BI dashboards for school districts. A college or university board of trustees reads a third vocabulary again — the admissions funnel, retention and completion, net tuition revenue and the endowment draw — and that pack is built from the model described on Power BI dashboards for higher education.
There is no retainer and no project minimum. You buy a fixed-price block of senior-led Power BI hours upfront — Starter, 20 hours at $125/hour ($2,500); Growth, 40 hours at $115/hour ($4,600); Power, 80 hours at $100/hour ($8,000) — and draw them down task by task. Every request gets a written scope and an hours estimate before any work starts, hours are deducted only for work you have reviewed and approved, and unused hours never expire. Most individual pages land in three to five business days; a first full pack with definition sessions and a distribution dry run typically runs across two to three cycles as the board tells you what it actually wants. See how Flex hours work.
business days, typical
hours, never expire
own everything
Board packs are one of the things prepaid Flex hours cover — we scope each task and you approve before any work begins. See Flex pricing →
How it works
Send us last cycle's deck. We map it to a page list, run a definition session with finance, fix the as-of calendar and the distribution date, then reply with a scope and the hours needed before any work begins.
We build the semantic model and the measures, lay out each page, and tie every headline figure back to your trial balance and source systems with your team before the board ever sees it.
We invite the guest accounts, test each RLS role as that director, produce the paginated export, and walk one full cycle end to end. Then we hand over the workspace, the report and the credentials — you own all of it.
Representative perspective
The week before every meeting used to disappear into rebuilding the deck. Now the pack is produced on the as-of date and we spend that week writing the commentary instead of chasing which revenue number is right.CFO, private equity–backed services group
Representative perspective
Our outside directors get a read-only link and a PDF, and each of them only sees the divisions they are entitled to. The definitions page ended a two-year argument about how we count margin.Company secretary, multi-entity manufacturer
We will tell you which pages can be automated, which definitions need a decision from your CFO first, and how many hours the first pack takes — before you spend anything. No project minimums, no obligation.
FAQ
A finance dashboard is built for people who work the numbers daily and want to slice them. A board pack is a fixed artefact: the same pages in the same order every cycle, tied to one agreed as-of date, with commentary and a definitions appendix. We build both from one model, but design them separately.
Yes. Outside directors are invited as guest users through Microsoft Entra B2B and given viewer access to a single app audience, never the build workspace. Row-level security limits what each guest resolves to, so an investor director sees the consolidated view and not, for example, individual salary detail.
Yes, and most boards still want one. Power BI exports a report to PDF or PowerPoint directly, and for a print-faithful pack with page numbers, headers and repeating table headers we build a paginated report in Report Builder. Standard reports cap PDF export at 50 pages; paginated reports do not.
We keep as-reported and restated figures side by side rather than silently overwriting history. The model stores the reporting period alongside the accounting period, so a prior-year column matches what the board saw last year, and a restatement note explains the delta on the page where the board will ask about it.
We lock an as-of date agreed with your CFO and stamp it on every page. The pack is snapshotted at that date and the export is taken from those values, so a late journal entry posted after distribution cannot change a figure a director already annotated in their reading copy.
You buy a fixed-price block of senior-led hours upfront: Starter is 20 hours at $125/hour ($2,500), Growth is 40 at $115/hour ($4,600), Power is 80 at $100/hour ($8,000). Individual pages typically land in three to five business days. Hours never expire and are deducted only for approved work.
Buy a block of prepaid Flex hours and, if you're unhappy within the first 4 hours, we refund you in full — no questions asked. Hours are deducted only for work you've reviewed and approved, there's no project minimum, and your banked hours never expire.
Book a free demo
Tell us the task. We scope it, you approve, and a senior consultant delivers — typically in 3–5 business days. Prepaid hours that never expire.
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