By ForeCraft · Published 2026-09-08 · Updated 2026-09-08
A monthly management pack has seven sections: executive summary, results at a glance, variance analysis, cash position and outlook, balance sheet notes, decisions and actions, and follow-up on last period. This page explains what belongs in each and gives you a fill-in template to use for your next client review.
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forecraft-management-pack-template.md — all seven sections with tables laid out and fields for client, period, preparer, and reviewer. Plain text, so it pastes into a document, a wiki, or an email without reformatting.
What a management pack is
A management pack is the monthly deliverable a finance professional sends to a client or a leadership team. It is not a set of financial statements — the statements are an input. The pack’s job is to explain what the statements mean and what should happen as a result.
The structural test is section 6. A document that ends with analysis is a report. A document that ends with named owners and due dates is a management pack.
The seven sections
| # | Section | What it contains | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Executive summary | Three sentences: what happened, why, and what it means. | Many readers will read this and nothing else. Write it last, once you know what the month actually was. |
| 2 | Results at a glance | Revenue, gross profit, gross margin percentage, operating expenses, net income, and closing cash — current, prior, variance, variance percentage. | Six rows, not thirty. This is the orientation table, not the analysis. |
| 3 | Variance analysis | Only lines above your materiality threshold, each with a driver category and an explanation. | Name the driver — volume, price, timing, one-off, or correction. A movement without a driver is not an explanation. |
| 4 | Cash position and outlook | Closing cash, net movement, the 13-week outlook, its expected low point, and the assumptions behind it. | State the assumptions. An outlook whose assumptions are invisible cannot be challenged, so it will not be trusted. |
| 5 | Balance sheet notes | Only what moved materially or what a reader would question — typically receivables, payables, and anything unusual. | Most months this is short. Write 'no material change' rather than deleting the section. |
| 6 | Decisions and actions | Each recommendation with why now, a named owner, a due date, and a defined next step. | Cap it at three. A pack with ten actions produces none. This section is what separates a management pack from a report. |
| 7 | Follow-up on last period | Last month's actions, their owners, and their current status. | The section most often missing, and the one that turns a monthly report into an accountability loop. |
The order is deliberate
The pack runs from conclusion to evidence, not evidence to conclusion. A reader who stops after section 1 has the answer. A reader who continues gets progressively more support for it. Building up to the conclusion instead — the way the underlying work is actually done — means the most important sentence arrives on page four, where a busy client will not reach it.
Section 7 goes last but is read first by anyone who was in last month’s meeting, because it tells them whether the previous conversation produced anything.
Keeping it consistent month to month
- Never drop a section. Write “no material change”. A section that disappears makes the reader wonder what is being omitted.
- Keep the same six rows in section 2. Changing which metrics appear breaks month-to-month comparison, which is most of the value.
- Use the same materiality threshold every month for a given client, and write it down. Moving the threshold silently changes what gets explained.
- Carry section 7 forward mechanically. Every action from last month appears, including the ones that slipped.
Producing this automatically
ForeCraft generates all seven sections from an uploaded P&L and balance sheet — the summary, the variance table with drivers, the cash outlook, and decision memos carrying an owner and a due date that reappear in next month’s follow-up section.
Related resources
- How to write monthly financial commentary — sections 1 and 3.
- Variance analysis examples and templates — the arithmetic behind section 3.
- Monthly close checklist — the work that happens before you fill this in.
- All resources