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OutputReport and scheduled workflowCadenceMonthly, after closeForCFOs and VPs of Finance, FP&A leads, business-unit general managers, chiefs of staff

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When to use it

The monthly review is where a company decides what it believes about itself. It’s also a week of somebody’s month. Reconcile the scorecard, chase the variances, get the membership or subscription numbers to agree with finance, rewrite the forward view because plan moved again. A monthly review should answer one question: how is the year going, what is driving it, and what does that mean for the rest of it? The people who own a line of the P&L should get that answer without reading the appendix. That’s the spec. Summation builds it after every close.

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Understanding the demo

When you delegate your MBR to Summation, you get the same five-page format every month. It opens with an executive summary, moves through a company scorecard and a segment-by-segment read, spends its longest section on whatever moved the most money that month, gives any subscription or membership line its own page, and ends with the forward view and the initiatives responding to it. Nothing on the scorecard is coloured; each row shows its variance to plan and last year and lets the number speak.
A report titled 'Monthly Business Review' for Wrenfield, fiscal month ending 2026-08-01 (Jul FY26). An Executive Summary lists four bullets: company net revenue is $43.97M year to date, up 28.0% against last year and down 5.8% against plan, a shortfall of $2.72M concentrated on owned channels where member orders came in 19.3% under plan and non-member orders 5.0% over; every merchandise line missed plan revenue year to date, by between 4.6% and 7.0%, while the company delivered margin rate held within 0.6pts of plan, so the miss reads as volume rather than rate; member penetration is 33.6% year to date, 6.1pts under plan; and the estimated return rate is 29.2% year to date, 1.2pts above plan and 2.0pts above last year. A 'Company Scorecard' table follows, with columns for Metric, Jul FY26, vs last year, vs plan, Year to date and YTD vs last year, listing Net Revenue, Product Margin Rate, Delivered Margin Rate, Estimated Return Rate, Member Penetration, Markdown % of Ticket, Freight and Fulfilment % of Revenue, and Marketplace Share of Revenue. A 'View SQL' link and 'Data as of Aug 21' sit at the foot.

MBR executive summary and company scorecard

  1. Summary: Up to five bullets carry the month and the year to date. The first one is the finding
  2. Company scorecard: Eight metrics for the month and year to date, against plan and last year, with both margin tiers on the table. Two or three notes underneath say what moved
  3. Segment landscape: Revenue, growth, margin rate and variance for each line, with one sentence on what makes that line different from the others. The table stops at delivered margin, because below it cost is allocated rather than measured
  4. Deep dive: One or two sections on whatever moved the most money this month: a revenue shortfall, a margin walk, a returns step, a channel shift. The heading is written from what the numbers showed
  5. The paid product: Members, fee revenue, and how a member’s order compares to a non-member’s, every month, whether the numbers are loud or quiet
  6. Forward view and initiatives: Where the year lands against plan, and the initiatives in flight mapped to the findings they respond to
Every number links to its source query, and Summation checks the sources, calculations, and written claims before delivery.

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How it works

Addison takes you through a guided setup:
  1. Data: Addison finds the last closed month and confirms how your business defines closed, along with which numbers arrive late
  2. Metrics: It suggests eight metrics, using your business’s own names for each margin tier
  3. Focus: Every candidate is sized in dollars, and the one or two that deserve the deep dive are suggested
  4. Build and verify: Summation writes the review, then runs verification: cited figures against their source queries, and the claims, comparisons and trends in the writing against the data behind them. A report is always verified before it reaches you, and a check Addison cannot resolve is surfaced as a decision for you rather than reported as a pass
  5. Send: Save it as a Playbook and schedule a Workflow to run it after each close. Every run verifies the new month’s review before it goes out

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What you need

Connect your warehouse to keep the review current, or upload an Excel or .csv to run it now.

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Make it yours

Keep your metric definitions and fiscal calendar in Knowledge so every review uses them. To change a paragraph, highlight it and use Edit with AI; remember to refresh verification before sharing. To save a correction for future runs, ask Addison to add to knowledge. Version history keeps every run.

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Try it

In Summation:
  • Use the setup skill: /monthly-business-review
  • Or follow the guided setup: Get started → Choose a ready-made job → Prepare a monthly business review → Explore demo → Create with my data
From another agent: Open summation.com/agents.md and ask for a monthly business review.

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Next

Reports

How a report is built, cited, and edited.

Verification

How Summation checks accuracy before you share.

Playbooks

Save the instructions so a run repeats exactly.

Workflows

Add a schedule and deliver by email or Slack.