A board report template for small businesses using Xero

Short answer: keep a small organisation’s board pack short and in the same order every time: cover and agenda, a half-page summary, the decisions required, then finance, operations and appendices. For the finance section, use Xero’s Executive Summary, Profit and Loss (or Budget Variance if you have a budget), Balance Sheet, Bank Summary and the aged receivables and payables summaries. Put half a page of commentary in front of them, cover the last closed month, and send the papers five to seven days before the meeting.

A board report for a small company, a not-for-profit or a family business does not need to look like a listed company’s. It needs to tell the people responsible for the organisation how it is doing, what has changed since the last meeting, and what they are being asked to decide.

This guide gives a simple template, maps the finance section to Xero reports, and covers the timing that makes a board pack useful. It is general guidance on presentation, not legal or governance advice: directors’ and committee members’ duties differ between the UK, Australia and New Zealand and between companies, charities and incorporated societies, so check what your organisation’s rules require.

The template

A good small-organisation board pack is short and always in the same order.

Section	Length	Contents
1. Cover and agenda	1 page	Organisation name, meeting date, items for decision, items for noting
2. Summary	Half a page	The three to five things the board most needs to know
3. Decisions required	As needed	Each decision, the options, a recommendation, and the cost
4. Finance	3 to 6 pages	Commentary, then the reports (see below)
5. Operations	1 to 2 pages	Customers or members, people, projects, risks
6. Appendices	As needed	Detail that only some readers want

Put decisions near the front. Boards that receive a decision on page fourteen tend to make it in the last five minutes of the meeting.

The finance section, mapped to Xero

Page	Xero report	What it answers
Finance commentary	Your own words	What happened and why, in half a page
Headline figures	Executive Summary	Cash, profit, margins and position at a glance
Results	Profit and Loss, or Budget Variance	Did we make money, and against what plan?
Position	Balance Sheet	What do we own and owe?
Cash	Bank Summary	How did cash move through each account?
Who owes us	Aged Receivables Summary	Which customers or funders are late?
Who we owe	Aged Payables Summary	Are we paying suppliers on time?

Some practical choices:

• Profit and Loss layout. For a board, show the period and year to date, with a comparison against budget or last year. A twelve-column monthly layout is usually too much on paper.
• Budget vs actual. If the organisation has a budget, use the Budget Variance report rather than the Budget Summary. See budget vs actual in Xero.
• Executive Summary ratios. Leave out any that do not fit the business, and explain the ones you keep. The Executive Summary explained covers each line.
• Not-for-profits may want income by fund or project. Tracking categories in Xero can split the Profit and Loss that way (how to run and check a tracking category report).

Build the finance section once as a custom report pack in Xero, so the same reports in the same layout come out every time.

The finance commentary

The commentary is the most important page in the finance section. Keep it to half a page:

1. The result: surplus or deficit for the period and year to date, against budget.
2. The two or three biggest variances, each with a reason.
3. Cash: the balance, the direction, and anything coming up (a tax payment, a grant instalment, a loan repayment).
4. Risks or requests: anything the board needs to know or approve.

For wording, see variance commentary examples, or draft it with our free commentary generator.

Timing

• Agree the papers deadline. A pack that arrives the night before the meeting is not read. Five to seven days before is common.
• Work backwards to the close. If the papers go out on the 20th, the month needs to be closed and reviewed by around the 15th.
• Use the last closed month. For a meeting on 28 October, the finance section usually covers to 30 September. Say so on the cover.
• Between meetings, a monthly email with the headline reports keeps the board informed without waiting for the next pack.

Common questions

What should the finance section of a board report include? Half a page of commentary, then the headline figures (Executive Summary), the result against budget or last year (Profit and Loss or Budget Variance), the position (Balance Sheet), cash by account (Bank Summary), and who owes the organisation and who it owes (aged receivables and payables summaries). For most small organisations that is three to six pages.

How long should a small organisation’s board pack be? Long enough to cover the decisions and no longer. Ten to fifteen pages is common for a small company or charity. If the pack keeps growing, move detail that only one or two members read into appendices and keep the order of the front sections fixed.

What goes in the treasurer’s or finance commentary? The result, the two or three biggest variances with a reason each, cash and what is coming up, and anything the board must approve. For example: “A surplus of $4,200 for September against a budgeted $6,000. Grant income was $3,000 lower because the second instalment arrives in October. Cash is $48,000, enough for about four months of costs, with the $9,500 insurance renewal due in November.” See variance commentary examples for more wordings.

Which month should the board report cover? The last month that is closed and reviewed, not the current one. For a meeting on 28 October, report to 30 September and say so on the cover. A part month mixes timing differences with real ones and invites questions nobody can answer yet.

Can Xero produce a board pack automatically? Xero can save the reports as a custom report pack, so the layout is the same each month, but at the time of writing it does not email reports on a schedule. The pack is exported and attached by hand, or sent by an app that connects to Xero (see Xero report scheduling).

Getting it out each month

Xero does not email reports on a schedule at the time of writing, so most treasurers and bookkeepers export the pack and attach it to the board papers.

For the monthly between-meetings email, ReportPilot can send the finance reports from Xero automatically: for example the Executive Summary, Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet and aged summaries as one PDF, monthly or quarterly, to the board’s list of recipients. Approval mode sends it to the treasurer or bookkeeper first, so nothing reaches the board before someone has checked it. The narrative sections of the board pack are still yours to write. It asks Xero for read-only access, and there is a 14-day free trial with no card.