Xero management report: cover page, notes and commentary

Short answer: in Xero, add commentary with text blocks or a Blank report page, use notes for standing wording you can hide or show before publishing, and set a report publishing style for your logo, border colour and footer. What you can change on Xero’s own cover page depends on your version of reporting. For a fuller cover (company number or ABN, practice branding), export the pack as a PDF and put your own cover and commentary page in front of it. Clear last month’s commentary before each run: text in a saved custom pack carries forward.

Xero’s Management Report groups several reports into one document. Out of the box it is a set of financial statements. With a few additions it becomes something a director will actually read: a front page that says whose accounts these are and for when, a short commentary, and the reports behind it.

This guide covers what you can add inside Xero, where the limits are, and a simple workaround when you need more. Xero has been changing its reporting regularly, with several updates to report text and notes during 2026, so treat this as a snapshot and check Xero Central for your edition.

What the Management Report is

Xero Central describes management reports as packages that group Xero’s reports and text-based information in one larger report. You can add, remove and reorder reports, include more than one version of the same report (for example a Balance Sheet at two dates), adjust each report’s settings and layout, and save the result as a custom report to re-run each month.

If you have not set one up yet, start with how to send a monthly management pack from Xero, which covers which reports to include.

Adding words inside Xero

Xero gives you several places to put text:

• Text blocks inside a report or pack, for commentary or explanations.
• Notes, which you can hide or show before you publish or export.
• The Blank report, a report with no figures that can hold free text, which some people use as a commentary page inside a pack.
• Headings and notes linked to report figures. In August 2026 Xero’s changelog described headings that can be linked to a report field, and notes that stay in sync with the numbers. If your edition has these, they are a good way to stop commentary going stale when a figure changes after a late journal.

Text in a saved custom pack carries forward to next month, which is useful for standing notes (basis of preparation, a reminder that figures are unaudited) and a trap for monthly commentary. Make it part of your close to rewrite or clear last month’s commentary before publishing.

Logos and styles

Report publishing styles let you set a default logo, border colour and footer, and choose the style when you export to PDF. Xero Central also describes adding a name and a watermark at export, which is handy for marking a pack as DRAFT before it is final.

For many practices this is enough branding. Set it up once per organisation and every export picks it up.

What Xero does not do yet

At the time of writing:

• Fully customisable cover and contents pages are a long-standing request on Xero’s product ideas forum, with people asking for things like logos, company or ABN numbers and practice branding on the front page. What you can change on the cover depends on your version of reporting, so check it in your file before planning around it.
• Scheduled sending. Packs are run and exported by hand; Xero said in May 2026 it was exploring scheduling. See Xero report scheduling.
• Automatic commentary. There is a product idea for automated profit and loss commentary and variance analysis. For now the words are yours to write.

A workaround for a fuller cover page

If you need a front page that Xero cannot produce, the simplest route is to make the cover separately and put it in front of Xero’s PDF:

1. Export the Management Report from Xero as a PDF, with or without Xero’s own cover.
2. Create a cover page with your logo, the business name, its registration number (company number, ABN or NZBN), the period and who prepared it.
3. Add a page of commentary.
4. Combine them into one PDF, cover first.

Our free management accounts commentary generator does steps 2 to 4 in the browser: it drafts commentary from the month’s headline figures, builds the cover page with your logo and registration line, and puts your exported Xero PDF behind it with a contents list and page numbers. Nothing is uploaded.

Writing the commentary

The commentary is the most-read page of any pack. A few rules of thumb:

• Lead with the result: profit or loss, compared with last month or budget.
• Give amounts and percentages together, so the reader can tell a big change from a big percentage on a small number.
• Explain the why: new customer, price rise, one-off cost, late bill.
• End with what happens next, so there is something to agree or challenge.
• Keep it to a page. The reports carry the detail.

See variance commentary examples for before-and-after wording.

Common questions

How do I add a cover page to a Xero management report? Xero’s Management Report can include its own cover page, but what you can change on it depends on your version of reporting, so check in your file. For a logo, border colour and footer, set up a report publishing style and choose it when you export to PDF. If you need more, such as the company number or ABN and the practice’s branding, export the pack as a PDF and put a cover page you made yourself in front of it.

How do I add commentary to a report in Xero? Add a text block inside the report or the pack, or add a Blank report, which has no figures and can hold a page of free text, as the commentary page. Notes can be hidden or shown before you publish or export. If your edition has headings and notes linked to report figures, use them so the wording updates when a number changes after a late journal.

Why does last month’s commentary still appear in my pack? Text saved in a custom Management Report carries forward to the next month. That suits standing notes, such as the basis of preparation or a line saying figures are unaudited, but monthly commentary has to be rewritten or cleared each time. Make it a step in your month-end close, before you publish.

Can Xero write the commentary for me? Not at the time of writing; automated profit and loss commentary is a request on Xero’s product ideas forum. The arithmetic part is mechanical: net profit of £7,300 against £5,100 last month is up £2,200, or 43%. The reason (a new customer, a one-off cost, a late bill) still has to come from someone who knows the business.

Can I mark a Xero report as a draft? Yes. Xero Central describes adding a name and a watermark when you export, so you can mark a pack DRAFT while figures are still being checked and export it again without the watermark once it is final.

Can Xero send the management report automatically every month? Not at the time of writing. Packs are run and exported by hand; Xero said in May 2026 that it was exploring scheduling. Until then, someone has to run, export and email the pack after each month-end.

Sending it every month

Once the pack and cover are settled, the monthly routine is: close, run the pack, update the commentary, export, send. ReportPilot automates the run, export and send part for standard Xero reports. Each pack has a cover note that goes in the email body and on the PDF cover page, figures are pulled from Xero when the pack is generated, and with approval mode the pack comes to you to check before it goes to the client. The cover note is saved with the pack, so for month-specific commentary, update it before the pack runs or add the commentary in Xero. ReportPilot asks Xero for read-only access, and there is a 14-day free trial with no card. For what goes in the finance section itself, see the board report template and budget vs actual in Xero.