The readers of your finance reports are busy and you need to grab their attention right upfront.
Here are three ways you could open up a finance report that will keep the reader reading.
- An unexpected or controversial statement (followed by supporting evidence). If making a bold statement is too much for you, you could instead re-frame the statement as a question. We should stop making product A becomes should we stop making product A?
- A quotation that summarises your message. The quotation could be an epigraph but not necessarily. An internal audit report could, for example, begin with a quotation gathered in the audit fieldwork.
- Describe an event that has happened and why it matters to your organisation.
All of these work because they set up a question in the reader’s mind that you then answer.