Prepare Management Reports for clients

This article explains how to collate and customise key financial reports around the unique needs of each client.

You can prepare Management Reports in FreeAgent to allow you to understand your client's data quickly and in a way that suits you. 

Management Reports in FreeAgent include an Executive Summary, Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Aged Debtors, and Aged Creditors reports. However, you can customise the Management Reports' content to choose which reports are included, add a front cover and add some notes.

The article covers the following topics. Please select a link to jump straight to that section:

• Accessing Management Reports
• Filtering Management Reports
• Customising Management Reports content
• Adding notes to Management reports
• Sharing Management Reports with your clients 

Accessing Management Reports

Log in to your Practice Dashboard and select ‘Switch to’ beside the relevant client to access their account.

Navigate to the ‘Accounting’ tab at the top of the screen and select ‘Reports’ from the drop-down menu.

Select ‘Management Reports’ from within the High Level section.

Filtering Management Reports

You can filter the displayed reports by report, view and reporting period.

Filtering by report

When filtering by report, you can select to display the Executive Summary, Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Aged Debtors or Aged Creditors reports.

If you've customised which individual reports are included in the Management Reports, you'll only see the selected reports in the drop-down menu.

Please note that the figure for ‘Assets minus Liabilities’ on the Executive Summary may not match the ‘Total Assets’ figure on the Balance Sheet as the figure on the Balance Sheet will be rounded up to the nearest pound, whereas the figure on the Executive Summary won’t.

Filtering by view

When filtering by view, you can select to display the Executive Summary, Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reports by ‘Yearly’, ‘Quarterly’, ‘Monthly’ or ‘Comparative’.

Aged Debtors and Aged Creditors reports will show the report as at the given end date and won’t update to filter by view.

How to use the Comparative view

If you select the ‘Comparative’ view option and then choose two periods that you want to compare, you can compare two different quarterly or annual reports side by side, or you can view a custom date range.

Filter by reporting period

When filtering by reporting period, you can select to display reports by current year to date, a specific accounting year, or a custom date.

Customising the Management Reports content

To customise the Management Reports, select ‘Report settings’.

You can add a front cover and select which reports to include in your Management Report.

Adding a front cover

Enter the title of the report, who they were prepared by and the date they were prepared.

Selecting which reports are included in your Management Reports

In the Contents section, select the checkbox next to each report that you would like included in your Management Reports. Please note that the Executive Summary can’t be excluded.

Adding notes

To add notes to the Management Reports, select the ‘All notes’ tab.

Select ‘Add a note’.

Choose which report section you want to add the note to, write the note in the ‘Note’ field and select ‘Add note’ to complete the process. Please note that there is a maximum character limit of 6000 for each note.

The note will appear at the bottom of the selected report section except notes added to the 'Introduction' section, which are included at the beginning of the exported full Management Reports.

You’ll then be able to see the date that each note was added, and who added it.

To edit the content or report section of a note previously added, select ‘Edit’.

To remove a note previously added, select ‘Delete’.

Sharing Management Reports with your clients

There's multiple ways that you can share the Management Reports with your clients. Clients with level 7 access to their FreeAgent account will be able to view the report but won't be able to edit the notes or settings unless they have full (level 8) access.

Once the reports are fully prepared, you can export the Management Reports by selecting ‘Export report’ in the top-right and choosing ‘Full Report (PDF)’ or 'Full Report (XLSX)' from the drop-down menu. You can then send the full report your client.

Alternatively, you can send your client the URL of a specific section of the Management Reports. When they click the link, they'll be able to log in and view that section of the reports.

Finally, you could go through the reports with your clients in person or share your screen over a zoom call remotely.