Monthly management reports in 2 hours instead of 2 days

Every month I produce management reports for a company with six cost centres. Used to take me two full days of data wrangling, formatting, commentary writing. Now it takes about two hours. The data work is still manual but the commentary writing is completely AI-assisted. What I do: export the numbers, identify the key variances, then ask Claude to help me write clear, concise commentary on each variance. I give it context — what happened that month, what the budget was, what actually occurred. It drafts the commentary in clear business language. I review, adjust numbers if needed, and make sure the tone is right for our CEO and board. The commentary is actually more consistent now. I used to write differently at 7pm on a Tuesday than I did on a fresh Monday morning. The AI keeps the quality level even. One thing I've learned: give it lots of context. "Revenue was down 12%" is not enough. "Revenue was down 12% due to the two-week shutdown for the equipment upgrade that was planned and budgeted" gives it something to work with.

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