Board Financial Package Template
Five documents and four sheets, including a register that gives every explanation the board was handed last quarter a verdict this quarter.
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Commentary Register
[Entity] — claims made to the board
An explanation is a claim. A claim is not finished until it can be tested in a quarter you can name.
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Claim | A number assigned once and never reused |
| Line and variance | The line it explains and the amount, to the dollar |
| Cause | One cause, from the closed list. Never two |
| Closeout quarter | The quarter this cause predicts something checkable |
| The test | A sentence that can only come out true or false |
| Verdict | Entered in the closeout quarter, not before |
| Consecutive packs | How many packs running this cause has appeared on |
Three verdicts, and one that is not a verdict
| Held | The test came out true |
| Did not hold | The test came out false. Say so in the next pack |
| Below floor | The line came back inside the floor untested |
| Promoted | Three packs running. It is the plan, not the quarter |
The closeout runs before any new commentary is drafted. A pack that writes this quarter's sentences before testing last quarter's agrees with itself and with nothing else.
Every board pack template prescribes the same run of sections: an executive summary, financials against plan, a metrics dashboard, variance commentary with named drivers, then a forward look. The advice is sound and the format stays consistent from meeting to meeting. The commentary does not. A cause named in March is never revisited in June, so the same sentence can be offered four quarters running and nothing in the process is built to notice. Boards remember the format. They forget the claim.
Here every explanation is a numbered claim carrying one cause, the amount it explains, a closeout quarter and a test that can only come out true or false. Calderwood Instruments, an illustrative instrument maker, backfilled four packs into the register and got verdicts on 28 claims. Seventeen held. All six failures sat on two lines, and both lines had carried the same cause for three quarters or more. Added up, those two causes were worth 1,803,640 that no single pack had ever shown as one number.
Service revenue was called late in four consecutive packs and never once came in above plan, because the plan recognised it 60 days after the order while the median install landed at 101. Both causes moved into the planning assumptions rather than into a fifth sentence. The pack is also a record with weight: a director is fully protected in relying on the records of the corporation, and materials given to a board are books and records a stockholder can demand. Feed it from a finished close.
What's in the pack
Commentary Register sheet
One row per claim, with a stable number, the cause, the amount, the closeout quarter, the test, the verdict, the consecutive pack count and the cumulative amount. This is the file the rest of the pack exists to serve.
Commentary Standard
The materiality floor with its basis, the closed list of eight causes and what closeout tests each one against, the four verdicts, and the promotion rule. Set once a year so the floor cannot move to suit a variance.
Board Financial Memo
The finance section itself, opening with the closeout of last quarter's claims rather than with this quarter's results. Then the quarter in one paragraph, the new claims, cash, unit metrics and the decisions being asked for.
Variance Narrative
One section per claim: the arithmetic decomposed into units, rate and mix, one named cause, a dated test, an owner, and the prior claim history on that line so a second appearance is visible before it becomes a third.
Cash and Runway Note
Runway with the denominator stated first: six months of measured burn rather than plan burn, restricted cash excluded, and the levers ordered by lead time so the board reads past the one it can no longer use. Where a lever needs a date rather than an ordering, that is the runway and scenario pack. Pairs with a thirteen week cash forecast.
Budget vs Actual Summary sheet
Actual, plan, variance, prior year and the source query for every line, plus two columns nothing else carries: whether the line is claimable and whether it cleared the floor. The claim numbers are assigned here.
KPI Trend sheet
Eight quarters of revenue, margin, opex, operating income, burn and cash that roll forward against each other, with a column marking any quarter where a metric definition changed and prior periods were restated.
Unit Metrics sheet
Each metric with its definition, the query that produced it, three comparison periods and the claim it supports. A metric whose definition changed carries the date and the restatement, or it does not go on a trend.
Board Finance Deck
Seven slides plus appendices, each naming the sheet it reads from, with the closeout as slide one. No figure is retyped, so the deck cannot disagree with the memo. Complements the board question prep brief.
Space rule
Every claim carries a closeout quarter and a test, closeout runs before drafting, and three consecutive packs is a promotion rather than a fourth explanation. It governs every prompt in the space.
How to use it
- 1
Open in River, or download it
Open the pack in River and let the agent build it from your own close package, or download the blank Word and CSV files instantly with no account.
- 2
Send the last four board packs first
These matter more than the current close, because every claim in the register comes out of a prior pack. Decks, memos, PDFs and board minutes all work, and three packs is enough to start.
- 3
Let the closeout run before anything is drafted
Each prior explanation gets reconstructed as a claim with the test its cause implies, then tested against what actually happened. Verdicts go in the register, and inferred tests are marked as inferred.
- 4
Promote anything at three packs, then build the deck
A cause on three consecutive packs moves into the planning assumptions with the measured quantity behind it and its cumulative amount. Only then is this quarter's commentary written and the deck generated from the sheets.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Completely. Take the Word documents and CSV sheets with no signup, no card and no trial. Edit with AI is an optional second path for anyone who would rather the agent backfill the register from their own prior packs than reconstruct four quarters by hand. More packs sit in the template library.
We have never written commentary this way. Is the register useless at first?
The opposite. The first run is a backfill: prior packs are read, each variance they explained becomes a claim, and the test its cause implies is inferred and marked as inferred. Calderwood got verdicts on 28 claims in one pass and found two causes that should already have been promoted.
What is the materiality floor and who sets it?
A dollar threshold below which a variance gets no claim, because a claim inside normal variation cannot be tested either way. You set it once a year against a stated basis, a small percentage of quarterly revenue, and write both the basis and the number down before the year's first pack goes out.
How is this different from a board deck template?
A deck template gives you slide structure and page-count advice, which this pack also has in its deck document. What it adds is the register underneath: the deck is generated from four sheets, and slide one is the verdict on the last pack rather than a summary of this one.
Does it produce the whole board pack?
It produces the finance section, which is the part that has to reconcile. Operating and strategic sections come from elsewhere in the business. The internal monthly read the quarter is assembled out of is the monthly management report pack, whose register scores commitments against the ledger rather than testing explanations. Alongside it sit unit economics and the investor update figures tool.
What format are the downloaded files?
Five .docx documents covering the memo, the variance narrative, the cash and runway note, the commentary standard and the deck outline, plus four .csv sheets, all in one zip. Everything opens natively in Word, Pages, Google Docs, Excel, Numbers and Sheets with no conversion step.
What does Edit with AI actually do?
It opens a free River account with this pack installed as a private workspace, primed to read your prior board packs and your close package, backfill the register, run the closeout and flag every cause at three packs. Send nothing and it writes nothing. Covenant reporting runs alongside in the lender pack.
Test the last pack before you write the next one
Download the blank pack as Word and CSV files, or open this exact pack in River and let the agent backfill the register from your own prior board packs.
Edit with AI