River
Y CombinatorBacked by Y Combinator
FREE TEMPLATE

Quarterly Business Review Template

Four sheets and four documents that score the quarter against what they actually bought it for, and check every number before it is said.

Free download  ·  No account needed

Value Realized Summary

Corveth Retail Group, Q3, prepared for operations leadership

Every figure below carries what it was measured against, over what period, and whose data it came from. Only the incremental change is counted.

1. What we can show you

Outcome, in your wordsFigureMeasured againstClass
The Friday close now runs in under two hours across all six regions1h 47m7h 20m median, eight weeks before go-liveMeasured
Uncovered weekend shifts in the north19 to 3Q1 2025, your scheduling exportMeasured
Overtime across the estate-4%Q3 2024. The estate was already falling 7% year on year, so only the residual is claimedMeasured
Agency spend, year to date-$310,000FY2024, your figure, from your Finance Business PartnerYou supplied

2. What we are not claiming

ClaimWhy it is not here
Rota build time down 62%Instrumentation started at go-live. There is no before
Roughly $480,000 saved a yearModelled from a benchmark, not measured on your data
Scheduling satisfaction improvedSix survey responses. One person moves that score 17 points

3. Stated confounders

You hired 22 seasonal staff into the northern regions in July, which improves weekend coverage on its own. Three of the sixteen recovered weekends are attributed there rather than to us.

Four defensible figures beat nine that invite a question. The arithmetic behind each one is on the second page in full.

Search this and page one hands you a deck outline. Nine to fifteen slides, agenda timings to the minute, and a value slide that says quantify what the customer's business gained. Not one of them tells you how to decide whether a figure belongs on that slide. That is the entire job. A quarterly review is the meeting where the customer's own finance team gets to test your number, and a claim that does not survive being tested costs more than the slide was worth.

So Value Claims is the gate. Every figure that would go in front of the customer is written down as the sentence it would be said as, then checked: what baseline, taken when, and is the gain incremental. Federal benefit-cost rules have held that line for decades, counting only the part that would not have happened anyway. Then the evidence class: measured from their data, supplied by them, or modelled. Modelled figures are useful internally and never reach the customer page.

The second half is Goal Attainment, and it carries where each goal came from. Written into the statement of work, said by a named person on a dated call, asserted by the account team, or never stated at all. A goal resting on somebody's memory is marked unsourced and goes to the review as a question. The renewal behind it gets its own clock in the renewal risk brief. Take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, or hand River the order form and the usage export and let it rebuild the quarter.

The sheet that decides what you are allowed to say

Goal Attainment with a provenance on every row, Value Claims with its verdicts, and adoption cut by the unit the customer actually manages against.

Goal Attainment

Illustrative rows for a fictional grocery chain, Corveth Retail Group, in the third quarter of a two year agreement.

Goal, as they stated itProvenanceSourceActualStatus
Friday close under two hours in all six regionsContractSOW 3.21h 47m medianMet
No uncovered weekend shifts in the northCallOps Director, 12 Feb3, down from 19Partly met
One labour cost view for regional managersContractSOW 3.44 of 6 regionsMissed, ours
Reduce agency spendAccount teamNobody can name a sourceNot measurableUnsourced
Overtime under 4% of regional labour costContractOrder form appendixNeeds their payroll extractCannot measure
Self-serve onboarding rota for store managersCallHead of Retail Ops, 4 AugNot instrumented yetNew this quarter

Unsourced is not the same as unmet. Agency spend appears in three internal decks and in no customer document or call. It goes to the review as a question to confirm, never as a result, because scoring an account against a goal it never agreed to is how a review turns adversarial.

A goal that cannot be measured is stated as not measurable, with the blocker named. It is never estimated into a number.

Value Claims

Every figure that would be said out loud, written as the sentence it would be said as, then checked.

ClaimClassBaselineGrossIncrementalVerdict
Friday close under two hoursMeasured7h 20m, pre go-live-5h 33m-5h 33mCleared
Uncovered weekends 19 to 3MeasuredQ1 2025-16-13Cleared, confounder stated
Overtime down 11%MeasuredQ3 2024-11%-4%Cleared at the incremental figure
Agency spend down $310,000They suppliedFY2024, their figure-$310k-$310kCleared, attributed
Roughly $480,000 saved a yearModelledNonen/an/aInternal only
Rota build time down 62%MeasuredNone. Telemetry began at go-live-62%Cannot computeStruck
Every region live on the cost viewMeasured0 at go-live4 of 64 of 6Struck, corrected to a miss

Gross and incremental are different columns for a reason. Overtime fell 11%, and the estate was already falling 7% a year before anyone signed. Four points is what this product can claim, and showing both numbers is what makes the four believable.

A struck claim does not get softened into a directional word. It comes out, and the review names it in the not-claiming section.

Usage and Adoption Trend

Cut by region, because regions are what Corveth manages against. Four quarters, so the column shows a direction rather than a reading.

RegionSeats24Q425Q125Q225Q3TicketsCause found
North East520.310.580.790.854Two floor sessions in July
North West480.280.510.740.816Same sessions, plus seasonal hiring
Midlands440.440.670.810.843At its ceiling, live longest
South East410.360.550.520.4119Finance mapping never finished. Ours
Wales170.000.120.290.351Onboarded with no launch support
Ellersby Foods00.000.000.000.000Acquired in May. Not in the contract

One falling region beats five rising ones. South East is the only estate segment going backwards, it holds nineteen of the quarter's tickets, and the root cause is a data mapping our own solutions engineer paused in July. That is the line the customer opens with, so it is the line the review opens with.

Every movement carries a cause, or it carries the words no cause found. An unexplained fall named honestly reads better than a total that hides it.

What's in the pack

01

Goal Attainment

One row per thing they bought it for, in their words, carrying whether the goal was written into the contract, said on a dated call, or asserted by nobody in particular.

02

Value Claims

The gate. Every figure gets a baseline, an evidence class, a gross and an incremental number, any confounder, and a verdict of cleared, internal only, or struck.

03

Usage and Adoption Trend

Four quarters cut by the unit the customer manages against, with a cause recorded beside every movement and the words no cause found where there is none.

04

Open Issues and Commitments

Both sides' promises from the last review with dates and days late, including yours, carried over with their original dates rather than quietly renumbered.

05

Value Realized Summary

The page the champion forwards to their own finance team, with the method beside each figure and a short section naming the claims that were left out. A quarter this clean is also the kind of signal a reference and advocacy program times an ask to.

06

QBR Narrative

The review itself, structured around their goals rather than your features, with the misses first and an owner attached to each one.

07

Next-quarter Plan

Commitments in both directions with dates and named owners, plus the measurement work that has to happen before the next review can claim something this one could not.

08

Renewal Read

Internal only. The renewal date, the notice period the term clause actually requires, the honest position, and the one change that most moves it.

How to use it

  1. 1

    Open in River, or take it blank

    Open the pack in River and hand it the account, or download the Word documents and CSV sheets and fill them in yourself.

  2. 2

    Send the paperwork first

    The order form, the statement of work, the proposal, and the notes from the original deal. Goal Attainment is rebuilt from those, not from the product.

  3. 3

    Run the claim check

    Every figure you want to show gets a baseline and an evidence class before anything is drafted. Expect to strike one you were attached to.

  4. 4

    Split the two audiences

    Three documents to the customer, built only from cleared claims. The renewal read stays with you, with the notice window on it.

Frequently asked questions

Is this template free?

Yes. Four Word documents and four CSV sheets, downloaded as a zip, no signup. River is the optional half: it reads the order form and the usage export, rebuilds Goal Attainment with provenance on every row, and runs the claim check. The account arrives here from the customer onboarding plan, and single-shot jobs live in River's tool index.

We never wrote down what the customer bought it for. Is this useless?

That is the normal case, and it is the first thing the pack handles. Goals are reconstructed from the order form, the proposal and the sales-cycle notes, each carrying its provenance. Goals existing only in the account team's memory are marked unsourced and taken to the review as questions, which opens better than a scoreboard the customer never agreed to.

We have no pre-deployment baseline. What then?

Then the affected figures come off the customer page and the review says which ones and why. Report the level rather than the change, and put building the baseline into next quarter's plan as a commitment with a date. A number with no baseline is a reading, and presenting it as an improvement is the claim most likely to be tested in the room.

Can we put the satisfaction score in?

Put the response count next to it or leave it out. A Net Promoter Score is the share of promoters minus the share of detractors, so on six responses one person moving from passive to promoter shifts an account score by roughly seventeen points. Six responses is a mood, not a metric. Cross-source themes live in voice of customer across sources.

Where does the renewal date come from?

The contract record, not the calendar. The Renewal Read names the renewal date, the notice period the term clause requires, and therefore the date the window actually opens, which is usually earlier than the account team assumes. Pull the clause with customer contract review, and the same arithmetic from the buyer's side sits in the vendor renewal pack.

Does it produce the slides?

It produces the documents the slides are built from, which is the half that takes the time. Value Realized Summary is a single page the customer's champion can forward to their own finance team without translating it. Drop it into whichever deck tool your team already uses; the numbers arrive cleared, with the method beside each one.

What if the quarter went badly?

Then the review says so, first. Every goal missed with the reason and whose reason it is, and every commitment your own side failed to meet with its original date. A review containing no failures reads as a sales document, and the customer already knows what went wrong. Owning it first is what makes the value section believable.

Score the quarter against what they bought it for

Take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, or open this exact pack in River and hand it the order form and the usage export.

Edit with AI