In this guide 6 sections
Pick one page per role, send it at a fixed hour before the working day starts, and limit alerts to a few thresholds that need a decision. Overdue stock and late collections qualify. Route every exception list to a named person rather than a shared inbox, because an alert sent to everybody is acted on by nobody.
Replace the monthly pack with one page per role
The monthly pack runs to forty slides nobody finishes. Start by asking each role a single question, namely what it must know before nine o’clock to do its job that day, and write down the answers verbatim.
A branch manager wants yesterday’s sales against plan and open complaints, a finance clerk wants the aged debtors list, and a stores head wants lines below reorder level. Each answer becomes one page. One table, one chart at most.
If a page needs scrolling, cut it, because the real test is whether the reader can act within two minutes of opening the email. Keep the layout identical every day, so the eye learns where the overdue column sits and spots a change at once, long before anyone reads the numbers.
- Branch manager: yesterday’s sales and open complaints
- Finance clerk: invoices past due
- Stores head: lines below reorder level
- Owner: cash position and top five exceptions
Choose the delivery time and format
Send it when the reader decides things. A reorder list is useless at noon if purchase orders go out at ten, and a collections list should land before the first customer call, not after lunch.
Choose a format for a phone screen. A PDF snapshot or inline table works. A link to a live dashboard suits readers who want to dig, yet the key figures belong in the body so nobody must log in first.
Tie the schedule to the data refresh. A nightly ETL load that finishes at five means a send time of six, never earlier, with a footer stating the load time and the source. Doubters can check freshness without asking IT.
Pick alerts that deserve an interruption
A report is a habit. An alert is an interruption. Spend interruptions carefully, because every alert needs a threshold, a named reader and an action that reader can take within the working day, or the message is noise.
Good examples are stock overdue for reorder by more than three days, a customer balance that crossed its credit limit, or a spike in cancelled orders within one hour. Poor examples fire daily and change nothing.
Add a quiet period. A rule that repeats every ten minutes teaches people to mute it, and a muted alert fails exactly when the stock-out or the credit breach finally arrives.
- Overdue stock past its reorder date
- Collections beyond agreed terms
- Cancellations above a daily limit
- Failed data refresh, sent to the builder
Send the exception list to the person who can fix it
A shared inbox makes it nobody’s problem. Route each alert by a field in the data, such as the sales rep on the invoice, the buyer on the item or the branch on the order.
Put the list in the email itself. Show customer, document number, amount, days late and a link to the record, so the reader can start work without running a second search.
Every alert needs a deputy. A deputy steps in on leave. Without one, a cancelled-order spike on Friday evening sits unread until Monday, and by then the customer has already moved on to another supplier.
Review what gets opened after a month
Most email tools and BI schedulers log opens and clicks, so check which reports were read and which were ignored, then retire the ignored ones without ceremony.
Ask three recipients what they did differently because of an email, and if the answer is nothing, change the content or stop sending it.
Fewer reports that people use beat many that fill a folder, so put the review date in the calendar today before the habit hardens.
Report and alert schedule sheet
One row per report or alert. Columns are role, question answered, source, delivery day and hour, format, threshold, named reader, fallback reader and the action expected, so one glance shows who acts on what. The last column dates each review.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
How many scheduled reports are too many?
Any number someone stops reading is too many. One daily page and a short weekly summary suit most roles, and anything beyond that must justify itself with an action somebody took because of it.
Should alerts go by email or chat?
Email suits lists, attachments and anything that needs forwarding to a supplier, whereas chat suits short urgent messages that one person can answer in a line. Never send one alert to both. Duplicates breed distrust.
What happens if the data refresh fails?
Stale numbers must never go out. Make the send depend on a successful refresh, alert the report builder the moment it fails, and hold the email until the corrected load arrives.
Can we still keep one monthly management pack?
Yes. Build it from the same definitions as the daily pages, so the monthly total equals the sum of the days, and finance need not reconcile two sets of figures. Each daily page can carry a month-to-date line, which makes the link between the two packs visible to anyone who opens either one.