The margin number is right. The definition behind it is not, and a director is about to ask. Executive financial reporting fails in the gap between an accurate spreadsheet and a defensible slide — and generative AI has made that gap easier to cross quickly and harder to notice.

This course builds the quarterly board pack end to end with Microsoft 365 Copilot. You'll scope and define a KPI set before writing a single prompt, direct Copilot in Excel to turn a messy quarterly export into a validated, chart-ready table, and tie every figure back to a source line. You'll then draft the deck in PowerPoint — choosing charts that carry a claim rather than display data, and writing bullet narrative that tells a director what changed, why, and what they're being asked to decide. Finally you'll run the review pass that decides whether the pack is fit to send: tracing claims, catching commentary the data doesn't support, and resolving the moment when slide 4 and slide 11 disagree. You'll practise against a quarterly export with the problems real ones have — a restated prior period, a renamed segment, three headcount figures that don't agree — defend a KPI table to a sceptical controller, rebuild three weak slides for a board audience, and face a CFO pre-read challenge on a pack you didn't write. Copilot drafts fast. This course is about what has to be true before that draft carries your name. By the end of this course, you will be able to: - Apply Copilot in Excel to transform raw quarterly financial metrics into validated KPI tables and chart-ready datasets. - Create executive-level PowerPoint decks with Copilot that convert KPI data into appropriate visual charts accompanied by concise, decision-oriented bullet narratives. - Evaluate Copilot-generated commentary and visuals to ensure message coherence and stakeholder relevance before finalizing the board deck. Working familiarity with quarterly management reporting and common financial KPIs (revenue, margin, operating expense, headcount, cash). Comfort navigating Excel and PowerPoint. Access to Microsoft 365 Copilot is useful for the hands-on work but is not required to complete the course — all demonstrations are viewable without a licence and every scenario supplies its own data. No prior experience with generative AI tools is assumed.