The new report up close (part 1) — executive summary

This post will look into the new report format that we have created in more detail and discuss some of the decisions we made around the report. Hopefully it can also provide some help in understanding all that new data from those of you either moving up from the earlier version or new to the service. We using our demo project for this little exercise.

Attention, this is an old article where certain parts may not be completely up to date. Aidhedge is a young company where things quickly change. We have chosen to retain the article as a “lessons learned”.

Executives typically have little time to go into details and depend on accurate summaries to make good decisions. Still, we need your feedback in order to improve our report further! Send us an email or reach out on twitter with your suggestions on how we can make AidHedge better. The most useful comments will be greatly rewarded (we will implement them right away!)

The Executive summary
We had quite a lot of feedback on the first version of the report. One major comment was that the overall report was to technical for non financial staff such as program officers and managers. So we now start with an executive summary, where we try to provide a condensated view with the most important. Where are we now and where are things heading?

1. The project overview bars
The two bars represent the total implementation of your project, from the start date until the project ends, as defined by your budgeted transactions. On each bare there are white lines, representing transactions, planned or already completed. We hope that this will provide a quick understanding of where in the project lifecycle the project is.

Next to the bars you have figures in percent, giving you the current result of all those transactions already carried out. You get one for donor funds and one for project costs. They show the result of completed currency transactions compared to budget. Here we see that donor funds are 2.89 % below budget so far. But at the same time costs have decreased by 13.51 % below budget.

2. Total remaning risk
Here you have the maximum remaining risk to your project budget (from currency transactions!). It will move towards zero as more and more transactions are completed. It gives you an immediate number of the uncertainty in the remaining budget.

3. Next transaction
This bar shows you the next upcoming transaction. It provides a updated analysis of how currency rates can affect the value of the transactions. The uncertainty will decrease the closer you get to the planned transaction date. We hope that having this information will enable organisations not only an option to budget for the next transaction in a better fashion but also to ensure that they can act if they perceive the risk is too big,

4. Projected result
This figure is a dynamic calculation of the project budget based on currency fluctuations since the start of the project and calculations of the remaining risk. The larger sum in the middle is the result compared to budget.

For the demo project we see a projected result (basically a new budget) of +2.35 %, or an increase with USD 159 434. The smaller figures gives you the remaining risk interval. As you see its still very uncertain, with a risk that the budget result could be somewhere between USD — 546 038 to USD + 864 906. This interval will decrease as more transactions are completed.

5. Project currencies
Finally each executive summary includes a visual rundown of all the involved currency rates. The rates run back to the start of the project, or a year back if the project recently started.

Originally published at www.aidhedge.org.