Not reconciled before publication
Reconcile first. A published figure that does not match the accounts becomes a story about competence rather than about spending.
Power BI · Readiness
Public reporting publication readiness
Twenty checks before publishing spending or performance data, covering accuracy, accessibility and the questions members will ask.
Why run this
What this checklist is for
Publishing a spending file satisfies a transparency obligation without making spending legible. Legible means somebody without technical skill can answer a reasonable question in under a minute.
It also means the figures survive being questioned, which is a higher bar and the one that matters politically.
Run it with
Head of Finance or Performance
And with
The analyst who will maintain it
And with
Communications and accessibility leads
0 of 0 complete · 0%
The checklist
20 checks, in the order we would run them
Tick only what you can genuinely evidence today. An item you intend to do is not an item you have done, and scoring yourself generously here only produces a comfortable number and an uncomfortable project.
Section 1
Accuracy
Because a correction is more visible than the original publication.
Section 2
Legibility
Whether a non-specialist can use it.
Section 3
Accessibility and publication
Obligations that are frequently discovered late.
Section 4
Sustaining it
Whether the publication survives its author.
What your score means
Read this against the number above
These bands are deliberately blunt. The middle band is where most organizations honestly sit, and it is a perfectly reasonable place to proceed from — provided the gaps are written down with owners rather than carried as optimism.
0–59%Significant gaps
Do not proceed yet. More than four in ten items are unaddressed, and the ones that fail here are usually the foundational ones that make everything after them harder.
60–84%Mostly ready, with known gaps
Proceed on a defined scope, with the outstanding items written into the plan as risks with owners and dates. This is the most common honest position.
85–100%Ready
The remaining gaps are small enough to handle during delivery rather than before it. Confirm the unticked items are genuinely minor rather than simply unexamined.
Your score highlights automatically as you tick items above. Nothing is saved, sent or tracked — refreshing the page clears it.
Closing the gaps
If you could not tick these, start here
The four items below are the ones whose absence causes the most trouble downstream. If your unticked items include any of these, they are worth addressing before the rest.
Accessibility not checked
Address it before publication. In most jurisdictions this is a legal obligation and retrofitting is more work than building it in.
One view for all audiences
Build three over one model. The extra effort is small and the difference in usefulness is large.
Single person dependency
Document and test with a second person. Publication obligations do not pause for annual leave.
Want a second opinion on your score?
Pick one spending question that currently takes an afternoon to answer, and we will build the model and the three audience views for it against your structure.
Talk through your result Read the related guides We reply to every message within one business day.
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