Margin explanation, one page
- 0 statements, each with its sources; 0 labelled as estimates.
- Sources cited: 0.
Financial Intelligence · Expanded Financial Intelligence
Margin and Cost-Driver Explanations
Trace material changes in margin, spend, profitability and unit cost to the governed measures and source-backed drivers behind them.
Demonstration: Northgate Distribution (fictional) · Distribution. Fictional data and a scripted answer.
The situation
- Organisation
- Northgate Distribution (fictional)
- Who is asking
- Finance business partner
- Industry
- Distribution
- What happened
- Gross margin fell 2.1 points between Q2 and Q3 and the board wants a one-page explanation it can rely on.
The question asked
Why did gross margin fall, and which parts of the explanation can we actually support?
What it reads, and who can see the result
- Management accounts, Q2 and Q3 exportGross margin and revenue.
- Carrier invoices exportFreight cost per pallet.
- Warehouse volumes exportPallets shipped.
- Sales by segment exportRevenue by customer segment.
- Reads
- Quarterly gross margin, freight per pallet, pallet counts and segment revenue.
- Does not read
- Contract terms with carriers, or individual customer prices.
- Permission
- Finance read access to the reporting views.
- Who sees it
- The CFO, finance business partner and the board.
Try it
Choose which statements go into the brief. A statement with no source is refused; each one you include carries its sources with it.
Brief for the board: why margin fell
Choose the statements to include. Each one carries its sources into the brief.
0 of 6 statements included · 1 held back for lack of a source.
The answer
Simulated answer. Written for this fictional case, not produced by a live model. Only the figures in it are computed, from what you decided above.
0 of 6 statements are in the brief; 1 was held back for lack of a source.
The brief contains only what can be traced. The fall in margin and the freight rate increase are recorded; the share of the fall that freight explains is calculated from volumes and revenue [S1][S2][S3].
One statement, that the carrier switch caused the rise, is a natural explanation but nothing in the data supports it, so it is not in the brief. The recovery in Q4 is an estimate and is labelled as one.
Relies on: S1 · Management accounts, Q2 and Q3S2 · Carrier invoices, July to SeptemberS3 · Warehouse pallet volumesS4 · Sales by segment
Review and approval
The CFO decides. Approving the brief releases it to the board pack as the finance team's explanation. It does not change any figure.
Not ready to approve. Choose at least one supported statement for the brief first.
In the product this is a different person with the right permission. Here you play that role to see the rule.
What it produces
Statement trace
- Every included statement lists the source it rests on; one statement without a source was excluded.
Limits of this example
- Three of the statements are calculations from the sources shown; their method is stated, not hidden.
- A cause that the data cannot show stays out of the brief until someone supplies evidence.
- This is a scripted demonstration on fictional data. No model was called and no real organisation, person or result is shown.
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