A picture paints a thousand words. A table of data could save you (and your reader) hundreds of words. But your table is a wasted opportunity if the reader doesn’t get your message from it. Or worse, skips over it. Here’s a tip to make the tables in
How to format a chart TIP: Remove the clutter from your charts. If you want your reader to get your message you need to make your message clear. Don’t just copy and paste a chart from Excel into a Word document or presentation. You need to format it first.
If you want the receivers of your finance reports to read them then you need to grab their attention at the top of your document. If you fail to do that they’ll skim your report (at best) or just do something else. Here are three ways you could start
I think somewhere during the journey towards a professional accounting qualification we adopt accounting-speak. Some of the words we learn are very specific, technical terms and we have to use them. I’m thinking of words like depreciation and recognition. But there is tendency amongst accountants to overwrite and use
When you’ve got a lot of data to include in a document it often makes sense to put it into a table. The default table style in Microsoft Word puts a fairly thick black border around every cell in the table. This is both ugly and a hindrance to
If you have a short message to send you can save yourself some time by putting the whole message into the subject line. This is also better for the receiver since they do not need to open the message unless/until they are going to reply to it. The trick
Bad writing costs your organisation a lot of money, too. A few years ago Josh Bernoff did some research into the Sad State of Business Writing. He surveyed business people who write at work and got over 500 responses. Amongst his conclusions were these gems: * Bad writing was costing the
Richard Feynman said, If you can't explain something to a first year student, then you haven't really understood. Feynman was talking about physics but I think the same sentiment applies to accounting and finance. Except, instead of a first year student you should be able to
You’ve read many times the advice to keep your writing clear and concise. But how do you do that? Here are three things you can do on your next piece of writing. First it means being a brutal editor of your work. Re-read your work before you “publish” it.
Your reader has limited time. Do them a favour with your emails and reports and keep them as short as possible. If a document is short (it fits onto 1 page or 1 screen) the reader can read it and remember what you want them to remember. If you include
Today is publication day for the new edition of Financial Management and Accounting in the Public Sector. To go with it I have created a set of pages on my website with links to further reading, videos, audio and other resources.
The technology for writing internal audit reports has changed since I wrote my first one in 1987 but not the content or structure. I wrote my first audit reports in the 1980s by hand and they were then copied by a typist before being sent to the client. Modern technology