Commentary

What Commentary is for

Commentary is a rich-text panel on the Dashboard for the board-pack narrative attached to a specific period — the story behind the month’s numbers, kept alongside them and ready to publish to viewers or pull into a report.

TL;DR

Open the commentary panel from the glyph in the Dashboard subheader. It’s a rich-text editor that auto-saves per company, plan, and last-actual month; admins publish, editors draft, viewers read the published version.

How to open Commentary

Open the panel from the glyph in the Dashboard subheader (next to the Period / Compare toggles, on the Overview tab). The icon is state-aware:

  • Plain — no commentary yet for this period; the tooltip reads Add commentary.
  • Draft state — there is an unsaved draft; the tooltip reads Draft commentary.
  • Published state — a published version exists; the tooltip reads View commentary.

Drafters always see the icon. Viewers and guests only see it once a published version exists for the active period.

How Commentary works

The panel is a rich-text editor that saves as you type, scoped per company × plan × last-actual-month — so May’s commentary stays distinct from June’s, and the case A plan version stays separate from case B.

Roles

  • Super Admin / Admin — draft, publish, discard, delete
  • editor — draft only (drafts auto-save; publishing requires admin)
  • viewer / guest — read the published version only

Actions

  • Publish — promotes the current draft to the published version (timestamped, attributed)
  • Discard — drops draft changes and reverts to the published version
  • Delete — removes the published version (admins, with confirmation)
  • Copy — copies the rendered commentary as HTML and plain text to the clipboard, ready to paste into an email or document

Draft helper buttons

Helper buttons pre-fill the editor with deterministic, data-driven drafts you can then edit (the same numbers always produce the same text — it’s a rule-based narrator, not AI):

  • Executive Summary — YTD headline (Revenues, margin, cash position)
  • [Month] Performance — last-month detail with breakdown bullets for Revenues, Contribution margin I, EBITDA
  • Cash Flow (YTD) — operating / investing / financing cash flow vs plan, plus working-capital ratios

These are starting drafts, not finished narrative — read, edit, and publish.

Commentary panel open on the Dashboard with a published version visible, the draft helper buttons (Executive Summary, Month Performance, Cash Flow YTD) at the top, and Publish / Discard / Copy actions in the toolbar

  • Dashboard — where the Commentary panel lives
  • Notes — short, in-place remarks on a single cell (vs. the period narrative here)
  • Report Builder — the report commentary is generated by the same deterministic narrator