Tell the AI which periods it's comparing before it writes a word

sweetmelon team · Finance

The monthly financials are out and someone wants commentary by Thursday. An AI can draft it from the export, and the first version will confidently tell you that repairs are out of control in a month when the annual insurance happened to land. Set it up before you ask for prose. Label the periods in the file so it knows what is being compared with what, since a column read the wrong way round makes every sentence in the draft wrong. Then mark the accounts that move on a schedule of their own, the quarterly rent, the yearly licenses, so it stops presenting them as a shock. And tell it that "nothing here worth chasing" is an acceptable answer for a line. Keep the payroll and bank detail out of it. Working from a summary export is enough for variance commentary, and it keeps the sensitive files where they are. What comes back is a draft with maybe four accounts flagged and a paragraph each. You check the numbers against the report, keep the two that hold up, and write the reason yourself, because the reason is the only part your board will remember.