For many people, reporting is one of those jobs that sits in the background until suddenly it becomes urgent.
A campaign goes live, content is published, updates are sent, and the team moves on to the next piece of work. Then a reporting request comes in.
It might be for a trustee paper, a funder update, a leadership meeting, or simply a review of how the campaign performed. At that point, what should be a straightforward task can quickly turn into a scramble through spreadsheets, email reports, website figures, social media data and notes saved in different places.
That is often where the frustration begins. Not because the information does not exist, but because pulling it together takes far more time than it should.
I hear this a lot from people working in charities. They are not short of data. In fact, they often have plenty of it. The challenge is that it sits across different systems, arrives in different formats, and is not always easy to turn into something clear and useful.
One spreadsheet has been copied forward from an earlier campaign. Another has had extra columns added over time. Different people record things in slightly different ways. Before long, even producing a simple update can feel more complicated than it needs to be.
That matters because reporting is not just an admin task. Done well, it helps teams understand what is working, what is not, and where to focus next. It helps communicators show the value of their work in a way that other people across the organisation can quickly understand. And in a sector where time and resources are often stretched, that clarity really counts.
The good news is that improving reporting does not always mean buying new software or starting a major digital project. Quite often, it starts with using familiar tools in a more confident and consistent way.
For many teams, that starts with Excel…
Reporting with Microsoft Excel
Excel is sometimes underestimated. For some people, it feels too basic to be taken seriously. For others, it feels slightly daunting, something they use only as far as they need to.
Yet it is still one of the most useful reporting tools many charity teams have access to. When it is set up well and used with confidence, it can save a great deal of time.
A lot of reporting problems begin with structure rather than formulas. Headings are inconsistent. Dates are formatted in different ways. Information is pasted in from different sources with no clear process behind it. Data for one campaign is mixed in with another. These things may seem small on their own, but together they create confusion and extra work.
Once a workbook is properly organised, everything becomes easier. Data is easier to check, sort and filter, summarise, and can be picked up by someone else if needed. That may not sound especially exciting, but it can make a real difference when a report needs to be pulled together quickly and accurately.
There is also the issue of repeat work. Many people spend hours doing tasks that Excel could help with much more quickly. Counting responses by channel. Highlighting duplicates. Rebuilding the same charts every month. Manually creating summaries from information that could be handled with a pivot table, a formula or a well-designed template.
Usually, the issue is not that people cannot do these things. It is that they have never had the time or opportunity to learn them properly. Like most of us, they have picked things up as they go. That often means they are doing a perfectly decent job, but in a way that takes longer than it needs to.
And once that becomes part of the routine, the long way round starts to feel normal.
A helpful reframe
One of the most helpful changes a team can make is to stop thinking about reporting as a process of collecting everything and start thinking about it as a process of answering a question.
That shift can make a big difference.
A useful report is not useful because it contains lots of figures. It is useful because it helps someone understand something. What happened? What worked well? What underperformed? What changed? What should we do differently next time?
Starting there often leads to much better reporting. It becomes easier to decide what really needs to be included and what does not. A trustee update is unlikely to need the same level of detail as a campaign debrief within the comms team. A funder report may need a different emphasis altogether. Not every audience needs every number.
This is where clarity matters just as much as technical skill. I have seen very clever spreadsheets that were hard for anyone else to interpret, and I have seen much simpler reports that were far more effective because they were easy to follow and made the main point clearly.
At its best, Excel does not just help people manage data more efficiently. It helps them communicate more clearly.
Power up your reporting with Power Business Intelligence
Microsoft’s programme Power BI can then take things a step further. It’s a business analytics and data visualisation platform that helps organisations turn data into interactive reports and dashboards.
Not every charity needs Power BI, and not every reporting challenge calls for a dashboard. In many cases, Excel is more than enough. But there comes a point where reporting becomes more regular, the data comes from more sources, or different stakeholders want different views of the same information. That is where Power BI can be especially useful.
What many people like about it is that it moves reporting away from static documents. Instead of rebuilding the same summary each month, it becomes possible to create a clearer, more interactive view of the data. Trends can be tracked over time. Performance can be compared across channels or campaigns. Different people can focus on the information most relevant to them without needing a separate report created each time.
For charity comms teams, that can be particularly valuable when campaign activity is spread across several platforms. Email results, website traffic, event sign-ups, social engagement and response data often sit in different places. Bringing that information together in a sensible way can save time, but just as importantly, it can make it easier to spot patterns and insights that might otherwise be missed.
Still, the tool itself is only part of the picture…
Refining your reporting skills
The most useful reporting tends to come from a combination of stronger skills and better habits.
Agreeing what is being measured. Keeping date ranges consistent. Separating raw data from summary pages. Using templates that can be reused. Making sure charts add meaning rather than just decoration. Taking the time to explain what the numbers suggest, rather than simply listing them.
That last point matters a great deal.
Many reports stop at information. Fewer get as far as insight.
There is a big difference between saying that engagement increased by a certain percentage and explaining what may have driven that increase, what it suggests about audience behaviour, and what the team wants to test next. That is where reporting becomes genuinely valuable. It helps colleagues see communications not just as delivery, but as a strategic part of the organisation.
It is also the part that often gets lost when too much time is spent wrestling with spreadsheets.
That is one reason why building confidence in Excel and Power BI can have more impact than people sometimes expect. It is not only about learning formulas, functions or dashboards. It is also about freeing up time and headspace for better thinking.
In many charities, reporting sits with people whose main role is not data. They are communications managers, digital leads, campaign staff and heads of team who are trying to make sense of results alongside everything else they need to do. A bit more confidence with the tools can make that work feel far more manageable. It can also reduce the risk of important knowledge living with one person and one spreadsheet that nobody else fully understands.
Often, it is small changes that make the biggest difference. A cleaner workbook. A more consistent process. A better summary page. Less manual effort. More clarity. More confidence.
None of that sounds dramatic, but together it can make reporting feel much less heavy.
And that matters, because reporting is not simply about proving that work happened. At its best, it helps comms teams tell a stronger story about what they are doing, what is landing with audiences, and where they can have the greatest impact next.
For teams that would value a bit more support in this area, there are practical training options available. ExperTrain offers live online Excel courses from Introduction through to Advanced Functions & Data Modelling, as well as Power BI courses at Introduction, Intermediate and Advanced levels. We also provide a 2 for 1 offer for charities and not-for-profit organisations on our scheduled Microsoft applications courses, which can be found on our charity offers page.
For busy teams, making reporting easier is not a small win. It creates more time for the work that matters most.
Image credit: Photo by fauxels on Pexels
