A weekly report is useful when a manager can see what changed, what cannot yet be trusted, and what requires a decision. If the meeting still begins with people disputing dates and tracing figures back to source files, a polished dashboard has only moved the cleanup work into the room.
A reporting Virtual Employee should own the repeatable preparation work. It reads approved sources, applies explicit checks, records caveats, and prepares a short decision queue. It does not decide whether to move a deadline, reallocate budget, change staffing, or make an external commitment. A named manager retains approval for every consequential action, reviews material interpretations, and authorizes circulation.
Process map: from source cutoff to approved circulation
The MAJLS workflow has six steps.
- Freeze the reporting window. At the agreed cutoff, record the source, owner, extraction time, reporting period, and a link to the source record. Late updates go into the next run unless the manager authorizes a controlled refresh.
- Preserve, then transform. Keep the received values intact. Standardize dates, identifiers, and units in a working layer, with each transformation logged. Never overwrite a conflicting value to make two systems agree.
- Run decision-specific checks. Test completeness, consistency, timeliness, validity, and reconciliation only where those checks affect the manager's use of the pack. The Government Data Quality Framework recommends prioritising quality dimensions around user and business needs rather than treating every dimension as equally important.[1]
- Build an exception register. Every failed check becomes a visible item with its evidence, source owner, impact, and next action. Missing information stays missing. It is not estimated unless an approved method and clear label allow it.
- Compose the decision queue. Separate requests for management judgment from ordinary data corrections. Each decision item names the owner, deadline, available options, evidence links, and unresolved questions.
- Hand over for review. The programme director validates material interpretations, accepts or returns the pack, and authorizes its audience. Only then may an approved distribution step run.
Automation helps when the pipeline remains reproducible and auditable. UK Government Analysis Function guidance links those properties with greater trust in statistics.[2] For this workflow, that means retaining source snapshots or references, versioning transformation rules, logging validation results, and making every number traceable without reverse-engineering the final slide.
Filled example: weekly portfolio-report handoff contract
The following is an illustrative example, not a client deployment or a claim of measured results. It covers a programme-management office preparing a Friday portfolio pack.
Purpose and boundary
- Purpose: prepare a traceable view of milestone movement, budget variance, and unresolved dependencies across active projects.
- Cutoff: Thursday at 14:00 local time. The pack covers records approved by source owners before that time.
- Output: a draft portfolio summary, an exception register, and a decision queue for the programme director.
- Authority: the Virtual Employee may read approved records and draft the pack. It may not approve budgets, staffing, schedule changes, project status, distribution, or external commitments.
Source register
| Input | System of record | Owner | Freshness rule | Evidence retained |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Milestones | Portfolio tracker | Project lead | Updated after Wednesday close | Record link, version and extraction time |
| Budget actuals and forecast | Finance export | Finance business partner | Current accounting period | Export ID, period and extraction time |
| Cross-project dependencies | Dependency register | PMO lead | Reviewed within seven days | Record link and last-review time |
Validation block
- Completeness: every active project has a milestone status, forecast, and named lead. If not, mark the project incomplete and add the source owner to the exception register.
- Consistency: milestone dates in the portfolio tracker agree with the linked project plan. If they conflict, show both values and request owner resolution.
- Timeliness: each source meets its freshness rule. Stale records remain visible but carry a caveat and cannot support an uncaveated summary.
- Validity: dates parse correctly, project IDs match the register, and budget fields contain the permitted units and periods.
- Reconciliation: portfolio budget totals reconcile to the finance export within the finance team's approved tolerance. A mismatch is not silently allocated.
Decision queue at handoff
| Decision needed | Evidence | Unresolved question | Decision owner | Due |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accept or recover a two-week milestone slip | Project-plan link and change record | Does the dependency move the launch date? | Programme director | Friday, 10:30 |
| Confirm treatment of a forecast variance | Finance export and project forecast | Is the variance timing or additional cost? | Finance business partner | Friday, 10:00 |
| Choose an owner for a shared dependency | Dependency records from both projects | Which team has authority to commit the resource? | Programme director | Friday, 11:00 |
The handoff also carries the run ID, cutoff time, source versions, validation results, open exceptions, and the draft's intended audience. That is enough for a reviewer to reproduce the path from source evidence to each decision request.
Checklist for a controlled first run
- Name one manager who accepts or returns the pack and authorizes circulation.
- Give each input one owner, one system of record, one cutoff, and one freshness rule.
- Define failed checks using observable conditions: missing, stale, conflicting, invalid, unreconciled, or outside scope.
- Keep source evidence and transformations traceable for every material figure.
- Route exceptions to named owners with due times; never use model confidence alone to decide escalation.
- Match review effort to the consequence of the report. The AQuA Book says assurance should be proportionate to the risk of the intended use and the complexity of the analysis.[3]
- Run the first cycles in draft-only mode, compare the output with the existing process, and tighten rules before permitting any approved distribution action.
The design test is simple: the manager should receive a pack they can challenge, a queue they can act on, and a record that shows where both came from. The Virtual Employee prepares the ground. A person still owns the consequential decisions.