As of 13 August 2026, AI can create a business report template.

What to actually do

1. Do it yourself

   The route this page recommends

   A chat interface, no skill needed, and roughly 15 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open a blank document in Word, Google Docs or your preferred document editor and decide whether the finished template will be used weekly, monthly, quarterly or for another reporting period.
   2. Gather one recent business report, the relevant spreadsheet or dashboard fields, your branding guidance and any required approval or distribution rules.
   3. Paste the prompt into an AI chat and replace every bracketed slot with the purpose, audience, sections, data sources, decisions and output format for your report.
   4. Copy the generated template into your document editor and apply your organisation's logo, fonts, colours, page settings and accessibility features.
   5. Compare every proposed heading and table against the recent report and your current reporting process, then remove sections that collect information nobody uses.
   6. Replace generic placeholders with the exact names of your systems, metrics, owners and approval roles, without adding figures the AI did not receive.
   7. Ask a colleague who prepares or uses the report to complete one trial copy, then correct unclear instructions, missing fields and unusable tables before sharing the template.

   Prompt

   Create a reusable business report template for [business or team].
   
   Purpose: [what the report is for]
   Audience: [who will read it]
   Reporting period: [weekly, monthly, quarterly or other]
   Required sections: [list them, or propose a sensible structure]
   Inputs and data sources: [systems, spreadsheets, documents or manual figures]
   Decisions the report should support: [list them]
   Brand and tone: [formal, plain English, concise or other]
   Output format: [Word, Google Docs, Markdown, or other]
   
   Build a practical template, not a completed report. Include:
   1. A title page or header with report name, reporting period, owner, version and date fields.
   2. An executive summary with prompts for key results, changes, risks and recommended actions.
   3. Clear headings for every required section, with a short instruction explaining what belongs there.
   4. Tables for figures, targets, variances, owners, deadlines and actions where useful.
   5. Placeholder labels that make missing information obvious.
   6. A consistent structure that can be reused for each reporting period.
   7. A final checks section covering missing data, unexplained changes, totals, dates and approvals.
   
   Do not invent business figures, policies, targets, sources or names. Mark any proposed section as optional. Use plain British English. First provide the template, then provide a short list of decisions I still need to make before using it. Make the result easy to paste into [output format].

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Hand it to a person

   The distant third

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.