The blog
Blog
Short pieces on the craft of the recurring report: the format that gets read, the typesetting that makes numbers trustworthy, and the small decisions that separate a document from a spreadsheet.
Latest
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Why Excel page breaks land in the wrong place in a PDF
Why page breaks move between Excel and the PDF, and how to keep a table in one piece.
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Why Excel cuts off columns when you save as PDF
Where the missing columns of an Excel PDF go, and what fitting them on one page costs.
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The rows your export adds above and below the data
What the lines above and below the data do to the numbers in a client report.
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Let the model write the sentence, never the number
Three consulting firms retracted reports for the same reason. The fix keeps the model off the number.
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What an LLM gets wrong when it reads your spreadsheet
Six ways a model misreads a table, and why verifying the output cannot catch them.
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We built a deterministic layout engine. It is not live yet.
A deterministic layout engine, finished and not yet in the product.
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The report breaks when the spreadsheet changes shape
The file changed shape. Nothing told the document.
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Client reporting automation stops at the document
Your checks came back green. That is not the same as correct.
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The client reporting mistake nobody writes about
The numbers were right. The sentence above them was last month's.
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How to automate client reports (without a template)
They automate the data, nobody automates the document.
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Your client reports shouldn't look like spreadsheets
Even with a proper tool, producing the document takes as long as the analysis itself.
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Why we're building Pressentable
Curated design beats freeform, and documents should be deterministic.
Start with the format
The notes above assume you already have a shape to pour numbers into. If you do not, start at the format itself: five parts, in order, with a free template and a live example.
The guide it belongs to Client reports your clients actually read The five-part client report format that wins renewals, with a free CSV template and a report published in the open.From CSV to this in minutes
Everything written here is what Pressentable does by default. Upload the file, fill the blocks, export a typeset PDF or publish a live link. On-brand without a designer, and next month the same report re-renders from the new file. The whole path is in the guide.
Founding members publish live links and print without our mark. See the founding offer.