How to build a revenue report in 2025? [Best practices]

How confident are you in your revenue statements?

Do they highlight growth drivers, weak spots, and future risks, or are they just numbers on a page?

A Gartner survey reveals that a third of accountants make financial errors weekly due to outdated reporting. Can your business afford to make decisions based on inaccurate data?

This article will show you how to build smarter, faster revenue reports, drive decisions, automate processes, and leverage AI for actionable insights.

Let's turn your company's revenue report into a growth tool.

What is a revenue report?

A revenue report is a financial document that summarizes how your company generates income over a specific period, whether daily, weekly, monthly, or annually.

In other words, a revenue report focuses on the value generated, much like an income statement, providing a comprehensive view of a company's financial performance.

Revenue refers to the total income generated by your core business activities, including product sales or service fees.

In terms of revenue, we categorize income into operating and non-operating revenue.

Operating revenue is the income from your normal business activities, including primary operations, like product sales, service fees, or rental income.

Conversely, non-operating revenue comes from one-time sources, like asset sales, interest, or a lump-sum investment.

While operating revenue shows the health of your ongoing operations, non-operating revenue is more sporadic and doesn't reflect the day-to-day performance of your business.

Why revenue report tracking matters

Revenue tracking ensures informed business decisions, allowing leaders to pivot strategies based on real-time performance data, improving outcomes, and mitigating risks.

Here's why tracking revenue is essential:

1. Tracks the company's financial health & business momentum, and cash flow: It helps you monitor where all the money is used or could be allocated for best results.
2. Informs strategic decisions and forecasting: Knowing where your revenue comes from allows you to forecast future performance and pivot when needed.
3. Supports investor relations and audit readiness: Investors and auditors rely on the revenue summary to evaluate financial performance and ensure compliance.
4. Reveals churn, upsell opportunities, and growth levers: Identify potential risk areas (like churn) and expansion opportunities (e.g., upselling or cross-selling).

By tracking how much revenue your business generates, you gain insights into growth patterns and customer behavior and identify areas for expansion.

Types of revenue reports and when to use them

This categorization is done based on how your company generates income over a specific reporting period:

1. Daily revenue report

Tracks real-time transactions, refunds, and revenue spikes. It helps identify performance changes or issues early, making it valuable for teams needing quick decision-making.

2. Weekly revenue report

Focuses on lead-to-close velocity, sales rep performance, and short-term trends. It's useful for sales teams and managers to monitor momentum and adjust strategies before the month ends.

3. Monthly revenue report

Tracks recurring revenue trends, net growth, and channel performance. Monthly reports are ideal for leadership teams to review progress, forecast, and pinpoint teams or campaigns driving or stalling growth.

Also, some companies track quarterly reports to get a comprehensive, long-term view of business performance, including revenue growth, sales pipeline performance, and profitability. This is essential for strategic forecasting and investor updates.

4. Annual revenue report

Provides a year-over-year view of net sales, performance, retention, balance sheet health, and customer lifetime value (CLV). It's essential for audits, budgeting, and long-term strategic planning with investors and stakeholders.

5. Recurring revenue report

Used by SaaS and subscription-based companies to track Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), churn, expansion, and net revenue changes. It's key for understanding the sustainability of recurring income and guiding pricing and retention strategies.

The above were the most common reports discussed, which track how revenue is tracked, but there are two specialized reports that we must know:

• Sales funnel report: Tracks the journey of leads through your sales pipeline, helping to identify bottlenecks and optimize revenue generation strategies, including the impact of marketing campaigns.
• Customer revenue report: Focuses on customer segments, including metrics like CAC and CLV. It helps identify high-value customers and optimize acquisition, retention strategies, and the income generated per segment.
• Product/Service revenue analysis: Segment revenue by product or service, helping identify top performers and growth opportunities in underperforming areas.

Effective financial reporting ensures accurate income tracking, cost analysis, and budget management. Let's move on to how you can do it.

How to build a revenue report from scratch?

Too detailed, generic, or disconnected from decision-making, these reports fail to drive meaningful action.

Here's how to create a financial performance report that's read, trusted, and drives better team decisions.

1. Clarify the purpose and audience

Before you create anything, ask yourself: Who is this report for, and what decisions should it help them make when reporting revenue?

For small business owners, it's essential to have clear revenue reports that break down earnings and expenses, helping you make strategic decisions that drive growth.

Here's how that plays out:

• Executives need visibility into sales growth, risks, and forecasts.
• Sales leaders want breakdowns by rep, product, or region.
• Finance teams need clean, reconciled data tied to recognized revenue.

Write a one-sentence goal for each primary audience, especially for a sales manager requiring clear revenue metrics tied to rep and regional performance.

This will help you focus on what matters and avoid overloading your report with irrelevant details. Based on this, you can build a revenue report template for different teams or needs.

2. Choose the right cadence and metrics

Revenue reporting over a given accounting period should match your team's decision-making rhythm to ensure financial accuracy, especially when tracking operating costs.

Don't report daily if you only review performance monthly; don't wait for monthly cycles if your business shifts weekly.

Align cadence with operational needs:

Once you've locked in cadence, select only the metrics that serve your audience, business model, and future revenue predictions. Skip vanity metrics. 

To create a meaningful revenue tracking report, focus on total revenue, incorporating all streams like product sales, service fees, and other income sources.

Key metrics to include (Based on business type)

Here is a revenue report example showing how to segment revenue by source (ads, Google, direct) to visualize performance trends over time. 

Insightful: Gross revenue vs net revenue: How to calculate & use

3. Consolidate data from your core systems

Most companies have financial data scattered across multiple tools. Your task is to pull it together into one unified view.

Key data sources to integrate for cash flow statement analysis:

• CRM (Customer Relationship Management): Deal flow and pipeline data

• Billing platform: Confirmed revenue, refunds, discounts, and cash flow data

• Subscription system: Churn, upgrades, and renewals

• Web analytics: Lead sources and conversion tracking

• Your bank account: This is for accurate cash flow analysis

Also explore: Finance CRM - A detailed guide on CRM for financial services

4. Design the report before you build it

Don't start in Excel, BI tools, or dashboards. Start with a pen and paper or a blank document.

Ask yourself:

• What are the three most important questions this report should answer?

• What visual format communicates those answers best (table, chart, written summary)?

• Where should you explain spikes, dips, or unexpected shifts?

Remember, a revenue analysis isn't just numbers; it's a story. Think like an editor, not just an analyst.

5. Automate what you can and add context before sharing

Automation can save hours. Pull recurring data from key systems, schedule automatic updates, and standardize your layout.

Before sharing the report:

• Spot-check totals against billing exports

• Add short insights to explain major movements

• Have someone outside your team review it for clarity

Final tip: Consider using a sales report template to standardize your reports, save time, and maintain consistency.

Building a comprehensive report gives you the complete picture of your financial health, making it easier to uncover trends and forecast future business performance. Let's see how AI is improving efforts.

How AI is transforming revenue reporting

With AI in finance and operations, reporting has evolved into predictive, automated, and far more actionable. Further, agentic AI in finance is now a critical enabler for businesses striving for faster, smarter decisions with less manual effort.

Here's the proof:

• 56% of US CFOs leverage AI in most financial decision-making processes; 98% prioritize AI integration in their business operations
• According to executives, AI is expected to drive revenue growth in the coming years, as highlighted by insights from the World Economic Forum.
• 83% of companies claim that AI is a top business strategy priority.

What AI brings to revenue reporting

AI adds depth to reporting, not only the speed part. Here's how it transforms the way revenue reports are created and used:

• Real-time data consolidation: AI pulls data automatically from CRMs, billing systems, analytics platforms, and customer tools, so no spreadsheets are needed.
• Predictive alerts: It forecasts churn risks, identifies upsell opportunities, and tracks sales growth trends before they impact performance.
• Narrative summaries: AI turns raw numbers into understandable insights, such as: "Revenue grew 12% this quarter, driven by transaction price increases in enterprise accounts."
• Anomaly detection: AI detects sudden dips or spikes in revenue, helping teams respond before issues escalate.
• Forecast comparison: AI tracks how actual MRR, ARR, and future revenue compare to predicted values, displayed efficiently on a revenue reporting dashboard for quick insights.

AI enables smarter tracking of key metrics and can be integrated with accounting software for seamless revenue reporting, reducing the chances of manual errors and improving accuracy.

Best practices for accurate and trusted revenue reports

Creating a financial performance report is about crafting a tool that stakeholders can trust, understand, and act on.

Here are the best practices to ensure your reports are accurate but also reliable and actionable across teams and timeframes.

1. Standardize how you recognize revenue

Standardize your revenue recognition by choosing the right accounting method, such as accrual accounting or cash basis. This ensures consistency and accuracy in your revenue reporting across periods.

Follow consistent revenue recognition rules, such as GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) or ASC 606, and accurately track operating expenses.

Identify the revenue allocation for each performance obligation in the contract, ensuring accurate and consistent recognition across periods.

Without consistency, reported net profit can appear inflated or misleading across periods, leading to bad decision-making.

2. Automate where possible, but keep human checks in place

Automation can reduce manual effort and improve consistency, but it shouldn't replace human checks.

Build a workflow where automation handles data pulls and formatting while people validate anomalies, explain the context, and ensure the story behind the numbers is sound.

Note that automation improves efficiency, but human oversight guarantees accuracy and clarity.

Insightful: What is workflow automation? Definition, features, and examples

3. Maintain audit trails and version control

Ensure every number in your report is traceable. Use version control, time-stamped exports, or comments to track data changes.

This practice is vital for audits, stakeholder reviews, or reconciling numbers across teams. Clear audit trails ensure data integrity and transparency.

4. Segment revenue by meaningful dimensions

Don't settle for aggregated numbers. Break down revenue by product line, customer type, region, or channel.

This enables teams to identify performance issues, spot growth opportunities, and make more targeted decisions. Segmentation reveals the story behind the numbers and uncovers actionable insights.

5. Review reports monthly with a critical lens

Make reviewing reports a recurring process, not a one-time task. Use monthly reviews to catch discrepancies, track trends, and adapt your reporting structure as your business evolves.

Stakeholder feedback should continuously shape what you include or exclude in the next cycle, ensuring reports stay relevant and effective.

Wrap up!

A good revenue report is trusted. A great one is used. 

A solid revenue analysis helps you track performance obligations related to your business operations and properly allocate revenue for more accurate financial assessments.

Automating processes, using AI for sales forecasting, and focusing on actionable insights turn compliance reporting into outcome-driven reports.

Ready to create reports that drive decisions? Try Salesmate and turn your data into real-time insights your team can trust.