Ask Lou

The Presentation Wizard

Tell Lou who you're presenting to and what you need, and he builds a PowerPoint deck from your own numbers.

Create PresentationBASICSPRESENTATION NAMEQ4 Board UpdateAUDIENCELoan OfficerBoard of DirectorsInvestorOwner / OperatorBank Covenant ReviewPotential AcquirerAnything else about this audience? (optional)Quarterly board meeting; they focus on marginsWHAT SHOULD THIS PRESENTATION ACCOMPLISH?Show how our KPIs improved over the last twoquarters and what drove the changeNextACME MANUFACTURINGQ4 Business UpdateBoard of DirectorsKey Financial HighlightsRevenue$7.2M▲ 8.2% YoYEBITDA$1.4M▲ 12.7% YoYNet Income$0.6M▲ 15.3% YoYSummary1Gross margin up 2.1 points on pricing2Debt paid down ahead of schedule3Operating expenses held to budget

Where to find it

On your Dashboard, open Create Presentation. You need at least one month of data imported, and AI turned on for your company: Lou writes the deck.

1. Basics

  • Presentation Name, such as "Q4 Board Update".
  • Audience: Loan Officer, Board of Directors, Investor, Owner / Operator, Bank Covenant Review, or Potential Acquirer. Add anything else Lou should know about them.
  • What should this presentation accomplish? In a sentence or two, what you need from the room.

Lou reads this and frames the whole deck for that audience.

2. Layout and 3. Configure

Start from your current dashboard or a saved layout. Its widgets (balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement, trial balance, budget analysis and KPIs) become the material for your slides. Set each widget's options, and turn off any you don't want in the deck.

4. Structure

Lou proposes the slides. Drag them into the order you want, change any title or subtitle, change a slide's layout, or add and remove widgets. Not what you had in mind? Regenerate with guidance and tell him what to change.

Slide layouts include a title slide, section breaks, one or two widgets, a widget with commentary, a KPI grid, your own text, and a conclusion.

5. Highlights and 6. Conclusion

Lou writes the key points for each slide and drafts a closing slide. Edit anything, regenerate with guidance, skip a slide, or write the conclusion yourself.

Your deck

Download gives you a PowerPoint (.pptx) file in widescreen. Titles and bullet points are text you can edit in PowerPoint; charts and tables are pictures of your statements, exactly as Ask Lou shows them.

Lou writes the words. Every number comes from your statements as they are in Ask Lou.

From a few answers to a finished deck
  1. 1Basics

    Name it, choose the audience, and say what it should accomplish.

  2. 2Your widgets

    Start from your dashboard or a saved layout, and choose what goes in.

  3. 3Lou drafts

    The slides, the key points on each, and a conclusion, framed for your audience.

  4. 4You refine

    Reorder, edit, or regenerate with guidance, at every step.

  5. 5Download

    A PowerPoint deck built from your own numbers.