Board Brief and reports

ROI → Reports holds the reports you take out of Roiva: the Portfolio Snapshot, the Board Brief and the Value Evidence Register. One initiative's review is on the initiative's own page. Anyone in the account can download them, on every plan, Free included.

To see them before you have data of your own, open the sample reports: each one made by Roiva's report code for a fictional company, with how to trace a figure back to its formula, inputs, source and approver.

Portfolio Snapshot

Cash value, freed capacity, total cost, cash ROI and a per-initiative breakdown, the same figures the ROI Overview tab shows. Freed capacity, where there is some, has its own tile and column, and is in no ROI. Its Planned vs Actual section sets the actuals against the plan to date: the plan for the months the actuals cover, not the whole horizon. Choose Download Excel, Download PDF or Download PowerPoint.

It covers the reporting period picked at the top of the page (1 year, 3 years, 5 years or All time), so pick that first. The PDF and slides name the methodology version in their footer, as the Board Brief does.

Board Brief

One fiscal quarter against the one before it, as three pages of PDF for the board pack or as slides with editable tables and charts for the board deck. It ignores the reporting period at the top of the page.

Pick the quarter from the list on the Board Brief card. It offers the last eight quarters that have ended and, at the top, the quarter running now to date.
Choose Download PDF or Download PowerPoint.

The brief shows:

Three opening points: the quarter's cash return and whether the portfolio has reached payback; how many initiatives returned more cash than they cost, the one that led and the largest drag; and, where the quarter freed capacity, how much, beside the cash figures and in none of them.
The quarter and the one before it: net cash value this quarter, against the quarter before, and net cash value and cash return to date. To date means everything through the brief's last day: the end of the quarter, or yesterday for a quarter to date. It isn't the day you downloaded it, so a brief for a quarter that has ended doesn't change when you download it again later.
The initiatives behind it: the five that moved the quarter most, whether up or down, and the rest rolled into one line so the totals still add up.
What moved net cash: a bridge from the quarter before's net cash to this quarter's, one initiative a step: the five that moved it most, whether up or down, and the rest in one line. Each step splits into its change in cash value and its change in cost, and a cost that rose shows as a minus. The steps add up, to the dollar, to the change the first figure on page 1 gives.
Where the money went: net cash value to date by quarter, the quarter's AI spend by cost type, and each initiative's spend against its approved budget to date, the ones over it first and named. Past five cost types or five budgets, the rest are summed into one row. The slides add net cash value quarter by quarter.
What the cash rests on: the quarter's approved cash that rests on Roiva's default figures rather than your own; on an estimate, meaning an estimated before-figure (a benchmark or a judgment) or a figure its recorder marked as an estimate; and on a reconstructed before-figure (a sample timed without the AI after go-live). Each is named apart. See Baselines for an initiative that's already live.
How much of your AI spend is measured: where a connected provider billed for AI in the quarter (a paused or disconnected connection included), what it billed and how much of it an initiative books. A cloud, data platform or GitHub bill counts for its AI services and whatever an initiative maps, not the whole invoice. A connection set aside as Not for an Initiative still counts as unattributed here. See Linking connections to initiatives.
What's in other currencies: how much approved cash value and cost was booked in another currency and counted in dollars at the European Central Bank's rate, how much cost counts at a provisional rate while its period's rates are out, and what had no rate and is in no figure. AI spend billed in another currency is in dollars the same way.
Whether the numbers can still move: how many of the quarter's months have a locked accounting period. Cost and value in a month that isn't locked can still change.
Value approved by the person who recorded it: when any of the quarter's approved value was self-approved, the brief's caveats give the amount. The Value Evidence Register lists the entries.
Who approved the cash: how much of it the account's auto-approve setting approved rather than a person. The brief's reading notes give it, and the approval controls when it was generated: the senior approval threshold, whether auto-approve is on, and whether people may approve entries they prepared.
What changed since the last brief: a brief of a whole quarter is set against the last brief of that whole quarter in Export history made after it ended. If its cash value, freed capacity, cost, AI spend billed or the part of that spend attached to an initiative has changed since (a late cost, a month reopened, an entry approved, a late provider bill, a vendor marked as AI or not, a cost link added or removed, a books or card connection paused or disconnected, a provider account connected again), the reading notes say so, with the earlier brief's date and report ID and each figure before and after.

The Portfolio Snapshot and an initiative's review carry the same disclosures: in a Disclosures section of the PDF, a Disclosures slide, and rows on the Excel summary.

Locking a month records its cash value and cost in the audit log. Relocking a month that was reopened says what changed since it was last locked.

A brief of the quarter to date covers it from its first day through yesterday, the last whole day, and says so on every page: "Q4 2026 to date · through November 17, 2026 · approved entries only". Its figures stop at that day, and it compares the quarter with the one before it over the same number of days, not the whole of it. Its file name and its row in Export history carry the date too, so a brief you make next week is a different, later document rather than one that disagrees with this one.

A quarter with no approved value, no cost and no initiatives taking part is refused with a message, because there is nothing to report.

The brief's footer names the version of the methodology it was made under, such as "roiva.ai/methodology · v6", so a brief forwarded a year later can be matched to the method that produced it. Its report ID is beside the page number, so a printed copy can be matched to its row in Export history.

The brief's reading notes also say how many of the quarter's initiatives were under a signed measurement charter. Once the account signs charters, its caveats give the quarter's approved cash counted under none, and name any charter revised after value was approved under it.

Management commentary

The Board Brief can carry a few paragraphs of management commentary under the net-cash bridge on page 3, and on a slide of its own. It prints only once an Owner or Admin approves it.

On the Board Brief card, pick the quarter. The line under it says whether that quarter has approved commentary. Choose Write commentary, Review or Edit.
Type it yourself, or choose Draft with AI. The draft is written from the quarter's figures only: the bridge, stage changes, go-lives, portfolio decisions, approved budget changes and new recurring cost lines. It says what the figures show and doesn't guess why they moved. Write your own clears it so you can start from a blank page.
Choose Save. Every dollar figure, percentage, percentage-point change and multiple in the text has to be one of the quarter's figures: as the brief prints it, or shortened with K or M (such as $12.3K) to no fewer than two significant figures. A multiple is read to a tenth. A figure that isn't is named, and the text isn't saved until it's fixed. The commentary holds up to 1,200 characters in five paragraphs, with a blank line between them.
An Owner or Admin chooses Approve. The brief prints it as "Management commentary · approved by" their name and the date. The person who wrote it can approve it.

Before you approve lists what the figures can't explain: a step on the bridge with no stage change, decision, budget change, new cost line or go-live beside it, and anything the AI draft flagged. It isn't printed. Answer it in the commentary, or leave it out.

Without approved commentary, the brief leaves the section out entirely, and the download asks you to confirm first. Changing the text takes its approval back, and so does a new AI draft. If any figure it was approved against moves (a cost booked late, an entry approved, a month reopened, or an initiative it names renamed), it needs approving again, and briefs leave it out until then. A brief of the quarter to date and the brief of the closed quarter share one commentary: its approval carries from one to the next while none of its figures has moved. Each brief in Export history keeps the commentary as it printed.

Which months a quarter covers

Quarters follow your fiscal year. An Owner or Admin sets it under Organization Settings → General, in Fiscal year starts in, then chooses Save Changes. Leave it on January if your fiscal year is the calendar year. With any other start month, quarters are labeled "Fiscal Q1", "Fiscal Q2" and so on, and the list shows the months each one covers.

Value Evidence Register

An Excel file with one row for every approved value entry in the reporting period: the formula version it was computed with, its inputs, the measurement charter it was counted under, and who approved it. Its Self-approved column marks an entry approved by the person who recorded it, last edited it, or entered a figure it was calculated from, and why that was allowed (see Approving value and initiatives). Its summary gives approved cash value and approved freed capacity as two rows, never one total, and counts the entries approved under no signed charter. It's the value appendix for an audit committee. Choose Download Excel on the Value Evidence Register card.

It's refused if the reporting period has no approved value entries, or more than 25,000 of them. Narrow the reporting period and try again.

One initiative's review

On an initiative's page, the … menu at the top has Download Review (PDF) and Download Review (PowerPoint). The review covers the initiative's whole life rather than a reporting period: cash value against the plan to date ("Not live yet" before go-live) and total cost against the plan from when work began, freed capacity beside them where it has any, its baselines, the formulas computing its value and the assumptions they use, the stage changes that got it here, and each portfolio decision with its figures as they stood that day.

What the numbers count

Approved value only. Drafts and entries waiting for review aren't in any report. See Approving value and initiatives.
ROI is cash ROI. Every report takes ROI over cash value. Freed capacity is reported beside it and never added to it, and a capacity realized as cash counts once, in cash. See How Roiva calculates value.
Every cost entry counts toward total cost. Costs don't need approving.
Sample data. The Board Brief and the Value Evidence Register always leave sample initiatives out. The Portfolio Snapshot leaves them out once your account has an approved value entry or a cost entry of its own. Before then sample data is all there is, so the snapshot includes it and says so.

Export history

Every report you download is recorded. Choose Export history at the bottom of ROI → Reports to see them. Download in a row's menu returns the file exactly as it was generated, so a report you've already shared keeps saying what its readers saw. Each row shows the file's SHA-256 fingerprint, so a copy someone holds can be checked against what Roiva produced (shasum -a 256 <file> on a Mac). Only an Owner or Admin can Delete a Portfolio Snapshot, Board Brief, initiative review or Value Evidence Register, and the audit log keeps what it was, with its fingerprint. These reports stay when the person who made them deletes their Roiva user.

Reading the ROI dashboard — the figures these reports are built from
Your data: exports and deletion — exporting tables and the whole account