Quarterly Business Review (QBR)

Last reviewed: 2026-04-28

Writing guide — prompt structure to paste into any installed PPT skill

Ops Reporting KPI Dashboards

Best for: Internal ops reporting, quarterly business reviews, and executive status updates with KPI dashboards, traffic light indicators, and action items with owners

Not ideal for: External investor decks or client-facing presentations — QBR format is designed for internal audience familiarity, not first-impression storytelling

KPI Dashboard Slide Format

Revenue

$4.2M

↑ 12% vs Q3 · On target

Churn Rate

3.2%

↑ 0.4pp vs Q3 · Monitoring

NPS Score

↓ 7pts vs Q3 · Action needed

Each KPI card should include the metric value, traffic light status, and trend vs prior quarter — supply these in your prompt or in the source spreadsheet you give your skill.

Action Items with Owners

Action	Owner	Due	Status
Launch win-back campaign for churned Q3 accounts	Sarah K.	Jan 15	In Progress
Root cause analysis on NPS decline in enterprise segment	Mike T.	Jan 10	At Risk
Hire 3 CSMs for Q1 expansion targets	HR / Lisa M.	Feb 1	Done

Format action items into a structured table with owner, due date, and status columns. Provide them as a table in your prompt or as a CSV your skill can read.

Core Features

🚦

Traffic Light System

Color-code each KPI based on target vs actual: green (on track), yellow (at risk), red (action needed). Specify these thresholds in your prompt.

📊

KPI Dashboard Slides

Generates structured KPI cards with metric value, trend vs prior period, and target status — all in a consistent grid layout that works across functions (revenue, ops, product, HR).

✅

Action Items with Named Owners

Actions are structured with owner names, due dates, and status — not just a list of bullet points. The format ensures accountability is visible at the executive level.

🔄

Quarter-over-Quarter Comparison

Automatically formats metrics with trend indicators (↑↓) and QoQ delta — so the narrative of improvement or regression is visible without additional analysis slides.

Signals

Status System

Traffic lights (🟢🟡🔴)

Action Tracking

Owner + Due + Status

Type

Writing guide

Best Audience

Internal / Executive

How to use this guide

This page is a prompt template, not an installable skill. The structure below is the part that takes longest to write — copy it into your prompt to any of these real, installed PPTX skills:

Anthropic PPTX

the canonical PPTX skill

Excel MCP Server

for the KPI source data

Kimi Office Skills

alternative free PPTX generator

# 1) Install one of the skills above (e.g. Anthropic PPTX):
git clone https://github.com/anthropics/skills
cp -r skills/skills/pptx ~/.claude/skills/anthropic-pptx

# 2) Paste a prompt that follows the structure on this page:
"Create a quarterly business review (QBR) on [topic].
 Follow the structure described in https://powerpoint.md/skills/quarterly-business-review.html
 — i.e. use the headlines, sections, and visual conventions documented there."
        

Your skill does the rendering. This guide ensures the prompt produces output that matches the genre conventions audiences expect.

Alternatives & Tradeoffs

McKinsey Consulting Deck

Better for strategy and external narrative; QBR wins for recurring internal ops reporting where the audience knows the context

Financial Services Plugins

Better if your QBR needs live financial data from FactSet/PitchBook; QBR skill wins for ops metrics that aren't in financial terminals

Anthropic PPTX Skill

More general-purpose; QBR skill wins for the specific format of traffic lights, KPI dashboards, and action item tables