When's the last time someone told you "wow, great spreadsheet"?

I'm serious. Think about it.

You get all of your data, and then suddenly your colleague asks you to present it.

You have no time for PowerPoint.

You have no time for fancy Excel formatting.

You have 10 minutes, but you still want to show something that looks professional and tells the right story.

Most finance professionals in that situation would open Excel, maybe add a few charts, and send it as an attachment.

And that attachment sits in someone's inbox, half-read or not read at all.

Well, I want to show you a way that takes less time than the Excel formatting you're already doing right now.

Today you’ll see how to turn any financial data into a visual infographic or visual that your team will open, read, and respond to.

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Strong Analysis, Poor Delivery

Your analysis is strong but your delivery is working against you.

You write solid variance commentary and you build clean models. But, then you package the whole thing as an Excel attachment or a wall of text in an email.

You don't want only text. You want something visual.

When people see an Excel file, they mentally file it under "something I need to decode later."

It takes effort to interpret. It takes concentration to find the key numbers. And in a world where your colleagues are processing dozens of reports a week, effort is the enemy of engagement.

The usual alternatives aren't much better. You could learn a dedicated BI tool, but that means licenses, training, and a dependency on another team.

You could build charts in PowerPoint, but formatting slides from scratch takes hours you don't have. And even when you do invest that time, the output often doesn't match the quality you wanted.

The answer? To simply ask AI to create a visual in HTML.

This will save you soooo much time. Plus, it's much more efficient than letting a BI team work on it for 3 months.

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Canvas + HTML = Your New Reporting Format

All you need to do is add your dataset in Excel or CSV format, activate Canvas, and then tell it to analyze your data and help you visualize it.

That's the whole process at its simplest.

The important technical detail: for infographics specifically, I have found that using HTML creates more visual infographics for finance themes.

HTML gives you sexy layouts with highlighted metrics, trend charts, and clean formatting that looks like a professional design team built it.

If you want interactive scenario modeling where people can change inputs and see outputs update live (great for meetings), you'd use React (javascript based code focused on user interfacing) instead.

But for a monthly visual report you're sending to your colleagues, HTML is the right choice - Your team can just open the HTML file in their browser

What you end up with is (if you want) a mini dashboard where everything is customizable. You don't like the color scheme? Tell it to change it. You want your company logo in the header? Ask for it. You prefer a waterfall chart instead of a bar chart? Just say so, and it rewrites the code for you.

And this works across multiple tools. ChatGPT Canvas and Gemini Canvas both produce strong results. Gemini has the added benefit of exporting directly to Google Slides (and from there to PowerPoint).

Copilot doesn't have full Canvas yet, but it can generate HTML visuals and it keeps improving.

Plus, Claude now lets you create visual dashboards as artifacts that you can publish and share with your team directly via a link, with no exporting required.

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​Build Your First Financial Infographic

What you're going to do is pick one report you sent last month and rebuild it as a visual. Here's the process.

Step 1 — Prepare your data. Export your financial data to Excel or CSV. Include the metrics you want to highlight (revenue, costs, margins, KPIs) and make sure your column headers are clear and consistent. The cleaner your input, the better the output.

Step 2 — Upload and prompt. In ChatGPT or Gemini, enable Canvas mode. In Claude, just start a new conversation and upload your file. Then prompt something like:

Claude Example

Gemini Example

ChatGPT Example

Step 3 — Customize in plain English. Ask for changes the way you'd brief a colleague. "Change the colors to match our brand." "Add a section comparing this quarter to last quarter." "Make the revenue figure more prominent at the top."

Canvas updates the design instantly each time.

Step 4 — Verify and audit. This step is non-negotiable. For your HTML dashboard, you can audit it, and you have a document you can keep to prove to everybody that the calculation works and the code is correct. If something doesn't look right, you can ask AI to explain the code in normal words, and then tell it to modify the formula to match what you need.

Step 5 — Save and share. Save your infographic as a PDF, or if you're using Claude, publish the artifact and share the link. You can put it in an email, attach it, read it on a phone, read it on a web browser.

Pro tip: Next month when you have a new file, you just need to change the source and you get the same type of dashboard. Save your prompt, reuse it every time, and you'll have a consistent visual standard with almost no additional effort.

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The One Thing To Remember

Next time you are asked to show a report, don't send the spreadsheet.

Build the infographic or visual. Save it as a PDF (or share the raw HTML) and send it to your colleagues..

You’re using the same data, but getting a much better level of engagement. And next month, you reuse the same prompt with updated numbers and you're done in minutes.

Plus, you can do the whole thing faster than the Excel formatting you were going to do anyway.

Spreadsheets tell the story. Visuals sell the story.

Start with this month's financial summary, and turn it into something your colleagues to open.

Best,

Your AI Finance Expert,

Nicolas

P.S. — Did you find this useful? Hit reply and let me know if you're planning to try this for your next monthly report. I read all replies.

P.P.S. — Interested in learning more techniques of using AI for dashboards? I've covered this in one of my YouTube videos, How to Build Finance Dashboards With AI in Minutes.

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