What makes a good report title?
First of all, the title should make immediately clear which organizational unit or company the report is about and what is being presented. Where needed, the reporting entity carries additional structural information to make the title meaningful (e.g. business division or product category).
- e.g. “Balance sheet of Muster AG” or “Operating result of business division XYZ”
Next, the measures used on the page and their units are listed.
- e.g. “Revenue in €” and/or “EBIT in mEUR”
It is advisable to stay within the same scaling wherever possible, so figures remain quickly comparable.
Listing the reference scenarios used on the report page tells the reader up front which figures to expect in the tables, charts, and other components.
- e.g. these can be “forecast”, “plan”, or variances of them.
A date or period assignment places the information on the time axis.
With this information, the reader already has the most important metadata and can put everything else on the page into the right context.
If a report page contains several components such as tables and charts, only the information they share appears in the report title; information specific to a component belongs in that component’s title.
Example of a report title from the BinoBI Workbench:
