Your board needs to understand the decision before it can help you make it. ROI.LIVE uses five main slides: decision and summary, financial performance, customer economics, execution, and the next-period plan. Keep detailed channel tables and methods in an appendix when the board needs them, so the main discussion stays focused on what you are asking people to approve.
The editable download follows that five-slide structure. The example below is illustrative, so replace its inputs with reconciled company records before using it as an actual report.
If the team needs help owning that reporting process, review fractional CMO reporting and decision support.
Editable resource
Use the worksheet
The CSV opens in Excel, Google Sheets or another spreadsheet editor. It contains labeled fields; sample data, where included, is illustrative.
Download the editable five-slide deck (PowerPoint)
Download the editable worksheet (CSV)
Preview the fields
- Slide
- Title
- Required content
- Source and definitions
- Owner
- Decision
Slide 1: decision and summary
Put the requested decision, period, main result and most important constraint on slide one. If you need a budget change or hiring approval, say so there. The board should have that question in mind while it reads the evidence, rather than discovering the request on the last slide.
What the board is being asked to approve
Approve a $10,000 reallocation inside the existing quarterly budget.
Checkout repair and a retention test.
Which spending reduces, the owner and the stopping condition.
Read the full explanation
Example: approve a $10,000 reallocation within the existing quarterly budget to repair checkout and run a defined retention test. State what spending will be reduced, who owns the work and what result would cause the team to stop or revise it. This is a sample request, not a recommendation for every business.
Slide 2: financial performance on a consistent basis
Use a financial picture the board can reconcile: net revenue, contribution before marketing, marketing cost and contribution after marketing. Explain how you treated returns, discounts, fulfillment and fees. Start from the finance total; adding overlapping channel-attributed revenue can make the same sales appear more than once.
An illustrative quarter with $500,000 net revenue, $300,000 variable order costs and $100,000 marketing cost leaves $100,000 contribution after marketing, before excluded fixed overhead and other costs. That is not automatically company net profit.
Slide 3: customer economics and retention
Show acquired customers, acquisition cost, contribution at matched cohort ages and repeat behavior under clear definitions. A customer with $85 average order revenue and $45 acquisition cost is not necessarily profitable; the order costs and later contribution determine the answer.
Keep observed and forecast customer value separate. The cohort guide prevents a young group from being compared with an older one as though both had equal time to buy.
Slide 4: execution and learning
Show what is completed and what remains a plan
Completed work
Describe what was delivered and the evidence available.
Planned work
Keep the retention test separate from an achieved outcome.
Learning
Distinguish an observed change from an attributed result and a causal estimate.
Read the full explanation
Show what the team completed, what changed and what the evidence supports, including failures and delayed dependencies. If a planned test did not run, explain the missing dependency. If a result arrived late, say why. The production list can explain the delay, but it does not establish business value on its own.
State whether a result came from a controlled comparison, an attributed report or an observation. In the sample deck, the checkout repair is a completed technical task; the retention test remains a planned experiment. Do not present its target as an achieved result.
Slide 5: next-period plan and commitments
Leave the discussion with named owners, spending limits and review dates for each decision. State what evidence would change the plan. If repeat purchases or delayed payback carry the forecast, show the assumptions and a lower-performance case so the board can see what it is agreeing to fund.
The marketing calendar holds the operational detail behind this slide. Keep the board version concise enough to support the decision, with the source records available when questioned.
Keep definitions visible
Make each number's status visible
| Term | Meaning in this template |
|---|---|
| Net revenue | Revenue after the stated discounts and refunds, excluding taxes collected for others |
| Contribution | Revenue less the variable costs included in the stated model |
| Marketing cost | The defined program costs for the same period |
| Actual | Reconciled observed result through the stated date |
| Forecast | A modeled future result with assumptions |
Social followers are an audience on another platform, not a fully controlled owned asset. Email permission also has limits and does not transfer automatically to SMS. Describe access and consent accurately rather than inflating the asset slide.
Before the meeting
Check the deck as though a board member has asked you to walk through the arithmetic. Reconcile each chart to its source table, confirm the source date and remove benchmarks with no defined population. Label illustrative material and replace unused prompts before the meeting.
The companion marketing ROI presentation guide explains how to present a difficult variance candidly. Send the decision and supporting record early enough for the board to read it. The five slides should support a discussion the evidence can withstand.
Questions owners ask
Is this a five-slide or six-slide template?
Five main slides. The decision and executive summary share slide one. Optional detailed methods and channel tables can be placed in an appendix.
Does the download contain real company results?
No. It is an editable template with an explicitly illustrative worked example. Replace the sample inputs with reconciled company data before presenting it as an actual report.
Should channel-attributed revenues be added together?
Not without reconciling overlap. Use the finance total as the company revenue basis and explain the attribution method separately.
What should the board be asked to decide?
State the specific approval, budget change or operating choice, its owner, spending limit, review date and the evidence that would change the plan.
Method
This guide presents ROI.LIVE’s editorial analysis and worked methods. Numerical examples are illustrative unless expressly identified otherwise. No ranking, citation or business outcome is guaranteed.
Substantively revised September 8, 2026. Definitions, calculations, sources and internal destinations were reviewed for this edition.
