This feature is included with Fathom Pro - the plan with access to all of Fathom's features. Companies on Portfolio can be upgraded to Fathom Pro at any time.

What should you use it for?

Write meaningful, accurate financial report commentary suited to your audience with the Commentary Writer.

Unlike general AI chatbots, the Commentary Writer exists in a secure environment and is trained to do one task: draft clear, professional, data-based commentary that explains the financial and non-financial results in your reports.

It generates commentary on demand with numbers that can easily be reviewed for accuracy.

This article details:

How to make commentary meaningful to your business or client

How to ensure the drafted commentary suits your report and financial period

How to prompt the Commentary Writer and refine commentary

You can learn about the Commentary Writer’s security and how to turn on the Commentary Writer for your organisation from our ‘Enable the Commentary Writer’ article.

Follow our suggested workflow

Before you can use the Commentary Writer, it must be turned on for your organisation.

Make the commentary meaningful to your business or client
Fit the commentary to your report and reporting period
Generate and refine the commentary

Make commentary meaningful to the business

The Commentary Writer understands accounting terms and has access to the results in your report components, but it does not automatically know your or your client’s business. That is some of the expertise you can provide.

The Commentary Writer can connect your results to your business or client’s goals, strategy, market conditions, current position, and more, if you provide it with Business Context.

What is Business Context?

Business Context is persistent or slow-changing information about the business. It can be used to tailor commentary for financial reports across several periods. Report Context (discussed later) is used to tailor commentary for a particular period.

You should review or update the Business Context occasionally (e.g., quarterly or yearly).

Add Business Context

To add the Business Context for a company:

Go to the Company Settings.
Select Company Profile on the left sidebar.
Fill out the Business Context.
Save.

The Business Context is split into categories to help you add the right details for your business.

Here are some examples of Business Context:

Type of Business Context	What it is
Goals	The key, persistent goal(s) for the business. You can include more temporary goals in the Report Context. Goals can include thresholds you want to meet, such as annual revenue figures or the number of customers. You can also include an owner’s goals, such as exiting and selling the business in a certain number of years.
Strategy	The medium-to-long term strategy the business is planning to use to achieve its goals. Temporary shifts in strategy can be included in the Report Context. Strategy can include geographic expansion (opening additional locations or targeting customers in new regions), developing new products, offering more services, and/or making use of new technology.
Market conditions	Persistent industry factors. Temporary factors can be included in the Report Context. Market conditions can include labour availability, fluctuations in interest rates or costs of materials, technological innovation or adoption in the market, and the overall economic climate.
Current position	The general position of the business. A good way to think about the current position is using it to define where the business is now compared to its goals. The current position can include the business’s market segment, employee headcount, the number of business locations, the business life cycle stage, and/or its main source(s) of funding.
Other	Any additional context you would like to include. 💡Smart Tip: You can include instructions on spelling for the commentary, such as “Use British spelling when generating commentary.”

📝 Note: The Commentary Writer has already been given the persona of a financial professional writing report commentary. We do not recommend instructing it to take on another persona to protect the quality of the commentary.

When is Business Context used?

If you’ve added it, the Business Context will automatically be used to draft commentary by the Commentary Writer.

You are always in control. If you do not want the Commentary Writer to use the Business Context while drafting some commentary, you can turn it off.

When using the Commentary Writer in a Pro Report, you can toggle the Business Context on or off for a specific chat:

Click the Stacked lines with dots icon in the lower left corner of the Commentary Writer.
Toggle it on or off for the chat.

Fit the commentary to the report and period

With Business Context, the Commentary Writer understands your or your client’s business, but it doesn’t know about the report you’re crafting or what influenced the specific reporting period. Again, your expertise is needed to provide the Report Context.

What is Report Context?

Report Context is information about the report, its audience, or the reporting period. It enables the Commentary Writer to tailor commentary for the specific report, not the overall business.

It includes context such as one-off events, seasonal demand shifts, short-term changes in focus or strategy, the report type (e.g., board report, sales review, etc.), or your report audience (e.g., investors, executives and board members, sales and customer success team members, etc.).

When considering what to include for Report Context, you can ask yourself:

Are there any key factors that impacted results during this period that should appear in the report commentary?

What type of report is this? An investor pack, board pack, monthly operations report, etc.?

Who is the intended audience, and what is their general level of financial background or knowledge?

Are there any short-term goals, strategies, or market conditions that influenced the reporting period?

We recommend adding Report Context to each report to provide the most insightful commentary.

Is this Report Context or Business Context?

While you can put similar information in both the Business and Report Context, a good way to separate the two is to think about it this way:

If this information would still be true next year, it’s likely Business Context. If it only applies to this period or this report, it’s likely Report Context.

Business Context	Report Context
Persistent or slow‑changing information about the business.	Information for the reporting period or report.
Can be used to tailor commentary for every report created for the business.	Can be used to tailor commentary for a specific report.
Set in Company Settings	Set in Report Settings
Likely updated occasionally (e.g., quarterly, yearly)	Likely updated per report cycle
Examples: More medium-to-long term or persistent goals, strategy, market conditions, and the business’s general position.	Examples: One‑off events, seasonal demand shift, short-term change in focus or strategy, or report type.

Add Report Context

To add the Report Context for a report:

In a Pro report, click the Cog/Gear icon on the left sidebar.
Enter the Report Context.
Apply changes.

When is Report Context used?

If you’ve added it, the Report Context will automatically be used to draft commentary by the Commentary Writer.

You are always in control. If you do not want the Commentary Writer to use the Report Context while drafting some commentary, you can turn it off.

When using the Commentary Writer in a Pro Report, you can toggle the Report Context on or off for a specific chat:

Click the Stacked lines with dots icon in the lower left corner of the Commentary Writer.
Toggle it on or off for the chat.

Generate and refine report commentary

The Commentary Writer can be used to draft commentary in individual Pro reports.

It cannot be used in Summary Reports or templates, but it can be used in Pro reports created from templates.

Any commentary added to a report will be included when saving a report as a template, but reports made from templates saved with commentary will not run the same prompts. Instead, the previous commentary will be included in the report. To make it easier to generate commentary with the same prompts, we recommend saving any custom prompts you like to the Prompt Library.

To generate commentary with the Commentary Writer:

Select components in your report for commentary
Choose Style and Length of commentary
Prompt the writer
Refine with additional prompts
Add the commentary to your report

💡Smart Tip: Read through our list of Commentary Writer FAQs.

Select report components

You’ve likely added several tables and charts to your report.

You can select up to 6 components for each chat with the Commentary Writer. The components you select provide the Commentary Writer with results and data. Only certain report components can be read by the Commentary Writer.

If you provide the writer with components that contain several periods of results, it can calculate period-to-period variance and identify trends. If you select components with results and budget or target data, it can calculate variances.

What components should you select? Ask yourself:

Are any of the results surprising, confusing, or unintuitive?

What would my audience be most interested in?

Your components and commentary should match the outcome you want from your report.

To open the Commentary Writer and select components:

In a Pro Report, click the Sparkly Speech Bubble icon on the left sidebar.
From the components in your report, select ones for commentary:
1. Hover over a component and click the checkbox in the upper left corner
  
  or
2. Click the Components option at the bottom of the prompt box to select from a list of the components in your report.

📝 Note: Once you start a new chat, leave a report, or refresh a report, you can no longer return to a previous chat with the Commentary Writer.

Choose the style and length of commentary

When you have the Commentary Writer open, you can choose the style and length of commentary.

This step is optional, but it can help to further tailor the commentary to your audience.

To choose the style and length of commentary:

In the Commentary Writer, click the Stacked lines with dots icon in the lower left corner before generating commentary.
Pick a style:
1. Simple – For people without a strong financial background or who get turned off by jargon
2. Technical – For accountants, advisors, or finance-savvy stakeholders
  
  💡Smart Tip: If you have an audience that includes people with a finance background and people without a finance background, you should tailor the report more toward those without a heavy background in finance. It’s better to lessen confusion, and you can often sound just as smart or smarter while using accessible language.
Pick a length:
1. Concise
2. Detailed
  
  💡Smart Tip: If you want really short commentary, it’s best to also include more specific instructions in your prompts, like “Keep the commentary to about 300 words or less.”

Prompt the Commentary Writer

Write your own prompt or select one from the Prompt Library.

If you craft a custom prompt that you want to share with other team members or you want to reuse for other reports or businesses, you can add it to the Prompt Library.

Fathom also has a few default prompts to help you get started.

When writing a prompt, use proper grammar and punctuation and try to be as specific as possible to get the results you want.

Again, this is when your expertise is key. You know how good report commentary reads and the type of commentary you want. Think of the Commentary Writer as a capable assistant who doesn’t have as much experience as you. What type of instructions would you give them?

In your prompt, you can include instructions like:

Actions you want the Commentary Writer to take
- Summarise...
- Explain...
- Identify...
- Analyse...
Areas of focus for the commentary
- ... the results for this quarter as compared to last quarter and how they compare to the business’s long-term goals...
  - The Business Context is needed for long-term goals.
- ...the relationship between Cash and Profit for this company and how it’s influenced by the business’s strategy...
  - Business Context and possibly Report Context are needed for the strategy.
- ...the line items most significantly off track as compared to the budget and how this is impacted by the business’s current position...
  - Business Context and possibly the Report Context are needed for the business’s Current Position.
- ...key revenue trends across the past year and how they might relate to market conditions...
  - The Business Context, and possibly the Report Context, is needed for market conditions.
How you want the commentary formatted
- ... in three bullet points.
- ... in two short paragraphs.
- ... in three short paragraphs. Each paragraph should start with a sentence identifying the off-track line item and include two or three sentences relating it to the current position.
- ... in three paragraphs of about 200 words each.

You can also always double down on information you provided in the Business or Report Context to highlight its importance to the Commentary Writer.

Example: Explain the relationship between Cash and Profit for this company and how it’s influenced by the business’s strategy in two short paragraphs.

The report’s audience does not have a strong financial background and struggles to understand why they run out of cash even when profits are high, so it’s important not to use financial jargon and to clearly explain how Profit does not always result in more Cash.

📝 Note: Remember that the Commentary Writer needs access to the appropriate data within the selected report components. For the example prompt above, the component(s) that show the company’s profit and cash should be selected for the prompt.

Refine with additional prompts or manually edit

Just as when most people write commentary, the first draft is often not perfect. You may need to instruct the Commentary Writer to shift its emphasis or style.

The Commentary Writer sometimes likes to highlight its work and show you how it followed a prompt within its commentary. You can direct it to leave out prompt references.

Example: Prioritise the Report Context over the Business Context without mentioning that you are prioritising the Report Context over the Business Context.

💡 Smart Tip: Not sure where some of the numbers came from? You can always easily check by hovering over them.

Manually edit commentary

If you want to type changes to the commentary yourself, you must first add the commentary to your report or copy and paste it elsewhere.

Once the commentary has been added to your report, you can double-click it to type in your own notes or make changes. You can use placeholders to quickly reference results as you’re typing.

Add the generated commentary to your report

To add commentary from the Commentary Writer to your report:

Click Add to report at the bottom of the generated commentary.

or

Use the Clipboard icon to copy and paste the commentary.

Learn more

Use the Commentary Writer