Turn a CSV export into a report someone will read

Your payment processor, your shop, your accounting package and your ad account all export a CSV. None of them export the thing you actually owe somebody: a page that says how the month went, with the numbers to back it.

How to do it

1. Export the CSV, or copy the cells straight out of the spreadsheet you opened it in.
2. In Indexcard, press Add data and drop the file in, or paste the cells. You see the rows and the column types before anything is imported.
3. Press Ask and ask the question the report is about: “revenue by month”, “top 10 customers by spend”, “which weeks were below average?”
4. Press Add this chart, then write the paragraph around it. Use Add the number so the figures in your sentences come from the data rather than from memory.
5. Press Share and send the link.

What to do about a messy export

• Currency symbols and thousands separators are read as numbers, and remembered as money, so charts come back with the right units.
• Dates in almost any order are read as dates. You are shown how each column was read, and can change it, before importing.
• Blank rows at the bottom of an export are ignored by charts rather than drawn as an empty bar.
• Several exports can live in one card, and one question can reach across them: spend from one, revenue from the other.

Next month

Replace the data on the same card and every chart and sentence is worked out again, so the report is written once and refreshed after that. If the export comes from a Google Sheet, link the sheet and press Refresh instead.