Now, no one doubts that information plays a vital role in the operations of any organization. Companies need people who understand both business and technology more than ever. As a product of information, technology, and commerce, the MIS report bears an indispensable responsibility in the enterprise.

This article will walk you through the MIS report step by step: definitions, types, importance, and how to prepare MIS reports in Excel & in a professional reporting software to best suit your needs.

Note: The report and dashboard examples in this article are all built-in templates made by FineReport, the leading BI reporting tool in the Asian-Pacific region.

1. What is a MIS Report?

Before clarifying the definition of the MIS report, we must first solve the confusion about MIS. MIS is the abbreviation of Management Information System. MIS serves as the backbone of an organization’s operations. It stands at the intersection of business and technology and adopts a set of systems and procedures to collect information and buttress decision-making.

MIS reporting is a part of Management Information System, a real-time business approach enterprises adopt to generate and track business data and requirements through interactive dashboards.

MIS reporting is a reporting process performed on the data collected in the MIS system. MIS reports deliver a concise and comprehensive view of daily business activities at all levels. Managers and analysts can evaluate these business processes, discover problems, gain insights, and make decisions based on MIS reports.

You may still have doubts about the definition, considering that the text is often pale and cannot bring you an intuitive understanding. Next, let’s look at some examples to help you become familiar with MIS reports more quickly.

2. MIS Report Sample

Let’s take a look at some examples!

Note: The samples above are made with professional reporting tool FineReport. These templates are built in the FineReport Designer, and you can download FineReport and apply your data to these templates for free. 

2.1 Profit MIS Report

Profit is the key objective in determining performance. Profit MIS report gives the earned profit corresponding to the planned targets for a given period. The dashboard can be updated in real time to show the monthly, quarterly, and annual profit completion.

2.2 Income MIS Report

2.3 Sales MIS Report

The Sales MIS report shows revenue, it also shows in greater depth the regions that contribute the most, the products that are performing well, and other growth factors. Thus, helping companies know what to focus on next.

2.4 Financial MIS Report

2.5 Purchase MIS Report

3. How does the MIS Report work?

From these samples, we can see that MIS report analysis helps integrate data to obtain better insights, so it seems mandatory for leaders. MIS reports are important as they focus on collecting past information, and current data, as well as doing trend analysis. They are prepared periodically at a specified frequency; the most common would be monthly. 

By tracking business operations via MIS reports regularly, managers can make informed decisions, avoid problems, and capitalize on business strategies, helping improve company performance in the long- and short-term.

MIS reporting provides a concise view of various important parameters, including key financial performance, HR indicators, order tracking, customer satisfaction, and churn rates. As a result, it can serve as a powerful instrument to identify opportunities and help make decisions.

As we have seen some popular MIS reports examples and templates at the beginning. Next, I will classify the different types of MIS reports in more detail. You will find that the usefulness of the MIS report is beyond your imagination.

Continue reading…..

4. Types of the MIS Report

There are many categories of the Management Information System. The types of MIS report can be concluded as the following four types.

4.1 The Summary MIS Reports

Summary reports in MIS are commonly the most utilized report because they pertain to the day-to-day picture of the business. It aggregates the information and presents data so that managers can make sense of it. 

If it is an inventory summary report, it will include information like the value of inventory in stock as well as the value of new purchases. 

If it is a sales summary report, then it provides detailed insight into daily sales, including fees, discounts, taxes, liabilities, and payments.

4.2 The Trend MIS Reports

Trend reports compare how different things perform, and also allow you to compare present performance with past performance. For example, it can show how well a product category or business unit is doing from one year to the next. 

It also allows you to see how your customers’ shopping habits are changing based on the customer data, or a specific business area and see if your financial performance is aligned with the general direction of your industry.

The trend reports can pinpoint problem areas and figure out how to correct them.

4.3 The Exception MIS Reports

An exception report can be a story about an anomaly. This type of MIS report will collect every instance of these abnormal occurrences and then put them in one place where management has easy access. The purpose of this document is to show that actual performance deviates significantly from expectations, usually negative.

For example, in the credit business, the exception report can flag high-risk customers or remark on some documents expiring. These reports usually require immediate measures to manage the risk.

4.4 On-Demand MIS Reports

On-demand reports allow managers to generate an MIS report whenever they need it. The report formats and the information contained in them depend on both the requirements of the manager that needs them and on current conditions.  

For example, the business owner might want a sales report for a specific product line to see how well it is selling in a particular city during a given holiday season, or at a specific price. The MIS reports will show how a change in the price of a product will affect the profitability of that product.

5. How to Prepare the MIS Report?

Now, we find that MIS reports play an important role in facilitating the flow of information and supporting company decision-making. Then you may be curious about how the MIS report is prepared.

There are two ways to prepare an MIS Report: one is creating reports with Excel, and the other is creating reports with professional reporting software such as FineReport and Crystal Reports.

5.1 Creating MIS Reports with Excel

Using Excel to create MIS reports is the traditional way adopted by most companies. In this way, the key is to generate MIS reports that are easy to read and know Excel well.

1. At first, you need to collect the raw data scattered in the different MIS systems in various departments, such as Marketing, Financial, Logistics, Customer Service, and so on. 

2. Then, combine this data in Excel manually and clean up the data to filter the information that is required for particular MIS reports. But in this step, remember to keep your raw data in different sheets.

3. Next, it’s time to use an Excel formula to link your data to your MIS template. You can use Vlookup, Hlookup, Sumifs, Sumif, etc. formula depending on your need.

4. Finally, don’t forget to check your report on whether numbers are following the trend or not, any #N/A, any #values, etc.

5.2 Creating MIS Reports with Reporting Software

MIS reports can also be prepared using the usage of specialized tools, which would also act as reporting tools. The reporting software can readily aggregate data and summarise the required information if the system is in place to capture the same. Take FineReport as an example, it may be a more suitable tool than Excel in the field of enterprise reporting. To generate the MIS report, you only need to set it once, and the process is much easier than in Excel.

FineReport supports integrating with various business systems since FineReport is a flexible Java software. Therefore, after integrating your MIS systems such as ERP, and CRM into FineReport, the data you require can be extracted in a few clicks. And you can use ETL to clean up your data.

After that, you can choose the built-in MIS report templates or design the on-demand reports on your own. Once you designed, the reports can be set as templates and be reused next time.

As mentioned above, MIS reports are prepared periodically at a specified frequency. This requirement is also easy to meet with FineReport. FineReport has a decision-making platform with a powerful automated reporting function that allows users to quickly and easily set up daily reports, monthly reports, quarterly reports, and annual reports, and other tasks without additional work.

After the scheduled tasks are set, the server will automatically complete the set tasks at the appointed time, and generate the required files. The generated reports can be notified to different objects in various ways such as email, message, and so on.

In this way, generating MIS reports is no more time-consuming. Besides, your managers can track real-time business operations and make the latest decisions.

6. A Conclusion of the MIS Report

This article explained the meaning of MIS and listed the types and importance of MIS reports with rich examples. Finally, we introduced two MIS report preparation processes: to make an MIS report in Excel, and the other is to use the professional report tool FineReport. Various templates are pre-built by the FineReport designer. If you’re interested, why not take a free trial now? 

FineReport provides a free personal version without any time or function limitations and a professional quote-based plan for enterprises.

Want to know more about how to transform data into value?  Feel free to make an appointment for a live demo with our product experts and work together to discover your needs and see how FineReport can help you and your organization.