Section 01

A finance deck is not a copy of your spreadsheet. It is the three things from that spreadsheet that the room actually needs to hear.

Finance presentations often start the same way: a spreadsheet full of figures, and a deadline to turn it into slides for a leadership meeting. The hard part is rarely the numbers themselves — it is deciding what to leave out, how to phrase the headline message, and how to word each slide so it reads clearly at a glance.

Gemini can help with that second part. Once you have decided which figures matter, Gemini can help you draft slide titles, headline messages and speaker notes — turning a table of numbers into the words that go around them on a slide.

Key insight: Gemini works best when you give it the figures and ask it to draft the words: slide titles, headline takeaways, and speaker notes. You and your team decide which figures and charts go on the slide itself.

Draft slide titles

Turn a chart or table into a clear, specific slide title that states the headline message.

Write key takeaways

Summarise what a slide's figures mean in one or two plain-English sentences for the audience.

Prepare speaker notes

Draft talking points for each slide so the presenter has a starting point to rehearse from.

Without Gemini

A slide titled "Q3 Results" with a table of numbers, leaving the audience to work out for themselves what the headline message is supposed to be.

With Gemini

A slide titled "Revenue up 8% on plan, driven by stronger product sales" with the same table — the headline message is stated up front, and the figures support it.

Most finance decks for management follow a similar shape. Having this structure in mind makes it much easier to ask Gemini for the right content, slide by slide.

Headline summary slide

One slide stating the overall result for the period in plain language — the single message you want the room to remember.

Key metrics overview

A small set of headline figures — revenue, margin, costs, cash — shown together with comparisons to budget or prior period.

Variance detail slides

One slide per significant variance, each with its own chart, headline takeaway and a short explanation of the driver.

Outlook or forecast slide

A brief look ahead — how the current trend is expected to affect the rest of the period, based on figures you provide.

Appendix with supporting detail

Detailed tables and breakdowns moved out of the main flow, available if questions come up but not cluttering the core narrative.

Note: Gemini can help draft the text for each of these slides, but the underlying charts and tables should be built from your own data in Sheets, then placed onto the slide alongside the wording Gemini helps you write.

These prompts help generate the wording for individual slides once you know which figures and charts each one will contain.

Prompt 1 — Draft a slide title and takeaway from figures

Act as a finance business partner preparing a slide for a management presentation. Here are the figures for this slide: [Describe the figures — e.g. "Revenue: £2.4m actual vs £2.2m budget for Q3; prior quarter was £2.1m"] Provide: - A slide title (under 12 words) that states the headline message in plain language - One key takeaway sentence explaining what this means - Two to three speaker note bullet points expanding on the takeaway, using only the figures provided Do not add any figures, comparisons or explanations beyond what I have given you.

Prompt 2 — Draft a variance slide narrative

Act as a finance business partner preparing a variance slide for a management presentation. Metric: [e.g. "Marketing spend"] Actual: [Amount] Budget: [Amount] Variance: [Amount and percentage] Known driver: [Describe the business reason, if known — e.g. "Brought forward a campaign originally planned for Q4"] Provide a slide title and a 2-3 sentence narrative that states the variance, its size, and the driver if one is provided. If no driver is given, the narrative should state that the cause is under review rather than guessing.

Give Gemini the figures, not the charts

Describe the numbers in text rather than uploading a chart image — Gemini works more reliably with figures you state explicitly.

Check every figure against your source data

Before a draft slide goes anywhere near a real meeting, confirm every number in the title, takeaway and notes matches your underlying spreadsheet.

Keep titles to one message each

If a draft title tries to say two things at once, ask Gemini to split it into a title and a separate takeaway sentence instead.

Important: Never present a Gemini-drafted slide without checking its figures against your source spreadsheet. A confident-sounding headline is only useful if the numbers behind it are correct.