MIS Reports: Types, Meaning & Example

Management Information System (MIS) reports offer crucial insights into business operations. Small business owners rely on MIS reporting to better understand multiple areas of operation, including cash flow, inventory, sales, profit and more.

What is MIS reporting and what does it include?

MIS reports are aggregations of multiple reports on day-to-day activities to better understand current performance and make smarter decisions.

An MIS report meaning a report that management prepares work differently from one business to the next. Reports may be drafted:

• Weekly
• Monthly
• Quarterly

Management receives these reports from various departments in the company and they must be formatted properly to make the data easy to analyze. Manual preparation of these reports is common in smaller businesses that often transition to automated report generation.

Automation is possible when systems are connected and the reporting software has access to raw data from departments, often held within a central database.

Business owners and managers will then analyze the reports to better understand the company’s performance during the reporting period.

Multiple types of reporting exist, and your business may benefit from one report and not another. The most common reports available include:

Summary MIS report

A summary report is one of the largest that you’ll come across because they aggregate data from all reports. If you need to have a full picture of your operations, this single report can provide you with the information necessary to:

• Review profits
• Understand sales trends
• Review inventory
• Much more

Graphs and charts help make the data easier to analyze and use in the decision-making process.

Trend MIS report

What are your recent business trends? Past and present performance have trends that help you reach them. In the trend report, comparisons between current and past data are presented to help you understand:

• How the business is performing as a whole
• How a certain segment of the business is performing

You can use trend reports to better learn what decisions are shaping the state of your business.

Sales MIS report

Business sales are necessary to keep your company operational. A sales report will often include data on:

• Total sales over the predefined reporting period
• Sales for specific products or business segments

Your report may be for a month or a quarter, and the report may even show additional data points, such as leading sales by geographic location.

Profit MIS report

Actual and projected profits rarely align, and the profit MIS will show you how your business performed over the reporting period. The report may go in-depth to show you:

• Factors that led to the reported profits
• Information on why profits fell if they did
• Leading business segments responsible for the profits

You can analyze the data in the report to better understand why profits beat or fell short of the estimates that you made.

Inventory MIS report

An inventory MIS report provides an overview of the products in the company’s inventory, including:

• Best-selling products
• Items that are currently in stock
• The top-selling categories of products

Having all of this data in one easy-to-read report allows management to make informed decisions when purchasing products.

Cashflow MIS report

Cash flow must be managed properly to ensure a business has enough funds to cover its operating costs. A cashflow MIS report can help with this process by helping managers and leaders understand the company’s cash inflow and outflow.

This report will typically include all cash flows from the company’s:

• Core operations
• Financing
• Investments

Accurate cashflow MIS reports will provide valuable insights into the financial state of the business.

Accounting MIS report

An accounting MIS report will include multiple financial documents that provide insight into the company’s performance. This can include all reports related to the business’s operational performance, financial position and economic activities.

Exception MIS report

An exception report outlines all exceptions, which are unusual or abnormal circumstances within the business. These outliers can help you identify potential issues that should be addressed before they progress into bigger problems.

MIS reporting is important for every business and plays a crucial role in the decision-making process.

MIS reports can:

• Highlight key problem areas that need to be addressed
• Help decision-makers determine whether it’s the right time to expand or invest
• Help you monitor the financial health and productivity of your business
• Improve internal (employee) and external (investor) communication by providing an accurate overview of the company's performance
• Convert data into useful insights that leaders can use to make informed decisions.
• Help you identify patterns that drive your decisions, whether you’re purchasing products for your shop or launching a new product line.
• Provide insight into your future cash flow, so you can stay on the right track.

MIS reporting on a regular basis can help ensure timely decisions and improve communication across all departments to increase efficiency and performance.

An MIS report can be prepared with MIS software or manually using spreadsheets. To create useful reports, you must have access to raw data that are both accurate and complete.

Here’s how the reporting process works if you’re using Excel:

• The first step is to gather all of the raw data you will need from all relevant departments.
• Next, determine the structure of your report and plan out the headings and columns.
• Once you have these organizational elements in place, you can begin adding and sorting data under each respective heading.
• Next, start filtering and removing data that isn’t relevant to decision-making or the MIS report.
• At this stage, you can begin preparing a dashboard template in Excel using pivot tables and formulas.
• Finally, use Excel’s selection mechanisms to extract the final results for your report.

MIS reports play an important role in long-term planning and the overall management of a business. The data presented in MIS reports helps leaders make data-driven decisions. Because they are generated on a periodic basis, decision-makers can make adjustments more frequently to keep the business on track to reaching its goals.