How to create a new presentation with the help of AI

Open, choose, refine, generate — build a board pack, management pack, investor report, or lender review in minutes with AI-written commentary from your live data.

ScaleXP can build a complete, data-driven presentation for you in three short stages — you open the new presentation builder, choose the purpose of the pack, refine the audience, style, and slides, and ScaleXP's AI generates a first draft with slides and commentary pulled from your Reports, Dashboards, Customers, and AI Forecast.


1. Open the new presentation builder

  1. Go to the Presentations tab in the top menu.
  2. Select Presentations (marked NEW) in the left sidebar. Your existing presentations are listed under Live templates to edit.
  3. Click New presentation in the top right.
Presentations tab with Presentations NEW in the sidebar and the New presentation button highlighted

2. Choose your presentation purpose

  1. Under Choose your presentation purpose, select the type of pack you want to create:
    • Management pack — the regular month-end pack
    • Board pack — board-level performance, cash runway, risks, and decisions
    • Investors report — growth, ARR, burn, and runway
    • Lenders review — cash, covenants, debtors, and statements
    • Customer or advisory report — a client-facing summary of performance
    • Blank presentation — build it slide by slide in the editor
  2. Click Next.
Choose your presentation purpose with the purpose options, the Next button, and Create from scratch highlighted

If you would rather start with an empty deck, click Create from scratch in the top right at any point and follow Getting started with Presentations: how to create a pack for a meeting.


3. Refine the style and content

  1. Under Refine the style and content, select who the presentation is for — Board of directors, Management team, Investors and shareholders, Lender or bank, Customer or client, or Just me. ScaleXP sets sensible defaults for that audience.
  2. Review the defaults and change any of them:
    • Commentary tone — how the AI writes the narrative
    • Level of detail — summary or detail by department and cost center
    • Reporting period — the month the pack reports on
    • Compare actuals to — Budget, Prior month, and/or Prior year
    • Theme — the look and feel of the slides
    • Confidentiality footer — the text shown at the foot of each slide
  3. Click Next.
Refine the style and content with the audience options, defaults, and the Next button highlighted

To compare against a budget, you need a budget loaded in ScaleXP — see How to add a budget or forecast. To set up your own theme, see How to change presentation styles, themes and eliminate images and lines.


4. Refine the slide detail and generate

  1. Under Refine the slide detail, enter a Name for the presentation.
  2. Tick the slides you want to include and untick any you don't need. ScaleXP preselects the slides that suit your purpose and audience, and shows a running count of slides selected at the bottom.
  3. Click Generate first draft.
Refine the slide detail with the Name field, slide checklist, and Generate first draft button highlighted

Slides that appear grayed out need a matching report or chart before they can be included — for example, KPI scorecard needs a KPI report. Once you have created it, come back and the slide becomes available.

ScaleXP now pulls your slides from Reports, Dashboards, Customers, and AI Forecast and writes the commentary. This usually takes under a minute, and you land in the presentation editor as soon as it is ready.

Your new presentation opens in the editor, live and updating with your data. To change a slide, select it and type your request in Ask for a change to this slide in the right-hand panel, or click a chart or commentary block to change just that part.

Generated management pack open in the presentation editor with the Ask for a change to this slide box highlighted

From the editor you can also review the AI commentary, add a page, add commentary to a chart, reorder slides, and then download or share the presentation.