Who should own reporting: finance or IT?

Ask why reporting hasn't improved and you'll usually get a version of the same answer: finance thinks IT owns it, IT thinks finance owns it, and so nothing moves. Meanwhile someone rebuilds the same pack by hand every month.

Why the gap appears

Reporting sits precisely between the two functions, and neither can finish the job alone.

IT owns the system, the data, the access and the performance. Finance owns the definitions — what "margin" means here, which accounts roll up where, what the board actually needs to see. Hand it entirely to IT and you get technically correct reports that answer the wrong question. Hand it entirely to finance and you get a spreadsheet estate nobody can support.

A split that works

The cleanest division we see in practice:

And one shared responsibility that belongs to both: agreeing the source of truth, in writing. Most reporting disputes are actually undocumented definition disputes.

The warning sign it's unowned

There's a reliable tell. If your month-end pack is rebuilt by hand each month, nobody owns it. Owned reports get maintained; unowned reports get redone. The rebuilding is the symptom.

Making it stick

• Name an owner per report, not per system. Ownership at system level is too coarse to be actionable.
• Write definitions down. One page per key figure: what's included, what's excluded, which accounts.
• Agree a change route. How does someone request a change, and who approves it?
• Review annually. Reports outlive their purpose; someone should be allowed to retire them.

Where an outside pair of hands helps

Occasionally the honest answer is that neither side has capacity, and the reporting sits unowned because everyone's busy — not because nobody cares. That's a legitimate reason to bring in help, provided the outcome is documented reports your team can maintain, rather than a dependency you've just relocated.

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