Good managerial decisions about the future cannot be made without an assessment of what happened in the past. What kind of financial reports will portfolio managers find useful for evaluating their past investment decisions? What kind will the client find useful in evaluating the manager’s performance?

Current reporting systems reveal very little—for either client or manager—about what is happening to portfolio accounts and why. They include no statement of what the account is actually earning, no statement of what is being dispersed and no explanation of changes in position from one period to the next.

Accounting reports can be as useful to the decision-maker in portfolio management as they are to other kinds of decision-makers—if they provide the necessary information. This article describes a reporting system that provides that information.