Customer Report Outputs
CPD and SPD report packages are derived directly from the same authoritative execution model that drives planning, status, and forecasting — generation is blocked with remediation guidance if the model is incomplete.
Formal customer-facing reports — particularly Cost Performance Data (CPD) and Schedule Performance Data (SPD) packages — carry significant governance weight. They are submitted to customers, auditors, and program offices as representations of the project's current performance against the plan. The credibility of those submissions depends directly on the quality and traceability of the data they are derived from.
Derivation vs. Assembly
In most project control environments, customer reports are assembled: a reporting analyst pulls cost data from the ERP export, schedule data from the scheduling tool export, earned value calculations from a separate Excel model, and actual-versus-plan comparisons from yet another file. The analyst reconciles these sources, resolves discrepancies, and produces a report that represents their best synthesis of what the project data says. The resulting report is only as trustworthy as the reconciliation process, and the traceability from the report back to any individual source record is informal.
ProjectXL's Customer Reporting feature derives reports from the governed execution model rather than assembling them from multiple sources. The cost, schedule, and performance data the analyst has been maintaining in the governed workbook is the direct source for CPD and SPD output. The derivation is not a black box — it follows defined rules that map governed data fields to report elements — so the connection between any output value and its source record is explicit and inspectable.
Readiness-First Generation
Before any report generation begins, the system evaluates whether the governed model is complete and current for the requested scope and period. If actuals are not current through the reporting period, if the ETC has not been updated, or if required governance steps are outstanding, the system surfaces those gaps with guidance pointing to the owning feature and the specific action required to resolve them. Generation is blocked until the prerequisites are satisfied — the system will not produce a CPD or SPD package from data it knows to be incomplete.