An "unreadable" report from an overseas office is one where the figures sent by a local subsidiary or an overseas subsidiary do not serve as material for management decisions, even when you look at them. In most cases, the problem is not a lack of skill on the reporting side, but that the head office has not defined or shared what it wants to know, at what level of detail, and for what purpose.
Article
Why Reports from Overseas
Are "Unreadable"
When reports from overseas offices are "unreadable," the cause can lie in the head office never defining or sharing what it wants to know, at what level of detail, and for what purpose.
The starting point is for the head office to clarify its own questions.
This page was translated from Japanese by AI. If anything is unclear, please refer to the Japanese version.
Reports arrive, but they don't support decisions
Every month, reports arrive from the local subsidiary or overseas office. Sales, expenses, headcount, progress rates: the numbers are all there.
Yet looking at those numbers, you cannot tell what they actually mean. Did they go up or down compared with last month, and is that good or bad? When you send back questions, the answers miss the point.
You try changing the report format. You try adding more items. Still nothing changes. Gradually, even opening the reports becomes a chore, and before you know it, several months' worth have piled up.
It is premature to dismiss this problem as "the local staff lack ability."
The structural reasons reports from overseas offices miss the mark
In many cases, the reasons a report is "unreadable" span several layers.
The head office has not defined what it wants to know.
A request to "report properly" is actually very vague. Which figures, at what level of detail, in a form comparable with what, and by when? Unless this is spelled out, local staff have no choice but to build reports based on their own interpretation. As a result, a gap opens between what the head office wants and what the local office delivers.
The language barrier reduces accuracy.
Even when a report is written in Japanese, subtle nuances can be lost if the writer is not a native speaker. When a report says "no problems," you cannot tell from the text alone whether it means "on track" or "we don't have full visibility, but we are not aware of any particular issue." Conversely, there are also cases where the head office cannot read reports prepared in the local language.
Each country has its own laws, accounting standards and practices.
For example, it is not unusual for the account titles and cost categories used in Japanese management accounting not to match the local accounting system. Because local tax classifications, social insurance systems and industry practices differ from Japan's, the very meaning of the figures can differ. Trying to fit them into the format the head office is used to forces local staff into unnatural conversion work.
Differences in experience and skills are not taken into account.
People at the head office with experience in management accounting or KPI design and people handling accounting or general affairs at the local office start from different background knowledge when dealing with numbers. Some can produce a figure when asked, while others do not know what to aggregate to arrive at that figure in the first place. Imposing requirements without defining them places an excessive burden on the other side.
What local staff see
So far, we have looked at why reports are "unreadable" from the head office's point of view. What situation, then, is the local side, which prepares the reports, in?
For local accounting staff and managers, preparing reports for the head office is extra work on top of their regular duties. While handling their day-to-day work, such as local tax filings, social insurance procedures and employee matters, they have to convert figures into the format the head office requires and put them together in Japanese (or English).
Even if the head office says it wants a certain figure, that figure cannot always be pulled directly from the local accounting system. Local account titles may need to be remapped to Japanese categories. Judging whether that remapping is correct requires understanding the intent behind the Japanese side's management accounting, but in many cases this is not shared.
In addition, the local office has its own priorities. Tax filing deadlines, audits and work permit renewals have stricter deadlines than the monthly report to the head office and cannot be put off. When reports to the head office fall behind, it is often not negligence but a rational decision given the local work environment.
Is there really something you need to ask of the local office to improve report quality, or would the situation improve simply by changing how the head office asks its questions? Making that judgment is the starting point for tackling this problem.