Deck Refresh Skill
What is a Deck Refresh?
In financial services, presentations are living documents. A pitch deck created in Q3 needs to be updated with Q4 numbers. A comps table needs to be “rolled” when new earnings data comes out. Market data slides need to reflect current prices and yields. This process — updating a presentation’s data while preserving its formatting, layout, and narrative structure — is called a deck refresh.
At first glance, this seems simple: just find-and-replace the old numbers with new ones. In practice, it is surprisingly complex because:
- The same number appears in many forms. Revenue of 485Mmightappearas"485M” in a text box, “485” on a chart axis, “485.0million"inafootnote,and"0.485B” in a comparison table. Simple find-replace catches one of these.
- Some numbers are derived from others. If revenue changed from 485Mto512M, then the “+15% YoY” growth rate that appeared next to it is now wrong. So is the “12% market share” that was calculated from revenue divided by market size.
- Formatting must be preserved exactly. The deck’s existing fonts, colors, layout, and style are correct by definition. A refresh that changes the visual appearance of slides — even subtly — creates re-work.
This skill handles deck refreshes as a four-phase process: get the data, find every instance, present the plan for approval, then execute.
Why It Matters
Deck refreshes happen constantly in financial services:
- Quarterly earnings updates — Every quarter, comps tables, financial summaries, and market overview slides need new numbers.
- Deal process updates — As a deal progresses, transaction details change (purchase price, financing terms, synergy estimates) and every slide that references them needs updating.
- Board materials — Recurring board presentations get refreshed monthly or quarterly with new KPIs and financials.
- Client review meetings — Wealth management and advisory presentations need current portfolio data before each client meeting.
The risk of doing this poorly is the same as having errors in the original deck: inconsistent numbers across slides, stale growth rates sitting next to updated revenue figures, or chart bars that do not match their labels because only the labels were updated.
Key Concepts
| Term | Definition | Why It Matters |
|---|
| Value Mapping | The explicit pairing of old values to new values (e.g., 485Mto512M). | The foundation of a correct refresh. Without a clear mapping, you are guessing. |
| Derived Numbers | Values calculated from the primary numbers being updated (growth rates, market share, margins). | These need to be flagged because they may be stale after the primary numbers change. |
| Unit Variants | Different representations of the same number (485M,485MM, $485 million, 485). | All variants must be found and updated. Missing one creates an inconsistency. |
| Approval Gate | The step where Claude presents the full change plan before editing anything. | Prevents wrong changes. Much easier to review a plan than to undo edits across 30 slides. |
How It Works
Triggers when: the user asks to “update the deck with Q4 numbers”, “refresh the comps”, “roll this forward”, or any request to swap figures across an existing deck.
Phase 1: Get the Data
Ask how the new numbers are arriving:
| Method | Notes |
|---|
| Pasted mapping | User types “revenue 485Mto512M, EBITDA 120Mto135M” |
| Uploaded Excel | Old/new columns. Confirm which column is which. |
| Just the new values | ”Q4 revenue was $512M.” Claude figures out what each replaces. |
Phase 2: Find Every Instance
Read every slide and find every instance of each old value, including all variants:
| Variant Type | Examples |
|---|
| Scale | 485M,0.485B, $485,000,000 |
| Precision | 485M,485.0M, ~$485M |
| Unit style | 485M,485MM, $485 million |
| Embedded | ”revenue grew to $485M”, axis labels |
Numbers hide in: text boxes, table cells, chart data labels, chart axis labels, chart source data, footnotes, source lines, and speaker notes. Find-replace misses most of these.
Phase 3: Present the Plan and Get Approval
Show the full change list before editing anything:
$485M to $512M (Revenue)
Slide 3 -- Title box: "Revenue grew to $485M"
Slide 8 -- Chart axis label: "485"
Slide 15 -- Footnote: "$485.0 million in FY24 revenue"
FLAGGED -- possibly derived, not in your mapping:
Slide 3 -- "+15% YoY" (growth rate -- stale if base year didn't change?)
Slide 7 -- "12% market share" (was this computed from $485M / market size?)
The FLAGGED section is where this skill earns its keep. You are not just executing find-replace — you are catching the second-order effects the user would have missed at 11pm.
Phase 4: Execute and Report
Make the smallest edit that accomplishes each change. Do not reformat anything you did not need to touch. After editing, report what happened and what was not changed.
How to Add to Your Local Context
Install the Plugin
claude plugin install financial-analysis@financial-services-plugins
Set Refresh Conventions
Edit skills/deck-refresh/SKILL.md:## Firm Refresh Conventions
- Always update "As of [Date]" on the cover slide
- Our unit convention is "$M" (not "$MM")
- When refreshing comps, update the "Data as of" footnote on every comps slide
- Always flag derived growth rates for manual review
Define Standard Refresh Workflows
## Quarterly Refresh Checklist
1. Update all financial metrics (revenue, EBITDA, margins)
2. Update all valuation metrics (market cap, EV, multiples)
3. Update all market data (stock price, 52-week range, volume)
4. Update "As of" dates on cover and data slides
5. Flag all derived metrics for manual review
Best Practices
- Never skip the approval gate. Reviewing the change plan takes 2 minutes. Re-doing 30 slides of wrong edits takes hours.
- Match the deck’s style, not the mapping. If the deck uses “MM"andthemappingsays"M”, use “$MM”. Values change; style stays.
- Check chart source data, not just labels. Updating a chart label without updating the underlying data creates a chart that lies.
- Watch for overflow. A number that got longer (485Mto1,205M) might overflow its text box or push a table column width.
- Do not rewrite narratives. If a slide’s narrative no longer makes sense with new numbers (“margins compressed” but margins went up), flag it for the user. Do not silently rewrite it.
