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 $485M might appear as "$ 485M” in a text box, “485” on a chart axis, “ $485.0 million" in a footnote, and "$ 0.485B” in a comparison table. Simple find-replace catches one of these.
Some numbers are derived from others. If revenue changed from $485M to$ 512M, 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., $485M to$ 512M).	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 $485M to$ 512M, EBITDA $120M to$ 135M”
Uploaded Excel	Old/new columns. Confirm which column is which.
Just the new values	”Q4 revenue was $512M.” Claude figures out what each replaces.

Also ask about derived numbers: if revenue moves, does the user want growth rates and share percentages recalculated, or left alone?

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
Update all financial metrics (revenue, EBITDA, margins)
Update all valuation metrics (market cap, EV, multiples)
Update all market data (stock price, 52-week range, volume)
Update "As of" dates on cover and data slides
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 “ $MM" and the mapping says "$ 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 ( $485M to$ 1,205M) 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.

Overview

Financial Analysis

Equity Research

Investment Banking

Private Equity

Wealth Management

LSEG

S&P Global

Deck Refresh Skill

Deck Refresh Skill

What is a Deck Refresh?

Why It Matters

Key Concepts

How It Works

Phase 1: Get the Data

Phase 2: Find Every Instance

Phase 3: Present the Plan and Get Approval

Phase 4: Execute and Report

How to Add to Your Local Context

Best Practices

​Deck Refresh Skill

​What is a Deck Refresh?

​Why It Matters

​Key Concepts

​How It Works

​Phase 1: Get the Data

​Phase 2: Find Every Instance

​Phase 3: Present the Plan and Get Approval

​Phase 4: Execute and Report

​How to Add to Your Local Context

​Best Practices

Deck Refresh Skill

What is a Deck Refresh?

Why It Matters

Key Concepts

How It Works

Phase 1: Get the Data

Phase 2: Find Every Instance

Phase 3: Present the Plan and Get Approval

Phase 4: Execute and Report

How to Add to Your Local Context

Best Practices