ISO 24896 Gives Business Reporting a Common Language

When we started building TRUECHART, the problem was not that BI tools offered too few ways to visualise data. There was already a great deal of freedom in how reports could be designed, even if scaling that freedom consistently across larger reporting environments was difficult then, and often still is today. Every team could choose its own colours, layouts, chart types, labels and conventions. The result was flexibility, but not necessarily clarity.

One report showed actuals in blue, another used blue for forecast. Variances were displayed differently from one department to the next. The same KPI could look completely different depending on who had built the dashboard. And every time that happened, the reader had to understand the visual logic first before getting to the actual message.

That problem has shaped much of my work with TRUECHART over the years. It is also why I see ISO 24896 as an important milestone for business reporting. The principles behind it are not new. For many years, the International Business Communication Standards (IBCS) have provided a structured approach to making business communication clearer, more consistent and easier to understand.

What changes with ISO 24896 is the level of formalisation and recognition: this approach is now reflected in an international ISO standard. For organisations already working with IBCS, that confirms an established practice. For others, it creates a recognised reference point for an area that is still handled very differently from one company to the next.

What ISO 24896 Means for Bus​iness Reporting

The basic idea is simple: Information with the same meaning should be presented in the same way. If something represents an actual value, a forecast, a variance or a particular time period, the reader should not have to work that out again in every dashboard.

We accept this principle naturally in other areas. Technical drawings rely on established symbols. Traffic signs work because their meaning does not change from one street to the next. Business reporting benefits from the same logic.

ISO 24896 builds on principles that have been developed by the IBCS community for years and brings them into the formal framework of an international standard. That matters because visual consistency is not simply a design preference. It affects how quickly and reliably information is understood.

The Hidden Cost of Inconsistent Reporting

This cost is easy to underestimate because hardly anyone measures it. Nobody adds “time spent figuring out what this chart means” to the monthly reporting budget. But that time is real.

Multiply a few minutes of interpretation across management meetings, recurring reporting cycles, business units and hundreds of report consumers, and the impact becomes significant. More importantly, inconsistent presentation can influence how information is perceived.

Colours, scales, chart types and visual emphasis all affect the message. A development can appear more dramatic simply because of the selected scale. A forecast can be mistaken for an actual value if both are presented in the same way. A common notation reduces that friction.

The discussion should be about why revenue is below plan, whether a forecast is realistic or what action should follow. It should not be about decoding the report itself.

A Standard Only Works If It Survives Everyday Reporting

This is where theory often meets reality. Creating a style guide is relatively easy. Keeping hundreds of reports aligned with it is much harder. A deadline gets close. A new developer joins the project. Another department starts building its own dashboards. A second BI platform is introduced. Over time, even carefully defined standards begin to drift. That is why I have always believed that reporting conventions need to be embedded in the tools people actually use. You should not have to consult a manual every time you create a chart. The software should help make the right choice the natural one.

How TRUECHART+ Brings These Principles into Practice

That thinking is deeply embedded in TRUECHART+. IBCS principles have shaped the product from the beginning, influencing how information is structured and communicated rather than simply how it looks.

Across Microsoft Power BI, Qlik Cloud and Qlik Sense, the aim is not to add another collection of visuals. It is to make business communication easier to build, easier to understand and easier to maintain.

Charts are only one part of that. Tables, comments, comparisons, highlighting, planning information and context all contribute to how clearly a message comes across. The Table Builder, for example, makes it easier to create structured business tables while supporting a consistent reporting logic.

The direction is simple: less time spent formatting reports, more time spent understanding what the numbers are actually telling us.

What Existing TRUECHART Customers Should Know

For organisations already using TRUECHART, the transition to TRUECHART+ is being designed as a gradual one rather than a hard cutover. TRUECHART and TRUECHART+ can run side by side, allowing teams to start building in the new environment while established reporting continues unchanged. Migration remains a central part of our roadmap: classic Table Comments and Table 2.0 comments are targeted for migration by the end of Q3 2026, with Perspective Comments progressing as well, while broader support for advanced visuals, Highlighting and Compares, Small Multiples and greater cross-platform parity is planned across Q4 2026 and Q1 2027.

Why This Matters Beyond Reporting Design

For me, ISO 24896 is ultimately not about making charts look better. It is about shortening the distance between information and understanding. Organisations have invested heavily in everything that happens before a report reaches the decision-maker: data platforms, data quality, cloud infrastructure, automation, planning systems and increasingly AI. Data can be collected and analysed faster than ever before. But at the end of that chain, somebody still has to understand what it means. If the final communication is unclear, part of the value created upstream is lost. That is why visual business communication deserves the same discipline we already apply to the rest of the data landscape.

The Next Step

ISO 24896 does not mean rebuilding your reporting landscape overnight. A good starting point is much simpler: establish a common visual language and apply it consistently.

Want to see how TRUECHART+ can support that in practice? Book a TRUECHART+ demo with our team.