IBCS - International Business Communication Standards

Communication standards for better and faster insights

Compose compelling stories using ISO 24896 notation for business reporting

Join us and get your free copy

Now available
IBCS Standards 2.0 –
fully aligned with ISO 24896

The IBCS Standards are now structured into two complementary parts: Notation and Composition. The Notation part is fully aligned with the new international standard ISO 24896, while the Composition part continues to provide practical guidance for designing clear and effective business reports.

View IBCS 2.0

ISO 24896 published: First International Standard for Business Reporting Notation

The IBCS Association welcomes the publication of ISO 24896:2026 – Notation for Business Reporting. The new standard is the first international standard defining consistent visual notation for charts, tables, and text elements in business reports, presentations, and dashboards. Based on the principles of IBCS, ISO 24896 was published following unanimous approval by all participating ISO P-Members.

Join the IBCS Certified Analyst course

The upcoming online training course in English starts on July 27, 2026 at 9:00 AM CEST.

Meet the new IBCS Association leadership

The IBCS Association elected a new Executive Board and introduced its new Management Team during the General Assembly in June 2026.

Events

Get to know IBCS and ISO 24896, and learn how to apply it.

Certifications

Get your own IBCS certification or find software and/or consultants already certified.

Resources

Get inspired by examples, templates, and learning materials.

News and features

Now available

IBCS Standards 2.0 – fully aligned with ISO 24896

This new edition marks an important milestone for IBCS. The standards are now structured into two complementary parts: Notation and Composition. The Notation part is fully aligned with the new international standard ISO 24896, while the Composition part continues to provide practical guidance for designing clear and effective business reports.

View IBCS 2.0

ISO 24896 published

First International Standard for Business Reporting Notation

The IBCS Association welcomes the publication of ISO 24896:2026 – Notation for Business Reporting, based on the principles of IBCS. This the first international standard defining consistent visual notation for charts, tables, and text elements in business reports, presentations, and dashboards. Its goal is to improve the clarity, consistency, and efficiency of business communication worldwide. Organizations adopting the standard reduce the time spent interpreting inconsistent reports and support better decision-making.

Coinciding with the release, the IBCS Institute has launched the official ISO 24896 Foundation course.

You are currently viewing a placeholder content from YouTube. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.

More Information

Unblock content Accept required service and unblock content

Watch Jürgen Faisst and Diego Berea in a live-talk

Meeting of the IBCS community

IBCS Conference 2026

The 2026 Conference marked a milestone in the IBCS journey: the publication of ISO 24896 'Notation for business reporting', the release of IBCS 2.0 aligned with ISO 24896, and the presentation of the results of an international study demonstrating its benefits. It also opened the door to the next chapter, with a new team and new topics.

ISO plain language standard | Business reporting made easy

An article is about ISO 24896 and its approach to notation. It explains who is working on the standard, what it includes, who can benefit from it, and when it is expected to be published.

Read

Upcoming online course for IBCS Certfified Analysts/Professionals

Understand IBCS and ISO 24896, and learn how to apply it in practice.

Enjoy checking out recent news from IBCS.

Read

Speaker request

Book a speaker

Please contact us to request an IBCS speaker for your event. Sample topics:

+ Time - the CFO’s most valuable currency
How standardizing the design of business reports transforms communication and frees space for strategic decisions

+ Do we really want to make the same mistakes again?
How visual consistency fuels smarter decisions in AI-powered reporting

Learn more

Solid, outlined, hatched (online with exercises)

Learn how a consistent notation ensures that your reports and dashboards are read and understood. About 30 short lessons with interactive videos, questions, tests and a workbook with practical exercises.

Enroll in the course

You are currently viewing a placeholder content from YouTube. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.

More Information

Unblock content Accept required service and unblock content

Microsoft Fabric Planning

Microsoft Fabric, the unified data platform for the AI era, now natively delivers enterprise planning with IBCS-certified tables and charts, unified with governed semantic models that provide a single, trusted business layer across planning, analytics, and reporting.

View software profile

Farseer

Farseer is an integrated FP&A platform that brings planning, modeling, reporting, and financial consolidation together in one shared data environment. Built for finance teams that need consistency, speed, and transparency, it enables analysts to prepare data once and use it across forecasts, dashboards, reports, and planning workflows — all supported by IBCS-compliant visualizations.

View software profile

Infotopics FinanceTables

Infotopics develops premium Tableau extensions that help organizations turn dashboards into interactive, collaborative, and actionable decision-making environments. Its solutions support use cases such as self-service analytics, write-back, workflow optimization, and financial reporting. FinanceTables, part of the Infotopics portfolio, enables structured, IBCS-certified reporting directly in Tableau.

View software profile

graphomate

With the graphomate suite - consisting of several specialized chart and table components - you can create clear and meaningful visualizations of complex data in Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Lumira Designer, and other SAP Analytics tools according to IBCS rules.

View software profile

Free for members of the IBCS Association

IBCS Standards (PDF)

PDF transcript of the IBCS Standards, 150 pages illustrated with more than 180 instructive figures, covering all conceptual, perceptual, and semantic rules for the design of comprehensible reports, presentations, and dashboards.

Join IBCS Association and get a free copy of the PDF.

Get PDF

Editable template

Notation manual (PPT)

Editable PPT template for the creation of a company specific notation manual covering the major design principles for IBCS compliant charts and tables.

Get template

Selected resources

What it means for business leaders and CFOs?

IBCS notation becomes ISO standard

An article on why IBCS notation is shaping ISO 24896 covers its impact on business reporting and traces its journey from ISO approval to global development. This standard aims to unify business reporting, improving data visualization, decision-making efficiency, and corporate communication.

View resource

IBCS article

A guide to IBCS certifications | Professional skills & software compliance

An article on IBCS Institute certifications, designed to help professionals enhance clear and effective business communication. Learn about certification levels, benefits for BI professionals, and how IBCS-aligned tools can transform business decision-making.

View resource

IBCS video

IBCS - Fostering comprehension

A video showing how, by applying the International Business Communication Standards (IBCS), we can understand our reports, presentations and dashboards faster and better.

View resource