Cleaning up Excel → PowerPoint workflow for monthly management reports

Every month I build a management report for board-level distribution. Current workflow:

1. Pull data from source into Excel

2. Build charts in Excel

3. Paste charts into PowerPoint template

4. Spend 45-60 minutes fixing alignment, font sizes, and chart formatting that shifts on paste

5. Export to PDF

The main friction points I haven't been able to solve:

— Charts lose formatting consistency when pasted across slides (colours shift, font sizes change)

— When source data updates I have to rebuild or re-paste rather than refresh

— Maintaining consistent styling across 10-15 slides is manual and error-prone

I've tried Paste Special → Picture to lock formatting but then charts aren't refreshable. I've tried linking charts directly but the formatting still drifts.

We have Power BI available but it's worse for this specific use case, visual customization is too limited for board-level output and the document format is painful to work with.

Has anyone solved the refresh + consistent formatting problem in a clean way? Specifically looking for an approach that works across 10-15 slides monthly without rebuilding from scratch each cycle.