Reporting cadence: who gets which numbers, and how often

Aug 22
3 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

Introduction

Most reporting problems are not about which metrics to track. They are about sending the same document to everyone at a frequency that suits nobody.

A report has a reader, a decision it supports, and a frequency that matches how often that decision gets made. Get those three aligned and reports get read.

1. Reporting cadence is set by the decision, not by the calendar

The question is never "how often should we report?" It is "how often is this decision made?"

Budget reallocation happens monthly, so channel performance is a monthly report. Whether anyone replied to today's enquiries is a daily question. Whether to change the offer is quarterly.

Reporting more often than the decision creates noise and invites reaction to normal variation. Reporting less often means decisions get made without information.

2. Match each report to one audience

Different readers need genuinely different documents, and combining them serves none of them.

The owner needs a small number of numbers and the decisions arising. Whoever runs a channel needs detail about that channel and nothing about the others. Delivery staff need volume and timing, not cost per acquisition. A client needs progress against what was agreed.

One report for everyone becomes long enough that each reader skims past their own section.

3. Keep the frequent reports very short

The daily and weekly items are checks, not analysis.

Daily: were all enquiries responded to, is anything broken. Two lines, ideally automatic.

Weekly: enquiries by source, progress on the active change, anything outstanding from the daily checks. Half a page.

If the weekly report takes an hour to produce, it will stop being produced within two months. Brevity here is a durability requirement rather than a stylistic preference.

4. Put the interpretation in the monthly one

Monthly is where numbers get explained, because a month is long enough for the explanation to be worth writing.

Include the comparison — against last month, and against the same month last year for anything seasonal — and one paragraph on what changed and why. Then the decisions being proposed.

A monthly report that presents figures without interpretation transfers the analysis to the reader, which usually means it does not happen.

5. Lead with the decision, not the data

Structure every report the same way: what we are asking you to decide or notice, then the numbers supporting it, then detail if wanted.

Reports that build up to a conclusion get abandoned before the conclusion. Reports that open with it get read as far as the reader needs.

For monthly reporting, the strongest format is three lines at the top: what changed, what we are doing about it, what we need from you.

6. Automate the collection, write the commentary by hand

The split that keeps reporting sustainable.

Pulling numbers should be automatic or nearly so — a saved view, a connected sheet, a scheduled export. Manual data gathering is the reason reporting lapses.

The commentary should not be automated. The value in a monthly report is a person saying what they think happened and what they propose, and no dashboard produces that.

7. Decide what happens when a report is not read

Reports that nobody reads should be stopped, and finding out requires asking.

Ask each recipient what they did with the last one. If the honest answer is nothing, either the report is aimed at the wrong decision or the person is not the decision-maker.

Cancelling an unread report is a gain, not a failure. The effort it consumed is better spent making one report good enough to act on.

8. Keep the format stable and archive every edition

The value of reporting compounds only if editions are comparable.

Same metrics, same definitions, same layout, month after month. Redesigning the report every quarter destroys the ability to compare, which is most of the reason to report at all.

Keep an archive. Being able to read what was reported and decided eighteen months ago is worth more than any individual month's analysis, and it is what makes the reporting an asset rather than a routine.

Conclusion

Set frequency from how often the underlying decision is made, and write a separate report for each audience rather than one for everyone.

Keep daily and weekly items to a few lines, put interpretation and comparisons in the monthly edition, lead with the decision, automate collection but write commentary by hand, stop reports nobody acts on, and keep the format stable with every edition archived.