Reports: Are They Really Worth The Time?

Client reports. Those monthly catalogues of what we did and did not accomplish for clients.

Are they fun to do? No.

Do all clients read them? No.

Then why do we need to spend precious time doing them?

Many client interactions are via email, leaving an electronic trail (stream) that can chronicle activity and results.

Post-it notes serve as handy reminders.

What about the highlights of important conversations jotted down in a notebook?

With all that information floating around, is it really worth the time to do monthly reports?

Absolutely.

A monthly report consolidates all of the month's activities in one place that's easy to reference if the client has questions.

More importantly, it can be a quick source of answers to questions that come up months down the road (who wants to sort through 20 emails trying to reconstruct what happened six months ago?)

A report can provide you with much-needed historical reference when staff has departed.

As a concise summary, it serves as an overview of activities, client approvals and outcomes. Your back-up includes the emails, little post-it notes, and notebook jottings carrying the daily details.

So what should go into a monthly client report?

The time you've put in on the client project. The results of that project. The steps you took to get there and your next steps. The media you contacted and the outcome of those interactions. A summary of other relevant business.

While you may hate reporting, it's a tool that turns out to be important when you least expect it to be — like when a retainer client has questions about direction, performance or approval.

That's when those dreaded monthly reports may just save the account.