Client reporting is a vital yet too often neglected aspect of agency and client relationships. One study reported that 81% of agency leaders believe strong client relationships are the biggest factor in retaining accounts.
Yet, perhaps due to how long it takes to manually dig up data, organize it, and share it, many agencies push it down their list of priorities.
But it doesn’t have to be so laborious. With today’s automated client reporting tools, you can use data to show the true power of your work and customize your reports with vast possibilities.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this guide to client reporting:
Key Takeaways from Our Client Reporting Guide:
- Agencies use client reporting to communicate project progress and performance to their clients.
- It builds trust, improves communication and decision-making, and opens doors to upselling.
- It creates a single source of truth for clients to understand exactly what’s working and what isn’t.
- It reduces assumptions and confusion.
- Visualization and charts are the key to modern client reporting, especially with busy executives.
- Inconsistencies in client reporting are one of the biggest hurdles agencies face.
- Project management software, such as Workamajig, allows for real-time reports, including scheduled report sending and client dashboards for 24/7 updates.
What is Client Reporting?
Client reporting is a process used by agencies and project managers to communicate updates on project progress and performance metrics to their clients.
Its main use is to provide transparency to the client, so they can understand how their investments are performing.
Reports are presented via documents, dashboards, or even presentations. They’re often scheduled over various timelines, depending on the client (such as weekly or monthly).
Why Agencies Should Use Client Reporting
70% of agency leaders rate client reporting as "extremely important" for retention. Here’s why:
It Builds Trust
Building trust with your clients is critical. In fact, 26% of agencies report that transparent reporting is a top factor in client retention.
Client reporting can help achieve that through transparent reports backed with clear data, rather than broad claims.
Scheduling your client reports regularly also helps improve that sense of transparency, giving a clear view into the workings of their investment, without a sense that things are being hidden.
It Improves Communication
Client reporting can also help agencies to improve their client communication, which is a pressing matter given that 66% of people say they switch to competitors due to poor business communication.
Good client reporting clearly shows key performance indicators (KPIs), timelines, and milestones with every scheduled update, so there’s no risk of surprises or scope creep later. You’ll also clarify the expectations for your agency.
Those vague discussions you may currently have with clients can also transform into ones based on reports that they have to refer to. Plus, it keeps the conversation alive with the client, so they feel a closer connection to your work and are more likely to discuss future projects.
Drives Growth
You can be the most transparent and well-communicating agency around, but it won’t mean much unless the client feels they’re getting a good ROI.
Client reporting can provide ways to justify your fees and expand your service to a client, like, for example, adding a video production to a design project.
Informed Decision-Making
Finally, client reporting allows both your agency and the client to make data-driven decisions. Insights will be readily available and comparable over time, to help you and your client understand what to adjust and where to allocate resources.
Accountability should also be strengthened as a result of that, as both sides will have clear records of what was promised vs what was actually delivered.
Types of Client Reports Every Agency Should Know
Agencies rely on client reports slightly differently from the rest. They need to show how deliverables are being put together and performing in a creative context.
Here’s a look at the types of client reports you’ll likely come across in an agency:
Project Status Reports
Project status reports are a snapshot of ongoing projects. They let clients know what deliverables are being worked on and the progress, without needing to make deep dives.
Project status reports usually share an overview, the progress since the last update, and the current progress. When using automated software for these reports, you’ll also be able to get a comparison of the actual progress vs the planned progress on factors such as budget spend and deadlines. Data visualizations such as Gantt charts can be powerful here.
In fast-paced projects, you can send out project status reports weekly or bi-weekly.
Performance Reports
Creative and marketing agencies can use performance reports to understand how their efforts are performing against client goals. They utilize specific metrics and KPIs that matter to the client's business objectives, such as conversion rates, ROI, or engagement metrics.
For example, in a creative agency, you could use a combination of sentiment shifts and data to show how your visuals have driven an audience response.
Performance reports are best suited to ongoing relationships and one-off events, like launches.
Financial Reports
Financial reports can help an agency justify its costs, while also pointing out expenses to the client to aid transparency. Using visualizations can also make overwhelming numbers easy to digest for all readers.
Through budget tracking, invoicing, and profitability, agencies will be able to quickly compare budgets with actual spends and profit margins per project.
Progress Reports
Progress reports take a deeper dive into updating clients on progress, using milestones, completion percentages, and clarification over approval statuses, timelines, resource allocation, and anything that’s causing a delay.
Visualization tools like progress bars, Gantt charts, and asset previews work very well in these reports. A milestone approach to scheduling works well for creative projects.
Executive Summaries
Executive summaries are a condensed, high-level look at the project that highlights what’s been achieved so far and the current challenges.
They’re perfect for busy stakeholders who are likely to push aside more detailed reports, especially when they include bold visuals.
Custom Reports
Custom reports and campaign-specific reports analyze the nitty-gritty of projects, helping agencies to convey the ROI on projects. Compared to other reports, they include more complex data, including KPIs, budgeting breakdowns, creative asset performance breakdowns, and frankly, anything that you’ve got data for.
For example, using an agency management software such as Workamajig enables the use of a vast amount of data sets and information for custom reports and formulations. All of which can be set up for automated, scheduled reporting.
Essential Elements of Effective Client Reports
Client reporting has become a staple of agency and client relationships. But many agencies get the whole thing confused. The goal should not be to overwhelm the client with data that doesn’t make much sense to them. Instead, it should use meaningful KPIs that explain:
- Is it working?
- Should we continue?
- What do we need to do next?
Here’s a look at what you should include to achieve that:
Include a Clear Executive Summary
An executive summary is a concise overview of the report. Putting one at the start of your report helps the reader immediately understand the most important findings and recommendations. With this, they don’t need to read the whole thing to get an understanding.
Use Visual Data Presentation Where Possible
Showing the current situation with visualizations such as charts, graphs, and infographics always makes it digestible. Which, in today’s world of short attention spans, is always appreciated.
Provide Context and Analysis
Sending the client raw data is like asking them to do the work themselves. A quick explainer of what the numbers mean for the client’s business is advised and will always be appreciated.
You can go one step further into your analysis with actionable recommendations about what steps should be taken in the future. This approach can open the door to upselling new projects and services!
Be Honest
As we mentioned before, transparency is the key to a long-term client and agency relationship. Give an honest assessment within your client reports and don’t hide information when things aren’t going to plan. Instead, provide explanations and plans for improvement.
In creative industries, delays and plan changes are common. So, taking this approach should reduce tensions and keep your clients informed about any difficulties.
Goal Alignment
Above all, ensure you show how the data, progress, and results connect to the client’s original objectives. That’s what they’re paying your agency for and will reassure them that their investment is a wise one.
Common Client Reporting Challenges (And How to Solve Them)
Creative agencies get hit harder than most by subjective deliverables, creative workflows, and value that is hard to prove by data. Here are some of the common hurdles you may face and how to get over them:
Manual Data Collection
Creative agencies are often juggling multiple client reporting tools and platforms, with their employees completing tasks at irregular rates and on fluctuating schedules. Managing all of that manually is hard, especially when you’ve got to collate it all in a spreadsheet and make it look pretty.
Using an all-in-one agency management software, such as Workamajig, is a great solution to this. It uses automated reporting tools and templates, so you can pull data from financials and budgets, to hours worked, and KPIs in seconds.
Inconsistent reporting schedules
If you’re manually sending reports over to your clients every week or so, then there’s a chance that you’re going to miss it at some point or need to move the task to another day.
Irregularities can damage client relationships as they can mess up their own schedules. Plus, it can feel inconsistent.
You can get around that with automation and scheduled delivery. From there, it’s a hands-off process. With Workamajig, your clients can also gain 24/7 real-time data from their client portal, too, so when they want to check in, they can without having to wait for the next report schedule.
Data Accuracy Issues
Manual entry can bring errors. And so can AI-powered tools. Instead, you can trust an automated system like Workamajig to accurately pull data and time tracking information directly from the same place that the agency is working with on a day-to-day basis, reducing errors entirely.
Client Confusion
Technical metrics can be overwhelming. No one wants walls of numbers, especially not busy executives.
Streamlining your client reporting is the first step to take; using a visual format is the second. You can use report templates for familiarity each week, key metrics, and visual graphics to aid data analysis.
Lack of Actionable Insights
Ideally, you should leave the client with a clear understanding and some options on what to do next. For example, give a clear understanding of trends, such as “the increased budget improved progress speed by 20%” or “the social media campaign performance saw Instagram views increase 80%”.
This is likely to occur in milestone reports, rather than weekly or bi-weekly reports.
How Workamajig Streamlines Client Reporting
Workamajig is a project management platform tailored for agencies. One of its many powerful game-changers for project managers is how easy and customizable it makes client reporting. Its scope is huge.
Here’s a closer look:
Real Time Data Integration
Firstly, Workamajig integrates the dataset into the system. It’s constantly tracking time, project progress, and budget data as work happens. So, you’ve got a vast amount of data points at your disposal for client reports at the click of a few buttons.
This includes integrated financial tracking that provides accurate cost and ROI data that standalone reporting tools cannot capture, because they lack any connection to actual project workflows.
With Workamajig, there’s no need to pull data from different systems, because it’s already all there, under one hood.
Live Dashboards
Workamajig’s project dashboards give teams and clients instant visibility into detailed aspects of the project, such as project health, timelines, and budget statuses.
You’ll see visual representations throughout, too, making otherwise overwhelming client data something that you can quickly understand and share with others.
Client Portal Access for Real-Time Updates
You can also give your clients access to their own user-friendly dashboards, which give 24/7 transparency on the data you wish to display to meet your clients' needs. This approach gives them the ability to get real-time insights into your projects, without the need to wait for reports to be sent over.
So, if you want to provide information on a project-by-project level, where they can track budgets and project status, then they can whenever they want. And throughout the system, clients can communicate with you in relation to what they see. For example, they could email the project manager directly from within the project - they won’t even need to do it through their own email system.
Quick Report Building
Workamajig shows data comparisons and reports in its dashboards, which is great for allowing your team to compare and track data. But, if you want to build reports to send over to your clients, it’s also set up to make report building a breeze.
For example, if you want to send a project status report to your client every week, it’s possible in seconds with the ability to schedule it for a specific time of day. So, if you want regular reports to be fresh in the client’s inbox at 10 am on a Monday, you can! It’s all automated, saving your hours of manual formatting and data entry.
A Vast Scope for Customized Reporting
If there’s one thing to take away from what Workamajig can offer in client reporting, it’s that its scope is vast but simple.
While there are many templates for quick analysis and traditional client statements, we give users a free rein via access to a vast number of fields and datasets, which you can use for custom calculations.
And, rest assured, our Workamajig account managers assist with onboarding and are always on hand to help out with customized modifications if you’ve got specific reporting goals.
Do you need a very specific report? You can build it.
Do you want to show it as a visual representation? You can show it.
Do you want to control what information is displayed? You can control it.
If you’d like to receive a free demo to see the extent of how Workamajig can transform your agency, feel free to contact us today.