How to get weekly and monthly reports right for your team and your clients

• They either promise them but don’t deliver them consistently enough; or
• They go to great lengths (and usually a lot of manual effort) to produce them, but their clients never read or use them.

Here is how to get weekly and monthly reports right for you, your team and your clients.

1. Make “reporting” part of “working”

   Start with the expectation towards your team that reporting about their work is part of doing the work. A lot of times you’ll find people who do a great job but forget to tell anyone about it.
   
   

2. Make reporting of the tasks completed as easy as clicking a button at most 

   Your team is busy, and so are you. Don’t make it difficult for people to let each other know that something is done, pending or hasn’t even started yet. If your idea of reporting is that when a team member finishes an assigned task, they’ll then go over to some spreadsheet, and go find that same task entry, and mark it as completed, then please re-think that. Reporting works very well when people don’t have to think twice about it. When the actions they are working on, are linked automatically to the reporting so they “get their job done” and at the same time they are actually generating the necessary details for reporting without any extra effort on their part.
   
   

3. Do not “produce” reports, provide reports 

   In other words, if your idea of reporting to your clients involves somebody spending time moving data around, copying and pasting, formatting documents, using document templates, even copying from one place to another to populate them you’re doing it wrong. Reconsider and look for a process and a system that produces reporting in a way that’s hands-free for you and your team.
   

4. Consider a shorter reporting cycle, ideally an always-updated reporting and then give it to your clients on a periodic basis. 

   This is getting into the quite advanced territory but if you can pull it off, your team and clients (and your business) will thank you for it. Aim for making reporting always-on. As things are done by your team, the reporting view(s) / page(s) whatever the client has access to updates also. You don’t have to promise your clients that they can see live, real-time results, you can still tell them it’s a weekly or monthly report. Your account managers or yourself if you are the one dealing with clients also, will be thankful that the system allows them the ability to look in one place and see what has happened at any time across any project.
   

5. Make reporting a key part of your deliverable to your client 

   Success requires trust and trust comes from communication. Reporting is an excellent way to build relationships and cultivate communication that will lead to trust more easily and quickly. Don’t just throw reports in with your offering, tell people they’ll be getting them. Show them even what they might look like, what they can expect and when. Promote your reporting and use it to build value in what you do and offer. Remember, most people in your industry don’t even do any reporting worth reading - by being able to offer a way that consistently, repeatable and accurately reflects on the results you are producing for your clients, you’re putting yourself head and shoulders ahead of everyone else around you.