The Agency Reporting Playbook: Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Cadences
How often should you report to clients? A practical guide to daily, weekly, and monthly reporting cadences for agencies.
The Agency Reporting Playbook: Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Cadences
One size doesn't fit
Some clients want daily updates. Others get overwhelmed by a weekly email. The right cadence depends on the client, the data, and what kind of decisions they're making.
Here's what actually works.
Daily: for high-spend and real-time operations
Who it's for: Clients spending $10k+ per month on ads. E-commerce brands during peak seasons. Anyone where a bad day costs real money.
What to send:
- Spend vs budget pacing
- Cost per lead or ROAS
- Any anomalies (rejected ads, spend spikes)
Where to send it: Slack or Google Chat. Daily emails get ignored fast.
Why it works: Small problems get caught early. A CPA spike on Tuesday gets addressed Wednesday, not the following Monday.
Set up a daily Pulse at 8am targeting a Slack Connect channel. Add a Meta Ads Stream for real-time alerts on ad issues.
Weekly: the default for most clients
Who it's for: Most clients. Marketing managers who want to stay informed but don't need daily noise.
What to send:
- Week-over-week performance (spend, conversions, revenue)
- Campaign-level breakdown
- AI summary with trends and recommendations
Where to send it: Slack Connect, email, or Google Chat. Monday mornings work well. It sets the tone for the week.
Why it works: It's frequent enough to catch problems, infrequent enough to show real trends. The AI summary gives clients something to talk about on your weekly call.
Monthly: for executives and finance
Who it's for: CFOs, founders, and stakeholders who think in months, not days. Accounting firms reporting to business owners.
What to send:
- Month-over-month totals (revenue, spend, profit margins)
- Quarterly trends
- Cash flow or P&L snapshots from Xero
Where to send it: Email. Monthly reports feel more formal. A well-formatted email with a chart and summary lands better than a Slack message.
Why it works: These people don't need granular data. They need the headline: are we up or down, and why?
Mixing cadences for one client
The best setup often combines two or three cadences:
- Daily Stream alerts for anything urgent (ad rejections, lead spikes)
- Weekly Pulse to Slack with performance charts
- Monthly Pulse to email for the executive summary
This way the marketing team gets the detail they need, and the CEO gets a clean monthly view without the noise.
Set it up
Create Pulses for each cadence. Use Source Groups to bundle related metrics into one delivery. The schedule runs itself from there.
Related reading
- Client reporting templates by cadence — slot-by-slot what goes where.
- Budget pacing for paid ads — the daily slot in detail.
- Keyword performance reports in Slack — the weekly SEO slot.
- Track MRR in Slack — the weekly + monthly SaaS metric.
- Spreadsheets vs email for management
