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.