How do you handle client reporting?

I've been talking to social media managers and agency owners and one thing keeps coming up — client reporting.

Everyone handles it differently. Spreadsheets, screenshots, Looker Studio, manually copy-pasting numbers into slides...

For those managing 3+ clients — three quick questions:

  1. How do you currently create reports for clients?
  2. How long does it honestly take per client?
  3. What's the most frustrating part?

I'm exploring building a tool to solve this and want to understand the real problem before writing a single line of code. Every honest answer helps.

Comments

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Any_Wrongdoer_2174•3 months ago•1

tbh if reporting takes more than 30 minutes per client, your system is the bottleneck. i’m not a designer so i focus on the "runable" part of the data and use something like looker studio to automate the data pull, but use a 5-minute loom video to explain the strategy. i’ve found that a recorded walkthrough builds 10x more trust than a static spreadsheet because the client hears your thinking, not just your math. speed of reporting = more time for actual growth work.

i-cruis•3 months ago•1

I've once read this article that provides a guide and structure on how to report marketing results for Instagram clients. Perhaps you could draw some inspo from it.

sheik_sha_ha•3 months ago•1

As a freelance data analyst working with digital marketing clients, here is my honest take.

  1. How I create reports

Looker Studio for everything. I connect Meta Ads, Google Ads, GA4, and GSC through Windsor.ai or Supermetrics, build the dashboard once, and share a live link with the client. No slides, no screenshots, no copy pasting.

  1. How long it takes

First setup for a new client takes around 3 to 5 hours depending on the data sources. After that, ongoing reporting time is close to zero because the dashboard refreshes automatically. I also use Apps Script to send automated weekly email alerts for key metric movements.

  1. Most frustrating part

Honestly it is not the reporting itself, it is getting clients to actually read the dashboard. Most clients still want someone to walk them through the numbers, so a short weekly or monthly call alongside the live dashboard is what makes the whole setup work in practice.

If you are building a tool for this space, the real gap is not pulling the data, it is helping non technical clients understand what the numbers mean without needing an analyst to explain it every time.

Independent-Ant-7230•3 months ago•1

honestly it’s less about the tool and more about how messy the data is across platforms

pulling everything together is what takes time, not the reporting itself

once you standardize what you track, the actual report becomes pretty quick

chiZuux_13•3 months ago•1

for 3+ clients i used to burn like 2 hours each on slides with pasted screenshots, it was miserable. switching to Looker Studio templates cut that to maybe 30 min per client once the templates are set up. the frustrating part is still wrangling data from different platforms into one place.

if you're dealing with data scattered across a bunch of tools, Scaylor might be relevant to your research too.

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