Guide
What to put in a monthly client report (and what to leave out)
· Written by the New Odyssey team, with AI help.
A monthly report has one job: help a busy client understand, in a few minutes, what they paid for and what happens next. Most reports fail at that not because they lack data but because they bury it.
Here's a structure that works for SEO, paid media, web development and general consulting retainers.
1. Executive summary
Three to five sentences. The headline result, the most important piece of work, and anything the client must act on. If a client reads only this, they should still know whether the month went well.
Write it last, from the sections below, so it never claims more than they support.
2. Work completed
A short list in plain language. "Rewrote titles and descriptions for 12 product pages" beats "on-page optimization". Pull it from your task board and stand-up notes rather than memory: a list built from the record is complete and easy to verify.
3. Results, with the source and period on every number
This is where trust is won or lost.
- Show the number, the period and the source together. "Organic sessions: 4,279 in September (Google Analytics 4)" is checkable. "Traffic is up" isn't.
- Compare like with like. The same metric, the same length of period, the same filter. Month over month is fine; say which months.
- Say how a number was worked out. Sessions add up across days; a click-through rate or an average position doesn't, so it's an average. Mixing those up is the most common reporting error.
- Don't explain a change you can't evidence. If your notes don't record why something moved, say it moved and what you'll look at.
A small table plus one chart per key metric is usually enough.
4. What's next
The plan for the coming month, in the same plain language as work completed. Keep it to things you've actually planned.
5. Risks and asks
The section clients most often need and agencies most often skip: what's blocked, what's waiting on the client (logins, approvals, assets), and any date at risk. Put the ask first: "We need theme access to finish product schema."
What to leave out
- Screenshots of dashboards with no explanation.
- Metrics nobody agreed to track.
- Vague claims ("strong momentum") with no number behind them.
- Anything you can't trace back to a note, a task or a data source.
Making it repeatable
The structure above is easy to fill when the inputs are in one place: the month's notes, the task list and a metrics export. That's what Reporta automates: it drafts these five sections from your inputs only, computes the numbers from your data with their source and period, and flags anything the inputs don't support, so the review is about judgment rather than copy-paste. You approve it before the client sees it.
Questions
How long should a monthly client report be?
Long enough to answer three questions: what did we do, what changed, and what do you need from me. For most retainers that's one to three pages, with numbers in a table rather than in paragraphs.
Should I explain why a metric went down?
Only when you know. If your notes record a cause (a tracking outage, a paused campaign), say so. If you don't know, say the number fell and what you'll check, rather than guessing.