A short weekly update that says what worked, what didn't, and what the client needs to approve.
Search for a client report template and you'll mostly find blank layouts to fill in. Those help with structure, but the hard part of a report is deciding what to say. So here's a finished one to learn from. The weekly sample sits behind a password, given on this page, and a second, monthly sample opens without one.
Who it's for
Anyone who owes a client a regular update: agencies, freelancers, consultants, and account leads with several clients. It suits weekly check-ins and monthly service reports, when a full deck would be too much and a chat message too little.
If your client has asked "so what's happening with this?" more than once, a short, predictable report usually stops the question.
What a good one contains
The details below come from the weekly sample, a creative report for a made-up outdoor brand. Its opening does most of the work.
- The headline and the ask, first. A busy client may read only this. If you need a decision, it can't sit at the bottom of page three.
- What's working, with evidence. Three ads ranked, each showing its click rate and cost per sale. Showing the creative itself beats naming it, since the client recognizes their own work at a glance.
- What's slipping, said plainly. "Clicks have dropped three weeks running" builds more trust than a report that's only good news. Raise a problem before the client finds it, and bring the fix with it.
- Next week, in concrete steps. Each line names an action, and two of the three name a day. Your client can see what's coming, and you've made a small promise you can keep.
- Nothing that only you care about. Hours logged, tasks closed and internal process stay out, because none of them tells the client whether the ads are selling shoes.
A weekly that takes longer than two minutes to read has turned into a document, and documents get saved for later.
Keep it consistent
Use the same sections in the same order every time, so the client knows where to look. In a Claude conversation, paste last week's page with this week's notes and ask for the same structure with new content.
Keep a running note during the week, even in rough bullets, because reports written from memory on a Friday afternoon go vague. Before you publish, check each figure against its source and reread the opening. It should still be true if the client reads nothing else.
Update the same page each week if the client just wants the latest, since the link never changes. Publish a new page each week if they want to look back, and link to the earlier ones.
