# Monthly Client Report — Delivery Kit Guide

> Folder: `monthly-client-report` · Category: scenario kits · solo or per account owner · 60 min per report · offline + online · print props · scenario kit
> License: CC BY 4.0

A monthly report has one job: make next month's meeting shorter and your fee feel obvious. Most reports fail the other way — a dump of charts the client skims, a meeting that starts with "so, what happened?", and a freelancer who spent Sunday editing a slide nobody reads. This kit runs the whole delivery loop — a data checklist that kills the scavenger hunt, the three-sentence spine every section hangs on, a send calendar the client agrees to, and a keep/stop/start review that turns report five into a better report than report one.

## Objectives

By the third report, the account owner will have:

1. A fixed data checklist collected in one pass — no more mid-month scramble for "can you send last week's numbers".
2. Every section built on one spine: what happened, so what, now what — three sentences before any chart earns its place.
3. A send calendar both sides agreed to, a running keep/stop/start ledger per client, and a report that takes under an hour to assemble.

## When to use this kit

- You report to clients monthly — agency, freelance, retainer, in-house serving internal "clients" — and the report costs you more hours than it earns trust.
- Your meetings start with the client asking the questions your report should have answered.
- You have quietly noticed the report getting longer and skimmed more.

## What this is not

- Not a dashboard. If the client wants live numbers, point them at a dashboard; this kit is the monthly moment where a human says what the numbers mean. That sentence is the part they are paying for.
- Not a data-correctness system. Sources stay the authority; the report renders and interprets. If a number is wrong, it is wrong at the source — fix it there and re-render.
- Not for daily/weekly ops reporting. The cadence this kit protects is monthly, where the conversation lives.

## Setup

**Space:** 60 quiet minutes on the same day each month; the review is a standing line in the quarterly call.

**Materials per client:** the data checklist (printed or as a recurring reminder), the three-sentence spine card, last month's report and its keep/stop/start ledger, this kit's review sheet.

**Materials for your desk:** one card deck per account — the checklist faces are what you hand the client who keeps sending numbers late, politely.

**Grouping:** solo works; agencies run one deck per account owner and compare ledgers at the quarterly review.

**Roles:** the account owner collects, writes and sends. The client owns the "so what" check — every section must survive one question from them: "and why should I care?"

## How to run it

| Time | Phase | What you do | The client does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1–3 | Collect | Run the data checklist in one pass; anything missing gets a named owner and a date, not a chase. | Receives the "what we need by when" note; sends on time because the list never changes. |
| Day 3–10 | Write the spine | For each section: what happened, so what, now what — three sentences first. Charts only after a sentence earns them. | Reads three sentences per section, not thirty slides. |
| Day 10–12 | Cut | Apply the cut card: any chart nobody references in the meeting dies next month. | Sees a shorter report every quarter, not a longer one. |
| Day 12 | Send | Send on the agreed calendar date — same day monthly, no exceptions, no "sorry for the delay". | Gets predictability; trust moves from the numbers to the rhythm. |
| After the call | Ledger | One line each: keep / stop / start — written in the ledger before you close the laptop. | Gets asked what to cut; their answer changes next month's report. |

## The card deck

Use the faces from `monthly-client-report-prop-cards.pdf`: a master card (the loop in one view), the data checklist card, the three-sentence spine card, the send calendar card, the cut card (what to delete before sending), and a watch-out card — plus branded backs and blanks for your channel-specific metrics.

## Failure modes

1. **The chart dump.** Everything the tool exports ships in the deck; the client reads none of it. Rescue: no chart enters without a sentence in front of it — what happened, so what, now what.
2. **The moving calendar.** Sent "when it's ready"; the client stops expecting it, then stops reading it. Rescue: the send date is agreed once and defended forever — late once is a policy change.
3. **Bad-news burial.** The missed target goes on page 14 in small font. Rescue: the bad news gets the first sentence of its section and the first minute of the meeting — burying it costs the trust the report exists to build.
4. **The report nobody reviews.** Twelve reports a year, zero changes — the client is politely reading yesterday's report forever. Rescue: the keep/stop/start ledger is three lines and it ships; report five must differ from report one.

## Variations

- **Quarterly version:** same loop, quarter cadence, deeper spine — for clients who fire people monthly and don't need a monthly paper trail.
- **Internal reporting:** replace "client" with "the department you serve"; the so-what question survives the translation almost unchanged.
- **Multiple clients:** one deck per account, but the loop and the calendar are identical — the point of the kit is that the report becomes a routine, not a re-invention.
- **Online:** the checklist becomes a recurring form (the folder's FormLM block), the report a link, the send a scheduled email — the loop does not care what medium carries it.

## Facilitation notes

- Write the meeting's first sentence before you build the first slide: "this month, the one thing that changed is ___". If you cannot fill the blank, the month had no story — say so, briefly, and spend the meeting on next month.
- The client who sends data late gets the checklist card, not a reminder email. Polite architecture beats impolite memory.
- Length is a feature: the report that fits in ten minutes of reading gets read. The one that takes forty gets skimmed and resented.
- Your fee is justified by the "so what", not the "what happened" — any tool can do the latter since last year.

## Put it on the wall

Print `monthly-client-report-activity-poster.pdf` (A3): the loop, the spine, the cut rules, the watch-outs — one sheet at the desk, one copy folded into the client's first-month packet.

## Props in this folder

- `monthly-client-report-prop-cards.pdf` — poker-spec print sheet (63.5 × 88.9 mm, bleed and cut guides): master, data checklist, three-sentence spine, send calendar, cut card, watch-out, branded backs and blanks
- `monthly-client-report-run-sheet.pdf` — the print edition: this guide + the report review, bound as one A4 document with bookmarks (`-Letter.pdf` is US Letter)
- `monthly-client-report-activity-poster.pdf` — the whole loop on one A3 desk sheet
- `monthly-client-report-guide.md` · `-debrief.md` · `-start-here.md` — the delivery guide, the report review sheet, the one-page start here
- `monthly-client-report-license.md` — what you may do
- `SKILL.md` · `monthly-client-report.zip` — the machine-readable manifest, and the whole folder in one download

## Agent version

Every file in this folder has a stable public URL — an AI agent can fetch the card deck, the review sheet and this guide with three curl commands (see `SKILL.md`), or turn the data checklist into a recurring collection form. The paper version needs a desk and a calendar you defend. Keep the "so what" human; that sentence is the invoice.