Case: A reporting runbook that cut a 4-hour monthly report to 35 minutes

Case: A reporting runbook that cut a 4-hour monthly report to 35 minutes

An agency spent half a day building each client report by hand, and numbers sometimes disagreed across decks. A templated runbook standardized inputs and ownership.

Run this on the 2nd business day of each month per client.

Stage 1 — Source (Owner: analyst)
☐ Pull from one agreed source per metric (no mixing)
☐ Freeze the date range, note it on slide 1

Stage 2 — Build (Owner: analyst)
☐ Drop numbers into the locked template
☐ Write 3 bullets: what worked, what didn't, next

Stage 3 — Review (Owner: account lead)
☐ Sanity-check totals against invoice spend
☐ Approve or send back one revision list

Trigger: month close + 2 days.
Done-when: report approved and sent.

Result: build time 4 hours to 35 minutes across 9 clients; data mismatches eliminated.

Save this. Run it every time.