The difference between tracking and reporting

An owner I worked with last year fired an agency after eight months. The reports looked good. The phone did not ring.

The tracking was fine. The reporting was a selection.

Every event was firing. The problem was which events made it into the summary. The summary highlighted impressions and click-through rate. It omitted that close rate and revenue per customer had never been measured at all.

Tracking is a feed

Tracking is the raw feed. Every call, every form, every direction request, every chat. It belongs in the background of a system, uncensored.

Reporting is a decision

Reporting takes that feed and decides what matters. It filters out the noise, and it can filter out the accountability at the same time.

A good report answers:

• What did we spend
• Against what did it land
• Which of those turned into work with dates on the calendar
• What happens next

Any report that cannot answer those four is not a report. It is a brochure.

The tell

Ask whoever produces your reports one question: what would you show me if the numbers were bad this month. If the answer is vague, the reporting is not choosing the truth.

I count conservatively. Every untracked job is your upside, not my credit.