No one appreciates pumping money into a project or an investment without a means of knowing what's going on with the endeavor. This simple understanding applies when dealing with clients working with your agency.

Whether you run a B2B or B2C type agency, clients want to receive regular quantitative and qualitative results in an easy-to-digest format. Reporting shows the value of your service and can convince clients to continue with your brand.

This is where client reporting software comes into the picture. Whether you’re a full-service agency or specialize in a specific area of service, such as marketing or content creation, reporting to your clients with the right tools will demonstrate your worth, save time, and may even contribute to a picky client staying on your roster.

Some client reporting apps are offered by developers as a dedicated solution while reporting capability comes as a module in other solutions for completing client projects.

In this guide, you’ll learn what client reporting is, its importance, key features, and the top 8 client reporting software options for your agency operations in 2024.

Table of Content:

• What is a Client Reporting Software?
• Importance of Client Reporting Software for Agencies
• Key Features to Look for in Client Reporting Software
• Top 8 Client Reporting Software
• Conclusion and Recommendations

What Is a Client Reporting Software?

Client reporting refers to the practice of providing clients with regular updates on project performance and metrics. The project could be a marketing campaign, web development, or any other type of service provided to the client.

Clinked Client Dashboard

The core function of client reporting is to help clients visually see and understand the value they get from your agency's services. Without a clear and concise report, a client may not know what they are exactly paying you for even though your service is bringing results to their operations or needs.

Aside from educating clients on your hard work, a client reporting system can also help service beneficiaries have realistic expectations. With regular reports, clients can compare the latest performance to previous campaigns or even industry standards. This way, they wouldn't expect figures or results that are unattainable or humanly impossible to achieve.

The purpose of agency client reporting includes aligning expectations, building trust, and enhancing decision-making. Client reporting makes it easy for clients and agencies to be on the same page in terms of input and output. Reporting helps build trust and strengthen client relationships by allowing service providers to demonstrate what they have done or are currently doing. With the right data and metrics, both clients and the agency can better make decisions that improve future processes and strategies.

Importance of Client Reporting Software for Agencies

Investing in the right client reporting tool is an important investment every agency needs to make. Since trust primarily comes from results, perhaps it’s okay to say building trust with clients is the biggest growth element of business-client interactions. And when you add transparency to trust, long-lasting client relationships develop.

As an agency serving whether B2B or B2C clients, a client reporting solution is crucial for building trust and transparency through:

• Regular Communication: Reporting software helps keep a client informed about the updates and progress of projects.

Clinked Client Profile Dashboard

• Accountability: Regular reporting helps both sides know their roles in the project, preventing misunderstandings.
• Expectation Management: By sending timely reports, clients know timelines for updates and deliverables. Plus, concerns and issues can be addressed proactively.
• Collaboration: From time to time, clients are more likely to have suggestions and new expectations when going through reports. Working together through projects can lead to better decision-making and project outcomes.

Clinked Document Management

• Data-driven Insights: Figures, KPIs, and other types of data demonstrate the value of service offered to clients. Information gathered from data can be used to identify trends, patterns, and insights, which are all required in making informed decisions.
• Value Demonstration: Instead of allowing clients to wonder if they are wasting money or putting resources to good use, use client reporting software to generate reports that underscore the value of your service.

Key Features to Look for in Client Reporting Software

A client reporting tool can work for or against your business depending on which option you choose. So, to get the selection right, here are some of the features to look for in a client reporting system.

• Smooth Onboarding: Getting to “know” a new reporting system or client onboarding software should not be daunting or an overwhelming experience.  From a user-friendly interface to setup guides, effectively using the tool shouldn’t pose a challenge.
• Secure File Sharing: In many cases, reporting includes file sharing. Does the platform help with the secure sharing of sensitive and private files? This is an important consideration.

Clinked's File Sharing Feature

• Automation: Generating files or reports can sometimes use automation. Also, importing and exporting data, for example, can be automated, too. Therefore, it'd be great if the client reporting app offers some degree of automation.
• Data Visualization: Can the reporting solution present data in an easy-to-understand format? The client reporting dashboard should be easy to read.
• Metrics and Reporting in Real-time: Whether for your in-house team or your client, a reporting tool should allow you to visualize key performance metrics. Metrics could be for total sales, traffic received, amount spent, etc.
• White Label: From reporting to the entire solution, the capability to create custom reports without the developer’s branding is essential to brand consistency.

• Integration: It’s hard if not impossible to find a single solution that'll meet your operational demands at every stage of growth. Integration capabilities let you connect the client reporting tool to a CRM. Integration also allows you to pull information and data from other web services your agency already uses.

Top 8 Client Reporting Software

Now that you know what a client reporting solution is, its importance, and essential features to check in a reporting solution, let’s get you started on your search for actual client reporting products with these top 8 options for 2024.

Feel free to explore any of the 8 client reporting tools further or let them serve as an inspiration during your research or when making a buying decision.

All software options are reviewed based on essential features to client reporting alongside their pros and cons, pricing, and G2 customer rating.

1. Clinked for Client Management and Reporting

Clinked is a cloud-based client portal solution that agencies in the client-facing industry use to manage everything related to their clients. It is a platform that allows client-focused agencies to onboard clients and collaborate with them, securely manage files, and get reports for internal teams and clients.

As part of its client management solution, Clinked provides reporting to help visualize how well your agency is performing concerning clients' projects.

Clinked agency client dashboard displays important metrics such as project progress. You also have different options when it comes to visualizing metrics. The client module helps you to manage everything related to individual clients. You can create tasks, add comments, initiate one-on-one messages, collaborate on files, decide who gets to see sensitive files, and many more.

Clinked Clients List Example

To even make reporting better, Clinked has a time-tracking function that can be used in addition to other features for a comprehensive view of project progress and resource allocation. The ability to track time on the same platform you use to manage clients can provide insight not only into the amount of time spent on each project but also provide insights into resource use and allocation.

Clinked's Task Management Tool

Clinked’s design is easy to navigate, and the platform offers a smooth onboarding experience for your team and clients. Also, you get a customized portal solution based on features that enhance your business workflows. Plus the platform’s white label offering means consistency of branding elements.

Clinked's White Label Solution

Clinked can integrate with your favorite CRM, productivity tools, and other web services, such as Google Drive and JotForm, that you already use or intend to adopt.

Overall, you can use Clinked as a client management platform with a reporting system.

Pros:

• Different data visualization options for tracking and reporting
• Built-in time management function to check resource allocation on client projects and tasks
• White label option in all plans
• Smooth onboarding experience
• Integration capabilities with other software and web services
• Secure file sharing

Cons:

• Limited feature experience on the mobile app
• The solution is well geared towards client-focused agencies, though its infrastructure can be adapted to suit the needs of other businesses

What you need to know:

• Use it for: client project management and reporting 
• Paid plans start at: $119 per month
• Free trial: 10 days
• G2 customer rating: 4.8 stars

2. Klipfolio for Visualizing and Reporting

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If you're not looking for client and project management tools but just a solution that can report on data from multiple sources, then Klipfolio may be a good option to check.

Klipfolio is a dashboard service that can connect to multiple data sources for real-time stats. It's a data visualization tool that helps you present such data as traffic, service usage, demographics, qualified leads, and many other KPIs. You can use the tool to create easy-to-understand dashboards for your marketing agency clients.

Without having to log into different apps, this marketing agency client reporting tool can pull information from Google Analytics, Dropbox, Excel, Google Sheets, Facebook Ads, JSON files, SQL databases, and sources through hundreds of integrations.

Its dashboard gallery has collections of dashboards for marketing, sales, HR, and more. This means you don't have to start building dashboards from scratch. Simply make use of any premade templates and start creating reports.

Ease of reporting is also another option provided by Klipfolio. The platform allows you to share with clients reports. You can share a dashboard or a section through email or publish it as a web page. 

Especially for consultants and marketing agencies, the Klipfolio platform can help you effectively manage client reports. Use this tool to help clients better track performance, spot trends, and overall understand the value you bring to their processes.

Pros:

• Dashboard gallery for different types of reporting
• The platform can pull data from multiple sources through native integrations and API.
• Features different ways to share reports

Cons:

• Limitations in back-end customizations for users without coding or large data sets experience
• Knowledge base resources aren't well organized
• The user interface can at times be confusing

What you need to know:

• Use it for: A client reporting software for generating dashboard reports
• Paid plans start at: $300/20 users/month
• Free trial: 30 days
• G2 customer rating: 4.5 stars

3. AgencyAnalytics for Creating Dashboard and Client Reporting

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Similar to Klipfolio, AgencyAnalytics is a dashboard creation tool that allows you to show important metrics and data to your digital marketing clients. Its Campaign feature lets you add the details of the client and connect to their campaign data sources.

The platform supports 80+ data sources, but you may not be able to integrate with services that aren't natively supported. AgencyAnalytics' customizable dashboard lets you use widgets, charts, and tables to create visualizations for important metrics within data sources.

Create a custom domain through which clients can access their dashboard reports and invite them from the backend. AgencyAnalytics shows clients a dashboard you've created for them when they log into their user area. Use also the invite function to give access to staff or users you’d like to collaborate on dashboard reports.

You can generate and send PDF reports containing different metrics to clients. Alternatively, you can schedule reports to clients on a schedule. The dashboard and client reporting tool also lets you send direct messages to clients. Use this feature to send important updates, reminders, or for other collaboration needs.

The white label option lets you upload your brand logo, customize the theme, and tweak other branding elements to make reports generated on your own.

Pros:

• Powerful dashboard creation tools for different agency services
• Features SEO tools
• Automated reports can be sent via email
• Excellent customer support

Cons:

• Integrations could be more expansive
• Issues from time to time when saving reports
• Reporting could be more detailed and the layout more robust

What you need to know:

• Use it for: Creating interactive dashboards and generating client reports
• Paid plans start at: $79 per month
• Free trial: 14 days
• G2 customer rating: 4.7 stars

4. Databox for Creating Visualizations and Client Reports

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Databox is a mobile-friendly, analytics platform that lets you combine data from different sources to create a customizable dashboard. It can pull data from multiple sources, including Excel, MailChimp, Facebook pages, and HubSpot CRM through its native integrations.

Additional ways to connect to your data sources are via SQL databases, REST API, and third-party integrations like Zapier. For those metrics that software can’t track or you don't have in an external data source, put those into the built-in spreadsheet function and sync with existing data afterward.

The Metric Library provides access to thousands of pre-made metrics that you can work with when creating reports. You also have access to existing dashboard templates to use for speedy workflow.

Whether for cost per click, total sales, page engagement, sessions, or other KPIs, you have many templates and metrics to get you started quickly. Plus there’s an option for custom metrics for the advanced users.

Visualize the metrics you've created through the platform’s customizable dashboard using charts and other data formats. Loop together multiple dashboards for a more comprehensive view and to see the bigger picture.

For client reporting, simply use the Send feature on the dashboard to share organized metrics. One of the things users love is the different ways to distribute reports. 

Use a shareable link, email it, embed reports on a webpage, or stream to a display. The streaming option makes for accessibility when reporting in person in a meeting. Use the Scorecard feature to automate client reports on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule.

Robust notification systems provide lots of benefits including alerts when client metrics have dropped below an established threshold.

Pros:

• Features simple drag-and-drop client reporting tools for visualizations
• Lots of predefined templates to choose from when creating reports
• Customer service response time is excellent, though sometimes reports may not be absent move down
• Mobile-friendly interface

Cons:

• Issues with prolonged platform outage
• Real-time sync issues with data sources such as Google Analytics
• Difficulties managing dates in visualizations

What you need to know:

• Use it for: Creating visualizations and generating client reports 
• Paid plans start at: $47 per month
• Free trial: 14 days
• G2 customer rating: 4.4 stars

5. TapClicks for Visualization and Reporting

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TapClicks is a client reporting software suite that features not only dashboards and reports but also analytics, workflow automation, data pipelines, and order entry automation. The software connects to over 250 apps and web services through its native integrations and supports more apps and services with its smart data connector. 

Dashboards can be created from scratch or through premade templates. The reporting section lets you create daily, weekly, and monthly scheduled reports. The Report Studio features predefined templates that make reporting faster. When creating a social media report, for example, you can start by editing a template. This speeds up the process.

Export reports in PDF or PowerPoint format. Although there have been usability concerns about the platform, TapClicks still has some nice features that marketing agencies can use to create and deliver performance reports to clients.

Pros:

• Integrate multiple marketing data sources into one reporting platform
• The Smart data connector extends integration possibilities
• Additional features such as analytics and order entry automation

Cons:

• Features are intuitively laid out
• Building reports can especially be cumbersome for the not-so-technical users
• Platform slow loading times and lags when exporting reports

What you need to know:

• Use it for: Creating visualizations, analytics, and reports for client project needs
• Paid plans start at: $99 per month
• Free trial: 14 days
• G2 customer rating: 4.3 stars

6. DashThis for Generating Marketing Reports

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If you’re looking for a marketing agency client reporting tool, DashThis is one option to check out. It comes with features suitable for marketing agencies and teams, freelancer marketers, and executives.

You have three options when creating dashboards. The first option called Periodic Dashboard is perfect for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semiannually, or annual reports. Campaign Dashboard as the name implies lets you create single marketing campaign dashboards. Rolling Dashboard shows you data on an ongoing basis. The period can be 15, 30, 90, 180, and 350 days.

Especially for new users, preset templates are available for single data source integrations and multiple integrations. You can duplicate created dashboards for multi-purpose use.

The pre-made templates are entirely customizable, with the option to add and remove data sources and metrics according to your dashboard needs. You can export reports as PDFs, send them through a URL, or automate sending through email.

The User Management feature lets you invite multiple team members to collaborate with you on a dashboard and reporting project. In addition to collaborating on existing projects, they can also create their own dashboards. Onboarding shouldn’t be a challenge as the platform is intuitive to navigate.

Overall, DashThis is a client reporting tool that helps marketing agencies and teams integrate data from multiple sources and create reports on integrated data. With report automation features, these agencies can save on hours of manual work.

Pros:

• Preset templates for the quick creation of graphs, charts, and other data formats for client reports
• Unlimited users can be added to a single account for collaboration purposes
• Integration with popular digital marketing and web design tools and services
• Simplified and scheduled reporting

Cons:

• Data sync can be glitchy at times
• Chart types are limited
• Limitations in Editor capabilities

What you need to know:

• Use it for: Client project metrics reporting
• Paid plans start at: $47 per month
• Free trial: 15 days
• G2 customer rating: 4.8 stars

7. Tableau for Powerful Visualizations

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For large digital marketing agencies looking for a solution to connect to large data sources and create powerful visualizations, Tableau is an option to consider. It's used by the big players, by freelancers, and other professionals looking for robust systems to create client dashboard reports.

Use the business intelligent tool as client reporting software to visualize massive amounts of client data. The simple drag-and-drop visual chart builder is popular among no-code users. This makes building visualization without much training or coding experience easy. The platform can connect to lots of data sources.

An interactive dashboard interface lets you filter data based on specific criteria and details you’d like to get insights on. You can customize the dashboard in three ways: operational, analytical, and strategic.

Operational dashboards show real-time performance of everyday business operations. Analytical dashboards use historical or past data to identify trends. Strategic dashboards are primarily used to compare current performance against KPIs.

You can use Tableau, for instance, to create an interactive dashboard that shows real-time information about a company's historical sales, operational indicators, sales growth, and other metrics.

Sharing reports with clients is as simple as using the Share button within the dashboard interface. You get a direct link to your reports or export in an image, PDF, or Tableau Workbook file. You can alternatively publish it directly to Tableau Online.

Pros:

• Can handle data from large data sources for enterprise needs
• Create powerful, beautiful, and interactive visualizations
• The capability to generate real-time and quick insights
• Easy to learn compared to many other business intelligence and data visualization tools

Cons:

• Scheduling and notification of reports are not robust
• Updating data in some respects requires manual intervention
• Limited data preprocessing features
• The learning curve may be steep for beginners to BI tools, though it is relatively easy to learn compared to other tools in its class

What you need to know:

• Use it for: Creating client reports with beautiful visualizations
• Paid plans start at: $35 per month
• Free trial: 14 days
• G2 customer rating: 4.4 stars

8. Raven Tools for Generating SEO Reports

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Raven Tools is one of agency reporting tools for automating marketing reports for SEO, social media, e-mail, paid ads, and even phone call tracking campaigns. Creating a profile or project automatically gives you access to a customizable dashboard that you can personalize to have the right metrics you'd like to present to clients.

Metrics can be about historical data or previous performances. Apart from a sharable link, you can export reports in PDF format. The WYSIWYG report builder lets you drag and drop metrics and widgets onto the report page and have report elements customized.

Schedule reports to show progress on marketing efforts on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. Send reports that have been scheduled as an HTML link, email attachment, or PDF link. These different options bring flexibility to report delivery.

The platform has built-in tools to check SEO rankings, organic traffic, backlinks, and other SEO audits for clients. It can draw data from sources including Google, Moz, Bing, Open Calais, and Majestic. Raven Tools also lets you upload a spreadsheet file containing keywords you'd like to work with. The ability to integrate with many data sources and platforms helps with harvesting data for content marketing opportunities.

The platform is fully white label down to the domain name shown to your clients when sending reports. This helps prevent conflicting branding elements when sending reports to clients.

Pros:

• Intuitive and easy-to-setup interface
• Decent report customization capabilities
• Pulls data effortlessly from popular SEO marketing tools
• Excellent customer support

Cons:

• The report customization module can use some improvements
• Charts and graph sizes seem too big
• The keyword ranking system is a bit difficult to understand

What you need to know:

• Use it for: Building SEO report visualizations
• Paid plans start at: $49 per month
• Free trial: 7 days
• G2 customer rating: 4.2 stars

Conclusion and Recommendations

This guide extensively covers the top 8 client reporting software that agencies can use in 2024, and why it’s essential to use reporting tools in your digital marketing efforts.

Clients who engage in your digital marketing service want to see that their investment is producing good results. One effective way to show the value of your work is by providing timely and detailed reports.

Regular reports not only give clients a reason to stay but also help your internal team see how they are performing overall. Plus, feedback from clients can reveal new ways to improve the services offered.

To take it a step further, prospects would be more likely to onboard your service when they see your track record, which you can showcase in part through past and present reports.

If any of the reporting tools reviewing this article interest you or might benefit your digital marketing agency operations, feel free to check it out to see if its features, integrations, and pricing meet the current needs of your business.

If you’re looking for a client partial solution that lets you onboard unlimited clients, then Clinked might just be a fit. With Clinked's cloud-based, white-label portal, you get to manage projects, track time, and report on every client.  

One of our representatives will be glad to walk you through the Clinked interface during a product demo consultation. Contact us today and see how Clinked can help you manage client information, projects, tasks, and of course, reporting!