how to write an official weekly report

• Content Types

Presentations Keep your audience engaged.

Documents Formalize your branding.

Videos Add movement to your brand.

Infographics Share information visually.

Printables Create content for printing.

Charts and Graphs Bring life to your data.

Social Media Graphics Create scroll-stopping content.

Mockups Create high-quality mockups in seconds.

Branded Templates new Get a bundle of templates that match your brand.

• Features & Assets

Interactivity

Integrations

Data Widgets

Collaborations

Presenter Studio

Free Educational Resources See All

Visme Video Tutorials Watch videos on how to use Visme.

Ebooks Read in-depth knowledge for your industry.

Graphic Design Videos Learn design principles & best practices.

Live Webinars Interact with the experts live.

Free Online Courses Get certified with free online courses.

Our Blog See All

• Presentations

Video & Animations

• Digital Marketing
• Infographics
• Design for Business

Data Visualization

• Design Inspiration

For Teams All Teams

Agencies & Consulting Manage multiple brands.

Education Use Visme in the classroom.

Nonprofit Bring life to your cause.

Enterprises Create visual content at scale.

• Perfect For These Roles

Marketers Creative content that shines.

Human Resources Improve internal communication.

Sales Teams Close more deals with your content.

Training Development Create interactive training content.

Templates See All

Presentations 1000+ layouts and themes.

Chart & Maps Get data visualization ideas.

Social Media Graphics Browse templates for every platform.

Infographics Find the right format for your information.

Documents Templates for every business document.

Videos & GIFs Find the perfect preanimated template.

Branded Templates Get a bundle of templates that match your brand.

• Other Templates

Website Graphics

Survey Results

• Case Studies
• Sign Up Free
• Free Educational Resources
• Most Recent
• Data Visualizations
• Video & Animation
• Visual Thinking
• Product Updates
• Visme Webinars

How to Write an Effective Weekly Report [Plus Templates]

Written by: Masooma Memon

A weekly status report is a complete overview of your week at work, covering projects you've completed, ones that are still in progress and upcoming plans for the future.

Ready to learn how to write a weekly report?

In this guide, you’ll learn what a weekly report is, how to create one, and get access to templates you can use immediately to write your own report.

Here's a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit weekly report templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more templates below:

Table of Contents

• What is a Weekly Status Report?

How to Write an Effective Weekly Report

• 9 Weekly Status Report Templates to Help You Get Started

Weekly Report Writing Best Practices

Top weekly report writing mistakes to avoid, what is a weekly report.

Just as annual reports dive into a yearly review, weekly reports cover a complete review of your week. These look into:  

• The past : a quick recap of what you covered in the past week
• The present : notable achievements of the week + challenges encountered
• The future : plans for the coming week

So you’re willing to give a snapshot of your week. The real question is – why bother?

Why Is a Weekly Report Template Important?

From an employer’s perspective, a weekly status report gives a quick look at what his or her employee is doing.

Is he secretly bingeing on Stranger Things (something I once noticed the receptionist over at a physiotherapy department doing while I waited for my receipt), or is he actually getting some work done?

The report also shows how the employee handled challenges that surfaced. And how far along a project has come under him. All this gives the manager an idea of employees’ strengths and weaknesses.

He then assigns other responsibilities based on these observations. Put another way, weekly reports help the management make informed decisions regarding assignments, employee training and development.

On the flip side, the employee can get an idea of their role in the progress of an ongoing project. A weekly report also better describes how they’re pacing things. Additionally, they can learn how to get better at their job.

A weekly report is an internal glimpse into your week, and it serves a good purpose. All you need to do is take your manager by the hand and walk him through your week.  

It involves writing, rewriting, crying over having done that one last bit to have something good to put on your weekly report and the designing part.

Too much work.

Did you just rub your temple there? Because I just did.

Fortunately, you can slash half your work with Visme. Wondering how? By using a weekly report template . With one of these, the design work involved in preparing a weekly report is no longer on your plate. Cheers!

As for the writing part, let’s chop the process into 5 steps for you:

1. Establish your weekly report’s purpose.

First things first – outline your report’s objectives before you set to work.

Here’s the part where you decide what’ll go into your weekly status report. What exactly does your management want to see?

Pro Tip: You might want to check in with your supervisor if you’re not clear about what goes here.

For instance, folks over at the team collaboration app   Chanty have their weekly report objectives in order. Their aim is to share weekly KPIs .

Their CMO, Olga Mykhoparkina shared, “For us in the marketing team, we share our organic traffic, new links, new blogs and publications and anything else that came up during the week.

These are all outlined in advance and every team member knows exactly what they need to present.

So the general objectives are to:

• Inform the management, stakeholders, project owner or whoever your reader is that the project at hand is on track and operating within the set budget
• Share the week’s accomplishments, issues and challenges along with the aims and activities for coming week 
• Give updates related to timelines, schedule, resources, scope and deliverables

Other purposes might include a weekly KPI report , a project status report or a profit statement.

2. Know your role.

Another thing to do before you put pen to paper is making sure you’re crystal clear about your responsibilities.

Are you responsible for working on project A? Or are you supposed to contribute to project B’s phase II as well?  

If you think your role relates to contributing to various tasks, you’re wrong. That’s too wide a scope to cover and present in a weekly report.  

So you need to make sure you’re clear about the project you’re handling and what the definition of success is for the project. Don’t have an answer? Talk to your boss.

Knowing your role is essential to putting together the perfect weekly project status report.

Hey marketers! Need to create scroll-stopping visual content fast?

• Transform your visual content with Visme’s easy-to-use content creation platform
• Produce beautiful, effective marketing content quickly even without an extensive design skillset
• Inspire your sales team to create their own content with branded templates for easy customization

Sign up. It’s free.

3. Work out your weekly report’s layout.

It’s easy to assume that slapping a few paragraphs on a paper makes a befitting report.

It doesn’t.

This is why you need a layout for your weekly status report to ensure your report is short, to the point and visually stunning.

Since we’re covering weekly reports here, you’ll need a layout with separate sections dedicated to each day of the week. A weekly report template can give you a pre-baked layout.

You can get creative with your format too. For instance, you can turn it into a visual infographic . Customize a report infographic to create a weekly report infographic your supervisors will love.

Or you can create an interactive infographic weekly report. We created an annual interactive infographic annual report for Visme . Take a page from our book and prepare your own interactive infographic weekly report. 

Other than this, if you’re working on a large project, you can divide the weekly status report into sections.

Let’s say you’re working on starting a blog for your company. You could divide your weekly report into 3 sections: ideation, competitor analysis and keyword research.

Present your weekly status report divided by 5 working days that each address the 3 goals and what you did to further them on each day. Alternatively, divide your weekly report by the 3 areas you’re working on. Under each, share what you did during the week.

4. Pay attention to 3 key writing characteristics for weekly status reports.

Now that you’ve your objectives and role clear and your layout ready, you can start writing.

Just keep these three writing tips in mind:  

• Brevity: Be concise and share your weekly updates in as few words as possible
• Use simple language minus the jargon: Don’t use technical terms to trace your actions
• Write with the reader in mind: Show the results and deliver good news first so your manager knows no hell is breaking loose behind his back 

5. Add the following in your weekly report.

Want to ensure your weekly status report doesn’t miss any important details?

Include the following:

Brief Summary

The top management can’t remember everything all the time so it’s best to always give a summary of your project’s objectives. 

The aim here is record keeping. By dating your reports, you’re making it easy for your manager to thumb through reports in chronological order should an issue poke its head.

Daily Deliverables

Since you’re giving a weekly outlook here, make sure you talk about what you did each day of the week.

Be sure to title your report with your [role] + [the report’s status]. Let’s say you’re a Communications Manager so you’d title your report as Communications Manager Weekly Status Report.

Outline what you had on your plate. If you don’t give the management an idea of what you had in the pipeline, they wouldn’t know how to measure your progress. 

You can also categorize your tasks under, ‘in progress,’ ‘done’ and ‘delayed.’  

Don’t forget to highlight progress and the goals achieved.

In this regard, it’s best you discuss metrics with the person you report to beforehand. That way, you’d know how to explain your progress. 

For instance, you’ve covered 75% of your task. Your manager can only understand this if you’ve discussed previously that you’ll notify your status by noting the percentage.

Challenges and Roadblocks

Note issues you encountered in your week while also providing suggestions for any steps that the management can take to ensure smooth workflow.

Action Items For Next Week

Lastly, tell what is planned for the coming week. This gives your manager an idea of what you’d be covering so he can map your future steps based on your deliverables.

10 Weekly Status Report Templates to Help You Get Started

Want to create your own weekly report to share with your boss and/or your team? We've got nine great templates to help you get started.

Browse our selection below to find the perfect template for your weekly report needs.

1. Basic Weekly Report Template

Need to provide just a quick at-a-glance overview of your tasks each week? Using the template below you can speed things up by only having to add details for each day of the week.

2. Project Status Weekly Report Template

Need to share updates on a major project you're currently working on? Share the progress with a timeline and synopsis in your weekly report, as you see in the example below. Use Dynamic Fields to automatically update data across your report and other projects in your repository.

3. Infographic Weekly Report Template

Get creative with your report format by customizing this infographic template. Include charts , data widgets and bullet points sharing any analytics and other updates you might need to present.

4. Content Marketing Weekly Report

Break down your weekly report updates into a table like the one below to easily represent the sections you've worked on each week. Customize this template to fit your own needs, or use it as is if you need to share your own content ideas, competitor analysis and keyword research.

5. Social Media Weekly Report Template

This weekly report template is perfect for showcasing the best performing content, sales emails, social media posts and more from the week.

Use this to keep an eye on trends in high performing content so you can adjust your strategy accordingly.

6. Executive Summary Weekly Report Template

A weekly report template like this is the perfect way to summarize your work throughout a week, no matter what industry you work in or what your day-to-day tasks look like.

Not only that, but you can use the lines at the end to share your action plan for the upcoming week and what your team can expect from you.

7. KPI Weekly Report Template

Need to show off a few KPIs using charts and graphs? This template is the perfect starting point. Adjust any of the existing graphs or data widgets to fit your data using Visme's 40+ available data visualization tools .

8. Employee Performance Weekly Report Template

If you're a manager who needs to keep tabs on how your team is keeping up with projects and major tasks, this is the perfect weekly report template for you.

Not only does it help keep your team on task, it allows you to have a birds eye view of where your team is on projects at all times, keeping deadlines in check.

9. Profit Statement Weekly Report Template

During major campaigns, busy seasons, etc., you might want to keep a close eye on how your sales are doing. Putting together a weekly profit statement can be a great way to keep everyone up-to-date with how the company is performing as a whole.

Use a template like the one below to easily insert your own content and updates.

10. Weekly Email Campaign Report Template

Your team’s email campaign has yielded great weekly results. It’s time to share the data with stakeholders, with easy-to-grasp data visualizations and visual storytelling arcs. Use this report template especially designed for email campaigns like yours. Send out weekly reports with the latest metrics and the most engaging visuals.

Do you know what would make your reporting process even better for the email campaign? A weekly updates email template where you embed or link your branded report made with Visme.

With this, you know how you can write an awesome weekly status report. Now onto the next section for ensuring your report is beyond awesome.  

Follow these best practices to outshine your report.

Ensure your report doesn’t exceed one page.

A single page document is enough for summing your week while respecting your readers’ time. Add a   report cover page to spice up your weekly report design.

Include visuals in your weekly report page.

Although you may not find the space to add visuals, you can always strategically use them in your report. Perhaps show a chart demonstrating how much of your project is completed.

Whatever you do though, make sure you don’t use complex graph types here because they aren’t very readable and you won’t have the space to explain the data.

Graphs such as pie charts are, however, easy to understand so you can experiment with those in your weekly status reports.

Don’t spend hours on your weekly report.

It’s a task that shows up every week so investing hours is futile. Ideally, use a weekly report template to give your report a permanent structure and speed up your writing process.

If you’re using a weekly report template, you can fill it in before the end of each day when the day’s details are still fresh.

Visme's Weekly Report Maker makes it easy for you to edit and customize a weekly report to fit your job. Once you’ve tailored the content to fit your role, all you have to do is pop in edits each week.

Lastly, before we wrap this up, let’s leave you with report writing mistakes you need to avoid so your report is ready to shine.

1. Disregarding the structure.

Structure shows clarity of thought. And it works both ways. You make writing weekly status reports less cumbersome and time consuming for yourself. Because you already have a layout in place, you don’t need to start from scratch.

On the flip side, a base structure makes your weekly report easily consumable for your reader. It also sets expectations clear from the outset.   

2. Failing to account for readability.

Readability relates to making your weekly report easy to read for your target audience, whether that’s your manager or someone else.  

Think of it like this, a block of words can be tough to read:

Image Source  

But short paragraphs and bullet points with subheadings or icons make your content snackable.

For instance, this weekly report template page from Visme makes sure your content is easy to read by providing a highlight section alongside the major accomplishments that were completed throughout the week.

Customize this weekly report template and make it your own! Edit and Download

Alright, so you get how important readability is. The question now is – what can you do to make sure your weekly status report is easy to read?

Here’s what:

• Use short paragraphs
• Use headings and subheadings
• Use bullet points where you can
• Write small to average length sentences with simple words
• Use a readable font type and size. Keep it to minimum 16 points with a clear type

3. Not paying attention to design.

Design also plays a crucial role in making your weekly status report readable.

Wondering how? With the right colors and whitespace.

You’d be surprised to know that colors can actually encourage or discourage people from reading your content. That’s how powerful their impact is . Red, for example, is known for drawing people in and making them excited.  

Meanwhile, pastel colors are trending, so you can use them to make an epic weekly report page design. 

These also leave a minimal effect, a creative way to design your report to wow your reader.

Here are more ideas you can grab from this guide on creative presentation ideas .

White Space

This also goes with the name of negative space and is the space between your paragraphs, graphs and other visuals in your report. Too much or too little of it can disturb reading experience. So you’ve got to be careful.

Can’t play with color because you’ve got to stick with office colors? Perhaps you’re sending in a weekly status report to your client and can’t deviate from your branding ?

Either way, no worries. Just tweak the color with Visme as each template is customizable so you’re free to tweak not only the color but also the font and other design elements.

Plus, you can easily upload your brand colors and fonts to your Visme Brand Kit to make branding simple.

4. Failing to give a summary or an action plan moving forward.

Without giving a gist or executive summary that includes your next steps, you run the risk of breaking the momentum.  

So elements like data, a summary of the week, a quick recap of the past and what’s in next week’s to-do board are good for keeping things on track.

5. Typographical, grammatical errors.

Needless to say but the problem with these errors is that they ruin impressions in seconds. But you can always prevent these by:

• Reading out loud or use a text to speech reader
• Resting your eyes
• Exchanging your weekly report with your colleague before submitting both your reports to management

Looking to create a stand-out visual weekly report?

• Choose from dozens of professionally designed templates
• Create animated charts and creatively visualize stats and figures
• Customize anything to fit your brand image and content needs

Never Create Another Boring Weekly Report

There you go. We’ve talked about writing a weekly report in a lot of detail here. Hopefully, it should be enough to help you understand how to write a weekly report that’s both awesome and functional.

As for your visual content and design, Visme is only a free subscription away from adding life to your weekly status reports.

Design beautiful visual content you can be proud of.

Recommended content for you:

Speak Loudly. Speak Visually.

Receive weekly practical tips on how to communicate visually, right in your inbox.

Please leave this field empty.

Create Stunning Content!

Design visual brand experiences for your business whether you are a seasoned designer or a total novice.

About the Author

Masooma Memon is a pizza-loving freelance writer by day and a novel nerd by night. She crafts research-backed, actionable blog posts for SaaS and marketing brands who aim to employ quality content to educate and engage with their audience.

How to Write an Effective Weekly Report

• Progress Reporting & Team Status Updates

For close to 10 years, we here at Weekdone – the leading weekly status reporting software for teams – have been at the forefront of building tools to make your team shine. You can try it out for free here . Here’s what we’ve learned on the way.

Communication is important when it comes to teamwork, especially when it comes to what you have been working on.  Which is why writing proficient and effective weekly activity reports is so important. So, how exactly do you write a weekly report? The process can be a little confusing for beginners. Vladimir Nikolaev answers these questions in a nice presentation:

Evaluating employee performance

The long and short of it is that employee performance is evaluated by the results achieved . The best way to know about these results is for everyone to record them on a weekly basis. These weekly reports can contain daily activities, productivity and progress updates, and personal thoughts about work.

Who needs weekly reports?

For employees that are not in leadership positions , weekly reporting is the only way to communicate to team leads and the organization as a whole that they are doing the right things correctly and is consistently progressing on a personal level in their knowledge and skills.

Management uses these reports to evaluate their performance as managers. In addition, management uses these reports to keep track of their daily activities and assigned tasks. This can apply to every level when implementing the OKR system, and the management benefits should be used as a go-to when confused about weekly reports.

How to write a weekly activity report

Reports should be clear and concise. They should not ramble on about standard, weekly tasks, and contain everything you have done during the week. Your weekly activities report should be no longer than a page if you’re writing them out physically, and no more than 3-10 items if you are using software. Remember, you need to focus.

Weekly activity reports must also serve as a two-way communication tool between various levels of an organization. Managers and coworkers alike should write comments on the reports left by others. This system of feedback is incredibly important from both angles. Managers can give constructive feedback or acknowledge that a report was read while employees can ask clarifying questions or ask for opportunities to collaborate with other teams if someone’s report seems relevant to their own work.

Remember that weekly reports are sent in  real time.  Try to send reports by Friday afternoon or sometime over the weekend. This way, you can start next week fresh and not forget about any of the important details from the week prior. If you are using software, email reminders will likely be sent to you and an update automatically sent in by default on Friday or Sunday evening.

Try to form a routine around your weekly activity reports. If you spend 5 minutes summarizing your activities daily, the process of reporting on Friday can be cut down to five minutes.

Team Compass effectively takes care of the technical aspects of communication and helps companies to seamlessly adopt the easiest weekly reporting process. Try it out for free from here .

Read our guide to writing an excellent weekly report.

Privacy Overview

10 Outstanding Templates of Weekly Reports | Free Download

By archtc on October 13, 2019 — 9 minutes to read

• Types of Weekly Reports Part 1
• How to Write Effective Weekly Reports   Part 2
• 10 Weekly Report Templates: Free Download Part 3
• How to dramatically reduce the time you spend creating reports Part 4

The Essentials for Writing Weekly Reports:

Tips and Templates (Free Downloads)

A weekly report communicates the progress, accomplishments, and issues encountered in a given week.

Types of Weekly Reports:

Internship weekly report.

A report submitted by a student who is undergoing an on-the-job training, this particular type of weekly report accounts for all the activities of the student during the week (related to his practice). Detailed and precise, it describes what the student has been doing, how, why, and what he has learned. It also asks for electronic files or samples of what the intern is currently working on. Aside from describing the intern’s work during the reporting week, it also allows the intern to narrate his accomplishments and the issues he encountered and what he has learned. It also allows them to state how they were able to apply what they learned at the school to perform a task or solve a problem in the place where they have their internship.

Marketing Weekly Report

Weekly sales reports, weekly report of an employee to supervisor.

Accounting for tasks during the week, a company may require its employees to submit a weekly report to their supervisor. The said report may include a summary of the week’s activities, including the accomplishments and problems encountered, and the plans for the following week. . A company may have a standard format for the weekly report to be used by the employees. It could be in the form of an email, a Word template, or it could be a collaboration tool like ProsperForms . .

When submitted to the supervisor, this report provides an overview of how the employee performed during the week without the need for him to constantly keep in touch with the employee.

The weekly report enables supervisors and managers to maintain track of an employee’s progress and tasks during the week. It helps the supervisor and the staff to set performance targets and monitor whether these objectives are being met. It also allows the supervisor to see if his team needs coaching.

Weekly Report of the Project Team to the Stakeholders or Others

Stakeholders are persons or group of individuals with interest in a project. The project team may be required to prepare a weekly report to these stakeholders. Other than that, they may also need to furnish other concerned departments within the organization of the same weekly report. . The purpose of this type of weekly report is to provide information and updates to these individuals so that they will have an idea of where the project is at the moment and if the project and the team need assistance or intervention. This weekly report presents quantitative data which may be submitted in the tabular or graphical form.

Weekly Expense Report

A weekly expense report accounts for all expenditures made during the week. However, the contents of this report may vary depending on the purpose of the report. Therefore, it’s important to have knowledge of what the report is for and why the company needs it. For example, an employee who is on an official business trip may need to submit his weekly expenses report so he may claim reimbursement for such, or as a liquidation of the cash advance given to him for this journey.

A construction project manager may also need to submit a weekly expenses report accounting for all the materials bought and other expenses made for the building project.

Weekly Report on the Key Performance Indicators

A weekly report on key performance indicators measures the performance of the business in certain areas of the firm. The KPIs are criteria used by the company to determine whether they are on the right path towards the fulfillment of their goals or if they are not meeting performance targets. It gives the company an idea whether things are going according to plan or if there are adjustments that they need to make in order to catch up, in case they are lagging behind.

How to Write Effective Weekly Reports

A weekly report is a short summary of what has been achieved in the past week. It can also include a list of tasks that have been completed or are planned for the next week. This is a regular report that we send to our management, executives and/or investors.

The objectives of a weekly report are to provide transparency, show progress and provide stakeholders with an update on the progress and highlight any potential challenges.

A successful weekly report should be well-written, concise, and easy to understand: clearly identify the purpose of the report, provide clear and concise explanations, and make sure to include all necessary information.

The following are some tips to help you write an effective weekly report:

Know the Purpose of the Weekly Report

Know who will read the weekly report, present the data and information according to its importance, deliver the report in a compelling.

Create headings and subheadings that allow the readers to quickly scan sections and have an idea of what it’s about. Write in clear and simple sentences to demonstrate clarity and structure of thoughts. . Use active verbs and avoid writing using passive voice. Make sure that the report has no errors and is free from jargon.

Keep the report as short as possible. It should not exceed one page. Focus on the most important tasks and outcomes of the week. Write it in a way that is easy to read and understand – use bullet points or numbered lists to present your information clearly and concisely. Make sure that you include all relevant information – do not leave out any important details just because they are not related to your current project or task. Include any meetings, conferences, events, or other activities that took place during the week under “Other.”

Weekly Reports: Free Downloads

Click Here to Download Weekly Report Template – Employee Weekly Report DOCX

Click Here to Download Weekly Report Template – Employee Weekly Status Report DOC

Click Here to Download Weekly Report Template – Expense Report XLSX

Click Here to Download Weekly Report Template – Internship Weekly Report DOC

Click Here to Download Weekly Report Template – KPIs DOCX

Click Here to Download Weekly Report Template – Weekly Marketing Report DOC

Click Here to Download Weekly Report Template – Weekly Marketing Report 2 DOC

Click Here to Download Weekly Report Template – Weekly Sales Report DOC

Click Here to Download Weekly Report Template – Weekly Sales Report XLSX

—————————————————————————-

You can also use the following templates on ProsperForms :

Edit and use this template

Additional Sources

• How to Write an Weekly Status Report + Free Template Download
• How to Write an Impressive Weekly Project Report + Free Template Download
• How to Write a Weekly Sales Report + Free Template Download

• EXPLORE Coupons Tech Help Pro Random Article About Us Quizzes Contribute Train Your Brain Game Improve Your English Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
• HELP US Support wikiHow Community Dashboard Write an Article Request a New Article More Ideas...
• EDIT Edit this Article
• PRO Courses New Guides Tech Help Pro New Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Coupons Quizzes Upgrade Sign In
• Premium wikiHow Guides
• Browse Articles
• Quizzes New
• Train Your Brain New
• Improve Your English New
• Support wikiHow
• About wikiHow
• Easy Ways to Help
• Approve Questions
• Fix Spelling
• More Things to Try...
• H&M Coupons
• Hotwire Promo Codes
• StubHub Discount Codes
• Ashley Furniture Coupons
• Blue Nile Promo Codes
• NordVPN Coupons
• Samsung Promo Codes
• Chewy Promo Codes
• Ulta Coupons
• Vistaprint Promo Codes
• Shutterfly Promo Codes
• DoorDash Promo Codes
• Office Depot Coupons
• adidas Promo Codes
• Home Depot Coupons
• DSW Coupons
• Bed Bath and Beyond Coupons
• Lowe's Coupons
• Surfshark Coupons
• Nordstrom Coupons
• Walmart Promo Codes
• Dick's Sporting Goods Coupons
• Fanatics Coupons
• Edible Arrangements Coupons
• eBay Coupons
• Log in / Sign up
• Education and Communications
• Official Writing
• Report Writing

How to Write a Weekly Report

Last Updated: March 16, 2023 References Approved

This article was co-authored by Miri Rodriguez and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD . Miri Rodriguez is a Business Brand Consultant and the Owner & CEO of Be Mindful Be Happy. She has been coaching business and individual brands for over 15 years in the areas of career development, personal development, branding, and storytelling for impact. She is the best-selling author of the award-winning book Brand Storytelling. She holds a Master’s degree in Integrated Communications and Marketing from Georgetown University and various certifications including Copyrighting, Technical Writing, Design Thinking, Six Sigma, and Prosci Change Management. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. In this case, several readers have written to tell us that this article was helpful to them, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 188,513 times.

Weekly reports are common in many business and retail environments, as well as for research projects and internships. Write a solid weekly report so that your superiors have a clear idea of what kind of progress you’ve made.

Organizing Your Information

• Typically your report is supposed to update managers on the status of your projects or assist them in making decisions.
• For example, if you are a retail store manager, you may be required to submit weekly reports that summarize your sales for the week. Your employer uses this report to evaluate performance, price points, and orders for your store.
• If you're submitting weekly reports for an internship or research project, the purpose is to show your employer or instructor how much progress you've made and share any major breakthroughs or discoveries.

• Knowing your audience also helps you understand how to write your report and what kind of language to use. For example, you'd write an entirely different report if your audience was a group of five-year-olds than if you were writing it for executives of a major corporation.
• You also get a better idea of what your audience already knows, and what you need to explain more in-depth or provide additional resources. For example, if you're writing a weekly report on a legal issue that will be read by a group of lawyers, there's no need to provide an in-depth summary of the law. However, such a summary might be required if you were writing about the issue for executives or administrators with no legal training.
• If your report is required in conjunction with an internship, research project, or other school activity, keep in mind that your audience is not your professor or instructor – even though you may be turning it in to them. To find your audience in this context, focus on the nature of your project and your discipline as a whole.

• For example, if the purpose of your report is to compare and contrast three different brands of equipment and recommend the one you think would be best for the company to use, your conclusion should go up front. Then you can go on to explain why.
• Generally, you want the first page of your report to consist of a summary of results, recommendations, or conclusions. Use the rest of the report to dig deeper, and readers will go further if they feel the need or want to expand their understanding of your findings.

• However, don't use this as an excuse to fake your way through your report or turn in sloppy work of poor quality. Your report should be a reflection of you and your work ethic. A sloppy report is likely to be noticed, and saying "I knew you weren't actually going to read it" is no excuse for a lackluster work product.
• While you want the report as a whole to be high quality and well written, focus especially on the portions of the report that your audience is most likely to read. This typically is your executive summary and your conclusions or recommendations. These should be flawless.
• Keep in mind that your employer isn't failing to read your report because they don't care, or because it's unimportant. People in high-ranking management or executive positions are very busy, and they are adept at gathering the information they need to make a decision efficiently. They won't read the whole report unless they have to – but they'll keep it in case they want to go back and look at it again later.

Formatting Your Report

• This is particularly important with sales reports. Managers become accustomed to glancing at a report and knowing where on the page a particular figure or piece of information will be. If you use a different format, your report will be virtually useless for them because they'll have to actually read through it to find what they need.
• Speak to administrative assistants and find out if there's a template you can use for formatting, so you don't have to create it from scratch in your word processing application. Many companies have a document template with the correct settings, including margins, tables, paragraph styles, and fonts.

• For example, if you're sending your report as an attachment to an email, you should include your executive summary in the body of your email. That way your reader doesn't have to open the attachment to understand the thrust of your report.
• If you're submitting a paper report, it's more likely that you will need to include a cover letter or title page so that your report can be properly identified and filed.
• Regardless of how you submit your report, make sure your name is included on all pages, and that all pages are numbered in "X of Y" format. Pages can be easily separated, and people should be able to tell at a glance whether the whole report is there, and who the report came from.
• You can easily include the required information as a header on each page. For example, your header might read "Sally Sunshine Sales Report, Week 32, Page 3 of 7."

• For the executive summary, it's especially important to use clear, concise language that is easy to read. Avoid jargon or terms of art that require any explanation, even if you know your audience is well-versed on those terms.
• Write the executive summary last, after you've completed all other parts of your report. After all, you can't summarize something that hasn't been written yet. Even if you have a detailed outline from which you plan to write your report, things can change during the writing.

• Check your outline to make sure it flows logically from one section to the next, and make sure it's tailored to the specific audience you've identified for your report.
• Your report typically will include an executive summary, an introduction, conclusions and recommendations, findings and discussion, and a list of references. You may include appendices of relevant data, as well as a table of contents for longer reports – but weekly reports typically won't be this lengthy.
• Each section of your report deals with a single topic. Within that section, each paragraph discusses a single idea. For example, if you have a section in your weekly sales report titled "Popular Children's Brands," you may have a separate paragraph for each brand. If you're dividing boy's and girl's clothing, you may have subsections (with appropriate subheadings) for each brand, then one paragraph discussing boy's clothing for that brand and another paragraph discussing girl's clothing.

• The title page is different from the executive summary, and essentially includes the information necessary for administrative purposes so the report can be filed properly.
• Your employer may have a specific cover sheet that is required for weekly reports. If that's the case, make sure you use that exact format.
• At a minimum, your title page should include the title or description of your report (such as "Weekly Sales Report"), your name and the names of any other contributors to the report, the name of your company, and the date you completed or submitted the report.

Using Powerful Language

• Make sure your headings and subheadings describe the content in that section or subsection directly and accurately.
• For example, if you're drafting a weekly sales report, you may include sections on "Trends in Women's Clothing," "Trends in Menswear," and "Popular Children's Brands." Within those sections, you may have subheadings to highlight particular trends or popular brands.
• Use the same grammatical construction for all headings so your report is logical and consistent. For example, if your first heading is "Establishing a Foothold in Menswear," then your second heading should be "Leading the Pack in Women's Clothing" – not something like "Women's Sales Figures."

• After you've drafted your report, do a read-through and get rid of all unnecessary language. Find the action of each sentence and put the doer of that action next to the verb. Think of every sentence as saying "who does what."
• Delete redundancies and throat-clearing phrases such as "the use of," "for the purpose of," or "in order to."
• You may think this style of writing seems boring, but the point of your weekly report is not to entertain. This style will most effectively get your points across and convey the information to your readers.

• Avoid adjectives and other loaded words and phrases that have positive or negative connotations. Instead, focus on factual reasons.
• For example, suppose in your weekly sales report you are recommending a promotion for one of your sales associates. Back up that recommendation with facts that demonstrate that employee's worthiness rather than subjective details or appeals to emotion. "Sally consistently has the highest sales in our store, despite only working 15 hours a week" is better than "Sally is the nicest person on my staff and always goes the extra mile, even though she's had to limit her work hours to take care of her ailing mother."

• Favor verbs that are simple. For example, "use" is better than "utilize."
• Verbs describing thought processes – think, know, understand, believe – are sometimes necessary, but generally less robust than verbs that describe an action. You may have to dig into your statement and unpack it to make it actionable. For example, suppose you write "I believe our sales will increase in the coming months." Unpack that statement and figure out why you believe that. Then you can write an actionable sentence such as "Historically, sales increase during the holiday season. I predict sales will increase in November and December."
• To keep your writing action-oriented, go through your report and try to eliminate prepositions and replace -ion words with stronger verbs. For example, "consensus of opinion" can simply be "consensus," and if someone "provides protection" it's stronger to simply say they "protect."

• Active voice gives credit to those who completed the action and shows the readers of the report who is responsible for that action. To understand why this is important, imagine you were reading an article about a destructive fire that said "Fortunately, all the children were saved." The identify of the person (or people) who saved those children is important. If that sentence read "Local pastor John Goodlace entered the orphanage a dozen times and saved all the children," you now know who deserves credit for being a hero in those circumstances.
• Active voice also is important to take ownership of actions that may have negative consequences. If you write "Mistakes were made" in your report, your employer is going to want to know who made those mistakes so they can be disciplined appropriately. If you made mistakes, taking ownership of those mistakes and admitting responsibility will go a long way.
• To locate and eliminate passive voice in your writing, look for "to be" verbs. When you find them, identify the action in the sentence, figure out who's doing that action, and put them front-and-center.

• Choose the correct visual element to convey the information to your reader in a way that is helpful to them and reflects the purpose of your report.
• For example, you might choose a line graph to demonstrate the upward trend in sales of wool coats. This presentation would be more effective to show that increase than a table with the number of wool coat sales in each month, because the table would require the reader to look at all the numbers, compare them to each other, and recognize that they were increasing. All of that can be done with a simple glance at a line graph.
• Keep in mind that the eye is drawn to visual elements. Make sure they're neat and clean, and positioned well on the page. Only include visual elements if they are essential to your recommendations or conclusions.

• It may be helpful to write a list of common industry buzzwords so you don't overuse them in your reports. When your report is complete, you can simply search the document for those words and replace them as necessary.
• Keep in mind that to your reader, excessive use of trendy buzzwords doesn't show that you're "in the know" about your particular field – in fact, quite the opposite. Executives and managers typically are older and have seen hundreds of these buzzwords come and go. Use them too frequently and they'll assume that you're lazy, don't really know what you're talking about, or are just trying to impress them.
• You also want to avoid using overly complicated terms. For example, just because you're writing a report summarizing a legal issue doesn't mean you need to pepper that report with tons of legalese.

• Run a grammar and spell check on your word-processing application, but don't rely on them entirely. These programs will miss a lot of errors, especially typos which result in a homophonic error (such as typing "hear" when you mean "here").
• Proofreading your report backwards is a good way to ensure you don't overlook errors. Especially if you're familiar with what you intended to write, you'll glide right past errors such as omitted words because your brain will automatically fill it in. This won't happen if you go backwards.
• Reading your report out loud is another good way to catch errors and edit for style. If you find yourself stumbling as you read a particular sentence or paragraph, it's likely that portion of your report is difficult to read – your audience will mentally stumble too. Rework difficult sections so they flow better.

Community Q&A

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/weekly-report-template
• ↑ http://wac.colostate.edu/teaching/tipsheets/writing_business_reports.pdf
• ↑ https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/writing-clearly-concisely
• ↑ https://writingcommons.org/section/grammar/parts-of-speech/verbs/strong-verbs/
• ↑ https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/revising/passive-voice/
• ↑ https://hbr.org/2014/11/how-to-improve-your-business-writing
• ↑ https://www.unr.edu/writing-speaking-center/student-resources/writing-speaking-resources/editing-and-proofreading-techniques

About This Article

The easiest way to write a weekly report is to model your report off of samples of previous reports. Prioritize the most important points and include them early on. Make sure to create effective headings and subheadings and maintain clear, concise language throughout. Proofread your report once you’re done so that it’s free of careless errors. For more information on how to organize, format, and write your weekly report, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

• Send fan mail to authors

Reader Success Stories

Hilma Erastus

Mar 12, 2017

Did this article help you?

Dereck Nyamekye Danso

Dec 5, 2017

Feb 3, 2017

Jun 11, 2017

Featured Articles

Trending Articles

Watch Articles

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Info
• Not Selling Info

Don’t miss out! Sign up for

wikiHow’s newsletter

Weekly Report: What is it & How to Create it? (Steps & Structure)

When you have a business bustling with activities and tasks, it is important that you communicate with your employee regularly and ensure that everyone is on the same page.

For this, you need to make sure that your employees have a source of information that they can turn to see what’s going on in the business, and the tasks that they need to complete.

This is where having a weekly report comes in handy. It helps summarize all the tasks carried out over the week and keeps everyone updated about the status of their project or work.

In this blog, we will guide you through the steps involved in writing a weekly report for your business.

But before that, let’s try to understand what a weekly report is and why it is important to have one! And if you wait till the end of the blog, then we will a something in store for you!

So without further ado, dive right in, folks!

What is a Weekly Report? (Definition)

As the name so clearly suggests, a weekly report is a report that is produced on a weekly basis.

It usually contains an overview of all the work you completed over the week, including the work in progress and plans for upcoming work.

In short, it gives you a snapshot of your entire week’s work. A weekly report is usually one page long and is beneficial for both the managers and employees.

How? For a manager or superior, a weekly report helps them track the employee’s plans and activities , and acts as a great reference for annual performance reviews.

Whereas, for an employee, it acts as an effective internal communication tool and helps them keep track of and give insights into their own work progress.

Now that you have an idea of what weekly reports are, let’s try and understand why they are beneficial and why you must create them!

Why You Should Create Weekly Reports?

Preparing weekly reports is a great way to ensure that your projects stay on track. But there is more to weekly reports than tracking projects and tasks. What are they? Let’s take a look:

1. Helps Improve Communication

Since a weekly report is used by both upper management and lower management, it offers access to information to everyone.

This provides a proper path for better communication flow, and in turn, helps identify problems easily and come up with better solutions. Also, since data is readily available and accessible, it helps build trust and long-term relationships within the organization.

Read more:  7 Types of Reports Your Business Certainly Needs!

2. Identifies Issues

Since a weekly report tracks progress and monitors the company’s performance over the week, it identifies and presents all problems and challenges at an early stage itself.

This allows you and your team to take preventive measures to ensure that those minor problems don’t become bigger issues.

3. Facilitates Decision-Making

A weekly report shows reliable data of the areas where your business is doing well, where it’s lacking, and how much progress you’ve made in the week.

This will allow you to make better decisions for your company as you will have a clearer idea of where to make improvements and changes, which will help in improving the efficiency of your company as well.

In simple words, weekly reports only add value to your company’s progress . So is important that you create weekly reports if you want an organized flow of work.

Scroll down to see how you can create a weekly report in just a few steps!

Read more:  Weekly Plan: What is it & How to Create an Effective One?

How to Create a Weekly Report in Simple Steps?

Let’s break down the process of writing a weekly report into simple steps:

Step 1. Outline Your Objectives

First things first – You must always establish the purpose of your weekly report and outline your objectives before you get set to work on them.

Here, you will decide what will what exactly you want to put in your weekly report. This can include the progress of each project, the accomplishments, and achievements of the week, issues and challenges faced, updates on timelines, budgets, schedules, resources, and deliverables.

Creating an outline and setting objectives in advance will help you and your team to know what you need to present while creating a weekly report.

Step 2. Establish Your Responsibilities

After you outline your objectives, the next thing you need to do is make sure that you know your roles and responsibilities. This is essential in putting together a perfect weekly report.

Be clear about the tasks and projects that you’re handling, define your role within it, and establish what makes a project successful.

Step 3. Keep the Reader in Mind

Before writing your weekly report, Ask yourself whom you are writing the weekly report for – the management, the legal department or your employees?

Keeping this in mind will make your reporting process easier as you can decide to include the relevant information and use the appropriate language.

It is advised to use simple language with active verbs and to avoid using passive voice, technical terms, and jargon so that it is easier for the reader to comprehend.

Step 4. Decide the Layout of Your Weekly Report

Weekly reports are not merely about putting together a few paragraphs and calling them quits. You need to make sure that you have a proper layout that makes your report brief, concise, and visually appealing.

You can create separate sections in your weekly report for each day of the week or get a little creative with your layout by adding visual infographics.

Decide what headings and sub-headings you want to use to ensure clarity and proper structure. You can even divide it into multiple sections based on the type of projects you are working on.

Step 5. Follow an Organized Structure and Format

Now comes the writing part. For a weekly report to present all the necessary and important details, you must follow a well-structured and organized format. This includes:

• Headline/Title – Be sure to add a title or headline to your weekly report. This can include the role and status of your report.
• Brief Summary – It is always best to start your weekly report with a brief summary of your project’s objectives.
• Date – Since the aim of a weekly report is to keep a record of the week’s work, it is advised that you write your report in a chronological order
• Daily Deliverables – Make sure that you mention what you did each day of the week
• Tasks – Categorize your tasks and projects of the week into sections, namely ‘in progress,’ ‘completed’ and ‘delayed.’ This will help measure the progress of your work.
• Results – In this section, you highlight your achievement and progress with a set of proper numerical metrics.
• Challenges and Issues – Mention all challenges, roadblocks, and issues you had to face over the week and provide suggestions to manage them.
• Next Step – Lastly, detail what is planned for the upcoming week to give the reader an idea of what is to be expected in the future. This can also help the reader map out your next step.

Following these steps and writing weekly reports will no longer be a bothersome task. However, it is worth noting that writing reports every week can be a bit exhausting and even boring sometimes.

So what if we tell you that there is a tool out there that can change this? Yes, that’s right – a tool to simplify your work and save time and effort! Want to know more about this tool? Then scroll down right now!

Read more:  Report Writing: Steps, Tips & Tools!

Bit.ai: The Ultimate Tool for Creating Reports

Bit.ai is a modern, cloud-based document collaboration platform that helps you create digital integrated documents effortlessly. Yes, that includes your weekly report!

You can just focus on the content because Bit helps you with every other aspect of your report – from formatting to sharing. With a few clicks, you can create any type of report on Bit!

Take a look at these features of Bit!

1. Stunning, Fully Responsive Templates: No matter what type of report you want to create, there’s a beautiful template for that on Bit. With over 70 pre-built and fully responsive templates , Bit has turned the painful task of creating reports a walk in the park.

2. Design Automation: Writing a weekly report isn’t easy. It takes so much effort that you end up having no energy to make the report look appealing. Luckily, Bit solves that problem for you with its design automation feature. With just one click, you can change the look of your entire document, its layout, and color too!

3. Interactive Documents:  Bit lets you add PDFs, charts, videos, maps, surveys/polls, charts – basically all kinds of rich media in your documents. Right now, there are over 100 rich media embed integrations on Bit! So, why give someone a boring, static project report they’ll never open when you could turn it into something much more engaging?

4. Real-Time Collaboration : Weekly reports are important documents, and creating one on your own is a little difficult. That’s why this feature of Bit is the best. Using Bit, you and your team can collaborate on the reports in real-time, no matter where everyone is located. You can co-edit, make inline comments, access version history, chat via document chat, @mentions, and much more!

5. Smart Workspaces : Organizing and managing all your weekly reports can be a pain, but Bit is here to take the pain away. Bit lets you create as many workspaces as you want around different teams and departments, invite guests into the workspace, and manage everything much more efficiently!

6. Tables: It’s better to show all the data and figures in your weekly via tables. This way, everyone who reads your report would be able to grasp the complex figures in a quick glance. On Bit, you can create wonderfully designed and fully responsive tables with the click of a button. The colors of these tables automatically change according to the colors of your document’s theme!

With a weekly report in hand, there is very little that could go wrong!

Follow the steps we mentioned in this blog and you can consider yourself fully prepared to write a weekly report. And with Bit on your side, your writing process just got a lot quicker and easier.

Bit is everything you could ask for while creating any report. So quit second-guessing and get Bit to create amazing reports without any effort. Time to make your business lives easier and smoother.

Further reads:

Survey Report: What is it & How to Create it?

KPI Report: What it is & How to Create a Perfect One?

Performance Report: What is it & How to Create it? (Steps Included)

Management Report: What is it & How to Create it?

9 Ways to Improve Work Performance in 2022

13 Social Media Post Ideas for Interesting Content!

Letter of Interest: What is it & How to Write it? (Format Included)

Related posts

Risk register: definition, importance, and elements, sales tracker: what is it & how to create one (template included), instruction manual: what is it & how to write it (template included), business letters: definition, types, format and tips, 15 team meeting ideas & topics for your next meeting, 4 reasons why your document creation is broken & how to fix it.

About Bit.ai

Bit.ai is the essential next-gen workplace and document collaboration platform. that helps teams share knowledge by connecting any type of digital content. With this intuitive, cloud-based solution, anyone can work visually and collaborate in real-time while creating internal notes, team projects, knowledge bases, client-facing content, and more.

The smartest online Google Docs and Word alternative, Bit.ai is used in over 100 countries by professionals everywhere, from IT teams creating internal documentation and knowledge bases, to sales and marketing teams sharing client materials and client portals.

👉👉Click Here to Check out Bit.ai.

Recent Posts

Burndown charts: what are they and how to create them, best document tracking systems in 2023, best file management systems and software in 2023, study guide: what is it & how to create an amazing one, 11 best link in bio tools in 2023, top 13 tools for researchers in 2023.

How to Write a Weekly Report

• Small Business
• Setting Up a New Business
• Steps for Starting a Small Business
• ')" data-event="social share" data-info="Pinterest" aria-label="Share on Pinterest">
• ')" data-event="social share" data-info="Reddit" aria-label="Share on Reddit">
• ')" data-event="social share" data-info="Flipboard" aria-label="Share on Flipboard">

How to Write an Informal Business Report

How to do a operations action & milestone report, how to restore outlook to a previous date.

• How to Stop Werfault.exe
• How to Write a Weekly Sales Report

A weekly report typically is meant to convey the status of a project. A weekly report can also pertain to an individual or team of employees. Such reports are typically written by a team or project manager for review by his superiors. Weekly reports are standard practice in some companies and, in others, instituted only under certain circumstances -- for example, in cases where a project is behind schedule or over budget.

Gather information on temporary or ongoing issues from team members. These can be personnel issues, equipment problems, administrative concerns or other quandaries. Prioritiize the list of problems before you begin to write the report.

Date the report. Identifying the report by date is invaluable to recordkeeping. If certain problems persist, reading past status reports can offer a chronological view of the issue and, perhaps, insight into it.

Relate work activities and progress. If certain sections of a job were completed, note these accomplishments at the start of the report. Superiors are always glad to see that goals are being met. Relate progress on the project as well. If your project is large, divide the progress portion of the report into sections. For example, for a construction project, you could write about electrical, plumbing and structural issues in three different subsections.

Discuss issues that need to be addressed. Start with new issues that have arisen during the week and end with ongoing issues that have been mentioned in previous reports. Alerting superiors to new problems in the first few sentences may prompt them to action.

Write a summary to close the report. Restate any issues that need immediate attention, as well as any triumphs, such as completing a portion of the project ahead of schedule. The closing section can also relate the planned activities and goals for the ensuing week.

• CroftSoft: The Weekly Status Report Templates
• University of Florida: Guidelines for Weekly Reports

D. Laverne O'Neal, an Ivy League graduate, published her first article in 1997. A former theater, dance and music critic for such publications as the "Oakland Tribune" and Gannett Newspapers, she started her Web-writing career during the dot-com heyday. O'Neal also translates and edits French and Spanish. Her strongest interests are the performing arts, design, food, health, personal finance and personal growth.

Related Articles

How to be disciplined about work, how to make an informal agenda for a meeting, what are the job requirements of a team leader, project performance feedback, how to plan your work at the workplace, how do i write a business abstract, how to write a formal business memo, suggestions on how to end a performance appraisal, how to open qrp files, most popular.

• 1 How to Be Disciplined About Work
• 2 How to Make an Informal Agenda for a Meeting?
• 3 What Are the Job Requirements of a Team Leader?
• 4 Project Performance Feedback

• Skip to main content
• Skip to footer

Learn To Manage More Effectively With Priority Matrix

Weekly status report template

On the heels of our previous post ( Making a status report with Priority Matrix ), I just wanted to talk about different formats that you might use for an employee weekly status report template.

We’ve compiled a few templates from other sources below.

Before digging deeper, let’s also review WHY you’d want to make a weekly status report. A recent article by the NY Times indicates that it is helpful to measure results, not hours. A weekly status report would provide the necessary update in a team environment. Here’s a relevant excerpt:

“But it’s not enough to think and observe. You need to communicate — often. Every week, write down a list of your assigned tasks — short-term assignments and long-term goals — and rank them by importance, from your perspective. Then ask your boss to weigh in on the list.”

At Appfluence, we do daily reports as a way to achieve clarity for the team. While it is not mandatory, it is absolutely helpful to keep everyone updated to your road blocks, progress, and accomplishments. Here’s a real screenshot of our daily send out. This is automatically generated by Priority Matrix , in this case on the Mac .

To get weekly status reports like these, try it out for yourself! Also, you can get a free weekly status report template as well as an explanation of the importance of weekly status reporting.

From the Northwestern University  website, you can find the following weekly status report template:

——————————————————————————————

————————————————————————————

From the Microsoft Office website, here is a sample weekly status report template:

• (Description)

Here at Appfluence, we use the following simple bulleted lists to notify each other by email what we are individually working on.

• List the tasks you completed last week
• List the tasks you plan to complete this week
• Write down any obstacles or roadblocks that you might encounter/have already encountered
• Add comments or questions that may aid in conveying what you are doing to your intended audience.

Here is a Weekly Status Report template ready to use on Priority Matrix. Below are some sample action items as well, for inspiration:

Let us know if you have any weekly status report templates of your own! We would love to hear about ways people are staying productive and accomplishing tasks!

Learn more about status reports in Priority Matrix in this video:

Learn more about  Priority Matrix  for  Windows ,  iPhone ,  iPad , and  Mac .

What President Eisenhower Can Teach Us About Prioritization

Time management strategies for busy people, how to: manage your team workload in excel, prioritize tasks, projects, and emails, try priority matrix for free.

------- or create an account with your email --------

Have dozens of tools but still struggle with staying aligned with your team, or staying on top of emails, or spending all your time shuffling priorities? Priority Matrix uses 4-quadrants to help you focus on top priorities and projects. When you use Priority Matrix, you become more effective and ensure that you are spending time where it matters most. Learn more about Priority Matrix.

Our Most Popular Posts

Prioritization Matrix Eisenhower Time Management Gantt Chart in Excel Weekly Status Report Template Time Management Skills for College Students Free Swot Template Omnifocus for Windows SMART Goals Worksheet Converting Goals into Action Items

ABOUT PRIORITY MATRIX

Priority Matrix is lightweight project management solution that increases visibility and accountability within teams. Manage more effectively with Priority Matrix.

• Prioritize Emails in Outlook
• Manage Projects in Microsoft Teams
• Workload Management
• Top 5 templates for Exec Assistants
• How to tackle responsibilities
• How to be a successful EA
• How to Create 30-60-90 Day Plan
• President Eisenhower’s Prioritization Method
• Employee Performance Review Template

How to Write a Weekly Marketing Report (+ Template)

Jan 28 2021 ● 7 min read

Table of Contents

As a new employee, the idea of writing weekly reports may seem uneasy and uncomfortable at first, but the truth is that weekly reports are not as tricky as they seem.

All you need to write a perfect weekly report are the necessary information and an ideal weekly report template.

New employees often can't resist the urge to ask if weekly report writing is essential and why any organization would think of making it a prerequisite. Or isn't the progress of the company prominent enough? Why go through the stress of documenting every weekly activity?

Business owners, employers, and organizations want to measure and evaluate important metrics and see how far you are delivering and discharging your primary objectives on a weekly or monthly basis.

What is a weekly report?

A weekly report is a document that contains information that can help the organization evaluate the employee and the organization itself, on a weekly level.

For example, a weekly report gives you a helicopter view of marketing initiatives and long-term projects, like SEO, PR, and content marketing campaigns, and how these projects influence your key metrics.

Organizations can make improvements based on personal thoughts and suggestions about work, productivity, and progress updates. These suggestions can help the organizations understand employees' strengths as independent workers and as a team.

Now that you understand that writing a weekly report is as vital as it can get, what then are the steps to writing a perfect weekly report?

How Do You Write a Weekly Report?

Writing a well-detailed business report may not be limited to these points, but they are sure to get you started in the right direction.

1. Identify the Purpose of your Weekly Report

How can you write a perfect weekly status report without identifying the report's purpose in the first place?

Identifying your weekly report's purpose will help you understand the type of information that your report should contain. In the later part of this article, we will get to the basic information that every report should have. But, for now, let's stick to how to write a weekly report first.

You do not want to talk about things that don't concern your weekly status report's role. You should be able to recognize if gathering information from team members or personnel issues, equipment problems, or administrative concerns should pop up in your report.

Once you start writing your weekly status report, try as much as possible not to stray away from the purpose of writing it.

2. Understand Your Role

You might not expect to find this in this article, but the truth is that knowing your role is equally as important as knowing the purpose of writing a status report.

Ensure that you have your responsibilities spelled out to you and understand them to the letter.

It will help if you are clear about the role you are handling and what the definition of success for that role is. That is the only way you can be sure of measuring your deliverables appropriately.

3. Organize your Information

When writing a business report or weekly status report, it is imperative to note the first rule of thumb, which is "keep your report organized."

You do not want to miss out on important KPIs or have essential points coming off in the last paragraph because you didn't remember it quite early enough while writing your status report.

Your report needs to be as clear, concise, and straight to the point as possible. The purpose of a weekly report is not to stress your manager or employer out but inform him/her as adequately as possible about your weekly progress and whether your marketing strategy is unfolding in the right direction.

Depending on your role in your organization, you should gather as many points as you would need and put them down on a rough note.

When you are satisfied with every piece of information you have highlighted, you can now arrange them according to their level of urgency using well-structured headings and paragraphs.

4. Determine Who Will Read Your Report

Identifying who will read your report is crucial to writing a satisfactory weekly status report. Knowing who you are addressing in your status report will help you understand what information to include and what not to add to your report.

Are you writing to your team leader, manager, executives, or administrators? Then a board report template is what you'll need to create. Answering this question will help you set the right tone for your report and give you insight into how detailed the report needs to be.

5. Ask for Report Templates

Samples or report templates can only be a problem if you are the first person to take up your position or role in your organization. Nevertheless, you can always count on online resources to help you out.

Automated reporting software saves you hours of building different types of marketing reports.

Having a data-driven weekly report template you can integrate with or sample could be all you need to write a perfect weekly report. It would be best if you considered reaching out to your administrative assistant to request a sample.

So, instead of starting from scratch, you can always have a weekly sales report template with the correct settings, including margins, tables, paragraph styles, and fonts.

You should also be able to integrate this template with Google Analytics, an email marketing tool, LinkedIn Ads, Facebook Ads, and every other social media channel that your marketing agency uses.

Social media marketing is an important part of many clients’ overall digital marketing performance report and contains specific marketing data you should include in your monthly marketing report template.

But the social media report is not the only type of weekly report that helps you understand the bottom line.

Your weekly marketing report can be a one-pager and focus only on website traffic, or contain multiple pages and analyze different key performance indicators, such as organic traffic, click-through rate (CTR), PPC, ROAS, rankings, conversion rate, landing page open rate, bounce rate, as well marketing metrics from Google Ads, and other marketing channels.

This will make writing your weekly marketing efforts easier, mostly if your organization prefers an electronic system of report documentation and has a marketing budget to accommodate it.

By now, you must have gained some level of confidence about writing your next weekly digital marketing report. Now, let's go over the marketing activities that you should consider including in your project status.

What Should Be Included in a Weekly Status Report?

Regardless of the organization you are currently working in - or the role or position you are occupying, here are essential report template subjects that must be included in your weekly sales report;

Whatever document involves reporting should always have an appropriate date. The aim of writing a status report is record keeping. Should any issue poke its head, it will be a hassle-free experience for your manager or team leader to go through the files chronologically.

2. Daily Achievements

Weekly status reporting requires that you give detailed and accurate information on each of your weekly activities. Although, while doing this, you should be concise, straight to the point, and brief. You don't have to include real-time activities that do not concern the purpose of your weekly status report. Alternatively, you can create a daily report template to provide the most accurate data to your clients. 

3. Headline

Including headlines in your weekly report goes a long way in helping whoever it is directed to know where the report Is coming from, and this helps them evaluate and understand your report better.

Regardless of the type of report, Be sure to title your report with your [role] + [the report's status]. Let's say you're a General Supervisor, so you'd title your report as General Supervisor Status Report.

Including your weekly report tasks will help your stakeholders understand how much work you had on your hands for the week and how far you were able to get them done.

An effective way to include this in your report is to categorize tasks under 'in progress, 'done, and 'pending.

5. Challenges/Roadblocks

When writing a weekly report, you should always have in mind that your superior expects you to come across a few quagmires and does not expect you to hold back on them in your report.

Report challenges encountered during the week, and if possible, comment with your honest opinions, and suggest steps you think the management can take to ensure smooth workflow.

6. Action for Next Week

This involves hinting to your manager about your plans for the coming week, so he/she can consider this when assigning new tasks.

This also will show your preparedness towards carrying out your responsibilities as at when due.

When writing a weekly status report, always close your report with a summary that highlights all your major points.

It will help if you remember that you would be doing your status reporting every week. Therefore, always leave a summary so that your top management doesn't have to go over the whole report before understanding your purpose for writing that particular report.

With these outlines, your next status report should be a lot easier. You may need to add more than this, but that depends on what additional information your superior expects or suggests you add.

3 Weekly Report Writing Mistakes to Avoid

1. disregarding the structure.

You do not want to disregard the structure of your organization's report writing template/style. After writing a successful report for the week, save the template and reuse it the following week. You are going to write weekly reports every week, doing this will make your life a lot easier.

2. Failing to account for readability

You must pay attention to the three key writing characteristics for weekly status reports.

Be straight to the point and concise when giving your reporting on your weekly marketing KPIs.

• Use simple language

You do not want your superior going through hard times to understand your report. Keep your report as simple as possible.

• Write with the reader in mind

Use short paragraphs, headings and subheadings, and bullet points to make your work easy to read. Use readable text sizes and write small to average-length sentences with simple words.

• Typographical/Grammatical errors

Bad grammar, poor punctuation, and typographical errors will ruin your weekly status report in seconds.

In other to avoid these errors:

• Exchange your report with your colleagues to check for errors before submitting it to your management.
• By reading your report out loud.
• This can help you pick redundancies and flawed constructs in your report.
• Take your time to proofread as much as you can before putting it up for submission.

3. Lack of Attention to Design

To make your report as detailed as possible, you need to pay attention to its design. Make proper use of colors to distinguish between tasks, e.g., having completed tasks in blue, pending tasks in green, and tasks that are yet to start in red. It doesn't have to be these colors, but colors sure help. You can use different designs for different report examples.

Marketing report templates allow you to include not only include just charts and graphs, but also diagrams, timelines, maps, and other data visualization widgets.

White lines between paragraphs, line spacing, and cell merging also play important roles in creating a perfect weekly report.

How Do I Create a Weekly Report in Whatagraph?

Creating a weekly report in Whatagraph is pretty simple and straightforward, but it all depends on the role you are reporting for and the data you are looking forward to working with.

First, choose your data sources and connect them to Whatagraph. We currently have over 40 data source supported, with anything from Google Analytics, all the way to LinkedIn Ads and TikTok Ads.

Second, choose a report template. We have a template library with 100+ report templates to choose from. Any one of these can be sent weekly. Once you choose your template, adjust it to your style and liking and you're good to go.

Third and final, set the report to be sent out at a weekly interval.

Wrapping up

Creating and sending out weekly reports can be one of the most fruitful activities for your marketing team or agency and even your client. The best part is, with a reporting tool like Whatagraph, you can create a weekly report in just minutes.

Sign up for your free trial today!

Published on Jan 28 2021

Gintaras is an experienced marketing professional who is always eager to explore the most up-to-date issues in data marketing. He is always in search of new and unexplored angles to share with his readers.

Related articles

Supermetrics Support: What Can You Expect When Troubleshooting?

Supermetrics Connectors: The Ultimate Guide for Marketers in 2023

The 4 Best Supermetrics Templates to Grab for Marketers

Moving from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4: Impact on Data

Supermetrics Review: Should You Still Use It in 2023?

Supermetrics Pricing: How Much Does Supermetrics Cost in 2023?

Read more awesome articles.

Enter your email and get curated content straight to your inbox!

Get Started With Interactive Weekly Reports For Performance Tracking

Table of Contents

1) What Is A Weekly Report?

2) Why Are Weekly Progress Reports Important?

3) How to Create a Weekly Status Report

4) Weekly Report Templates & Examples

5) Top Elements Of A Weekly Performance Report

6) The Value Of Visual Weekly Reports

Businesses across industries have been analyzing their performance for decades using traditional written reporting formats, but with the amount of data being produced every day, the need for more frequent reporting is growing. Often, companies generate written monthly, quarterly, or yearly reports that serve a number of purposes, but they do not provide the level of detailed insights that businesses require in order to succeed and stay ahead of their competition. This is where interactive weekly reports come into the picture.

Armed with powerful visualizations and real-time data, modern weekly summary reports enable businesses to closely monitor the progress of their strategies to extract relevant insights and optimize their processes to ensure constant growth. 

To get you started with interactive weekly reporting with powerful data visualizations, in this post we will cover the definition, tell you a few benefits of using them, provide you with top weekly reports templates for different industries and functions created with a professional BI dashboard software , and finalize with some tips to achieve successful regular reporting. 

Let's kick it off with the definition.

What Is A Weekly Report?

A weekly report provides an overview of relevant aspects related to the performance of a business during a given week. Powered by interactive visualizations, managers and employees use them to outline the progress of the week and find improvement opportunities.

Typically, these tools are used to track progress or success for different business scenarios, such as projects, sales, finances, marketing campaigns, human resources, or any other area that might be relevant. Traditional reporting formats are often written in a way that might include an introduction, body, and conclusion. Even though this weekly report format is needed to summarize some relevant information, it is also static and less efficient. 

Today, more and more businesses are turning to online informational visualizations such as a dashboard creator that is user-friendly and accessible for everyone. The ability to visualize your frequent performance through interactive reports will improve your decision-making by providing a 360-degree view of your progress. We will see these interactive tools in action throughout the post.

Why Are Weekly Progress Reports Important?

As mentioned, reporting every week provides businesses with a detailed overview of relevant tasks that affect various departments and functions. Now that remote work is a permanent part of the business world, the need for more detailed monitoring of progress and tasks has grown. An online reporting tool provides managers with interactive weekly status updates, so they and their employees can stay connected, even if they are working remotely. This allows for less frequent meetings and more time to concentrate on tasks. Paired with this, weekly activity reports are important because: 

• They allow for informed decision-making: Besides being instrumental to success, monthly, quarterly, and annual reporting do not provide the immediate insights that a weekly operations report can. Tracking relevant KPIs often will improve the decision-making process while keeping every relevant stakeholder engaged with the metrics. 
• They enable team performance tracking : Tracking the progress of the different teams is another reason why weekly reporting is such a relevant practice for modern businesses. As a manager, you need to be aware of what your workforce is doing and how they are doing it. Being able to provide regular feedback to your employees based on their consistent ability to meet benchmarks will keep them more engaged with their tasks and increase productivity. 
• They help spot improvement opportunities : The short-term nature of weekly business reports allows for a more detailed view of the development of different organizational strategies. Through this, you can find improvement opportunities as well as spot potential inefficiencies before they become bigger issues. Paired with this, reporting on a week-to-week basis can also save your company money and time as you can quickly identify if a strategy is not successful and reallocate resources accordingly. 
• They enhance collaboration & communication : One of the prime benefits of using these modern analysis tools is that they serve as valuable tools to enhance communication and collaboration between different stakeholders. Modern BI reporting tools make it easy to visualize all your relevant information sources into one single point of access so everyone can stay connected with the latest developments. Empowering everyone in your organization to generate their own interactive reports every week will increase the productivity of your company and a data-driven culture will be implemented in the long run. 
• They improve responsivity: By gaining access to highly-visual insights, you will improve your company’s overall business intelligence, which, in turn, will empower you to respond to emerging opportunities, changes, or potential issues swiftly - saving time and money in the process.

Now that you are aware of the benefits of visual weekly progress reports, we will go through a list of 10 powerful report templates for different industries, platforms, and internal functions. 

How to Create a Weekly Status Report

Now that you’re up to speed with the key features and functions of a weekly progress report, let’s consider how to create one that will optimize every key area of your organization.

• Hone in on your key aims, goals & outcomes

To create a business weekly report template that offers a genuine insight into the progress of your initiatives and activities, taking the time to consider your key organizational aims, goals, and outcomes is essential.

While this may sound like an obvious step towards creating a weekly metrics report that gets results, many companies wade in without ironing out these critical details. Sit in a collaborative environment and take the time to consider what you’re looking to achieve over a 12-month period across every department.

Take these aims and consider which ones will benefit most from the insights of weekly report templates. Once you’ve combed through every aim and goal, it will become clear which activities or metrics require seven-day monitoring.

• Choose your data sources

The next step in producing an effective weekly activities report is choosing data sources that offer the most relevant insights. Examine all of your key informational sources and look at the data as well as metrics that align with your seven-day monitoring goals. Doing so will help you trim the fat, working with a mix of digital information that will enable you to transform raw insights into progress-boosting visuals - metrics that will integrate into your reporting dashboards seamlessly.

Curating your information from the right sources will allow you to consolidate your most impactful into one central dashboard and gain access to quality information that will ultimately make your organization more robust, responsive, communicative, and intelligent across the board.

• Set your KPIs

Armed with your refined goals and best informational sources, you’ll be able to choose the right KPIs for your weekly status report template. Remember that the KPIs you choose should be focused on your goals and not distract from them. Choosing too many indicators to include in your report can distract from the analysis and the insights extracted from it. 

Take the time to consider which visualizations will present your data in a way that is not only accessible but will help you measure your success on a seven-day basis with minimal friction and maximum success. Once you start populating your weekly project status report with a cohesive mix of KPIs, it will leap into life.

• Get your design elements right

Once you’ve set your KPIs, it’s important to optimize every aspect of your design for maximum value. When it comes to dashboard-style design, the most important thing to remember is that you should always lead with substance over style. 

Yes, having a neat and pretty reporting design is important, but if anything gets in the way of clarity or usability, it needs work. A few best practices in this regard, include not overcrowding the report with too many visuals, sticking to just a few colors, and choosing simplicity overall. This will enable you to focus on conveying the information in the clearest and most engaging way possible without distracting your audience from the true objective of the report. 

Read: Our complete guide on the top 23 dashboard design principles and best practices for essential tips that will make your weekly report sample layout sing.

• Tell a story

Despite the fact that you’ll be monitoring your metrics every seven days (possibly more), it’s still important that your KPIs and design layout follow a logical narrative. Visuals that tell a story will make your insights far more accessible to all internal and external stakeholders, making your metrics more impactful in the process. For this reason, it is important to provide context and insights that will enable your audience to understand the story you are trying to tell and make better decisions. 

Read: Our complete guide on dashboard storytelling for essential tips and advice. 

Weekly Report Templates For Status Tracking

We’ve covered the essential steps it takes to create a successful template for weekly report and shared some useful tips as well as resources to assist you on your journey - now let’s look at some real-world examples.

Each of these dynamic weekly report examples offers a wealth of company-boosting insight into different departments or organizational functions. Let’s start by looking at a marketing example.

1. Weekly Marketing Report 

Our first weekly report sample is an interactive marketing BI dashboard tracking the success of different campaigns through metrics such as total impressions, clicks, acquisitions, and costs. Let’s look at it more in detail. 

**click to enlarge**

The template starts by providing the total spend by campaign and comparing it with the expected spend. This is an important metric to monitor every week as it lets you understand if your cost goals are actually in line with what is feasible. For example, if you implemented a campaign with a large budget and in the middle of a week you realize that it is not paying you back, you can make adjustments immediately before it is too late and you waste your budget (something very likely to happen if you were monitoring your spending monthly or quarterly).  You can also see if a campaign is exceeding expectations and allocate more resources to it. 

Next, we get an overview of metrics such as clicks, impressions, and acquisitions, each of them displayed for the last 12 weeks. The value of including historical data in your weekly status dashboards is clearly depicted in this interactive marketing report . Tracking the development of each campaign this often will allow you to test different strategies and compare the results to the values of the previous weeks. This allows you to monitor every important aspect of your campaigns more in detail and use your resources wisely. 

2. IT Weekly Report 

Between handling tickets, and dealing with big projects such as website updates, your IT department always has its hands full. This weekly project status report aims to make your life easier by providing you with the most important information regarding the status of your IT project, facilitating communication, and ensuring efficient development. 

This intuitive IT weekly report provides a mix of operational and costs-related IT metrics that form an accurate picture of the project status. Through this, you can ensure that you are not going over your budget, track that all deadlines are being met and that your employees are not overloaded with work. Furthermore, by looking at these metrics every seven days, you can take a deeper look into the causes of overdue tasks and find smart solutions so that the development of the project will not be affected. 

Tracking the performance and status of larger IT projects every week with an IT dashboard will keep managers, and anyone else involved in the project informed about every relevant task or development, facilitating the decision-making process and minimizing the scope so that issues can be spotted fast and handled efficiently. And not just that, getting this level of insight every week will also enable teams to stay connected with their tasks and deadlines while enhancing collaboration. 

3. Weekly Sales Report 

Our next weekly progress report template is a sales dashboard providing a detailed overview of the sales department’s ongoing success with a focus on metrics such as sales growth, sales targets, ARPU, CLV, and CAC.  

Built with a valuable mix of data visualizations, this digestible weekly sales report offers you a full picture of your sales operations so you can understand your performance quickly and easily without losing any valuable piece of information. For instance, the top part of the dashboard provides insights into the performance of your sales team. By looking at the sales target metric you can easily evaluate if anyone needs extra training to reach their individual targets.

On the other side, the bottom part of the dashboard, tracking the ARPU, CLV, and CAC, provides a snapshot of how these metrics developed in the last 12 weeks so you can dig deeper and find trends and patterns that will improve your progress. Getting all this information together in an interactive weekly executive report like this one enables you to compare these important numbers and monitor if you are on track to meet your goals. In the long run, you will augment your operational management and improve your profit margins. 

4. Weekly Hospital Report 

Next in our rundown of examples comes a template for weekly status report for the healthcare industry. Armed with powerful metrics related to management and operations, this healthcare dashboard will enable you to identify trends, spot any bottlenecks, and help to allocate your resources for sustainable facility development. 

Running a healthcare facility is not an easy task, every detail and department needs to be carefully monitored as any issue can directly affect patient care. For this reason, the value of producing seven-day dashboards in this industry is not in question. 

The dashboard above was created with a healthcare business intelligence tool that has real-time data so you can always extract fresh insights. Starting at the left side, we get a glance at relevant values such as the total patients, total patients admitted, average treatment costs, average ER waiting time, and available staff. This information is all complemented with more detailed graphs by division. Through this, you will be able to understand if a specific department is overcrowded and allocate resources to ensure patients are getting optimal care. 

5. Weekly Facebook Report 

A specially valuable weekly report format, this Facebook dashboard focuses on the development of advertising, enabling you to optimize your campaigns, distribute your resources wisely, and keep up with any algorithm changes that might come up. Like this, you will save time and resources by creating data-backed campaigns. 

Going more into detail with this weekly Facebook report, we first see the current value of fundamental Facebook KPIs for ads management such as the impressions, reach, frequency, cost per click, and CTR. Each of them is then broken down into more detailed charts displaying the development of the past 5 weeks in a visually appealing way that makes them easy to understand at a glance. Getting this level of insights on a seven-day basis will enable you to monitor the progress of your campaigns closely and test different ad strategies based on which one performs better for your business. If you want an even deeper understanding, each week can be filtered by day. 

6. Weekly Service Report 

Next, we have a weekly report example for a popular cloud-based customer service solution: Zendesk. Considering call centers have a bad reputation for long waiting times and inefficient solutions, focusing your efforts on providing the best talk service should be a priority and this dashboard will help you do just that. 

By providing a mix of Zendesk KPIs related to call center performance, this report will help you optimize every relevant detail related to the development of your call team to ensure quality service.

Although this report is focusing on the progress of one month, it is also a valuable resource to track weekly as it lets you dig deeper into the reasons for specific issues or trends. For instance, tracking the performance of your agents on a seven-day basis can let you understand if anyone needs extra training. Additionally, you can find patterns in your customer’s behaviors such as the times they are most likely to call, or the problems they face the most. This way you can prepare your resources and strategies accordingly.

7. Weekly security report template

We live in a hyper-connected digital age that evolves at warp speed. Failing to prioritize your company’s cyber safety is like leaving your front door wide open in the dead of night - and the costs of data breaches are financially devastating.

A weekly activity report template designed to create a cohesive and consistent cyber security strategy across the organization, this essential tool uses seven-day monitoring IT KPIs including average attack response times, backup frequency, phishing test success rates, cyber security ratings, and the number of intrusions experienced over a seven-day period.

This melting pot of information will ensure that you can fortify your organization against the looming threat of cybercrime with complete confidence - saving your company untold amounts of time, money, and progress stunting logistical stress in the process.

8. Social media weekly overview report

Social media is ever-present in the digital age and regardless of your niche or sector, it remains one of the most effective ways of engaging with (as well as winning over) your target audience. It’s a vessel designed for organizational growth - if you have a progressive strategy.

Our social media KPI scorecard is a visually-balanced template for a weekly status report that offers a wealth of brand-boosting information with a quick glance.

Split into key social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, this savvy informational tool serves up insights based on seven-day followers, content clicks, engagement, and impressions.

Here, you can also identify key trends or patterns related to average order values, conversion times, and specific engagement rates across platforms. Armed with this melting pot of information, you can uncover content-based strengths and weaknesses to optimize your messaging as well as your posting times for maximum success. In turn, you’ll enjoy a consistently healthy return on investment (ROI) from your social media marketing efforts.

9. Logistics weekly report

Without a well-oiled fulfillment and logistics strategy, it’s unlikely that your organization will ever reach its full potential. Conversely, if every aspect of your strategy is optimized for maximum efficiency, you will accelerate your commercial growth.

This invaluable weekly progress report template in the shape of a professional logistics dashboard , makes a powerful addition to any business’s analytical strategy as it hones in on regular patterns related to pick & pack costs, picking accuracy and cycle times, use of packing materials, and equipment utilization rates.

One of the most striking aspects of this highly-visual informational tool is the fact that it’s part weekly financial report . Here, you can make accurate decisions based on improving your company’s fiscal health through your core logistical initiatives while consistently assessing areas that need improvement or refinement. A powerful tool that will accelerate your commercial growth from the ground up.

10. FMCG Weekly Report Templates 

The Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry is arguably one of the most relevant industries for weekly tracking since these companies deal with edible products that are being consumed by people, therefore any mistakes can have major effects. According to a study by Deloitte, FMCG businesses using analytics will stay ahead of the game by identifying key price points in the market, understanding consumer behaviors, and developing new pricing strategies based on competitive intelligence. Now we will take a look at two weekly progress report templates that are valuable for this industry.

• On-Shelf Availability 

This weekly progress report template is intended to measure the percentage of time a particular product has been available for sale on shelves. In most cases, this metric is measured by auditing the available products in the store or by conducting a deeper analysis of the inventory.

This is an important FMCG KPI to be measured on a regular basis as it allows you to understand at which frequency some specific items are being sold and plan your stocking and inventory strategies accordingly. If a customer arrives at the supermarket and does not find what they are looking for repeatedly they will simply move to the next one.

• On-time In full Deliveries 

In this next weekly report sample, we look at the supply chain delivery performance within the FMCG industry. This report tracks different levels of delivery including the quality standards, time to be delivered, and quantity delivered. Keeping track of this every week can be helpful for supermarkets to measure the performance of suppliers, as it allows them to determine if some are not delivering the expected service.

We covered templates for a diverse range of business functions, industries, and platforms. If you want to see more than 80+ interactive reports then browse our list of dashboard examples and find the ones that better suit your business. Now we will go to the final section of this guide, where we will provide you with some tips for the perfect weekly reports format. 

Top Elements Of A Weekly Performance Report

There is no set of rules that you should follow to create the perfect weekly performance report as each of them will have a different purpose, as you saw in our examples. However, there are a few steps and elements that you should follow to achieve weekly reporting success. For instance, you should incorporate what was achieved in the previous week as well as future plans for the next one. Paired with this, before creating your report you should also consider who is your audience as well as what KPIs and visuals will tell your data story in the best way possible. Going a bit more in detail, the main elements that should be included in a successful weekly report are: 

Historical and current data

As mentioned, one of the steps you should follow when creating your data collection is to include current performance as well as past insights in your weekly reporting. On one hand, getting insights into the progress of different strategies and tasks will help keep everyone in the team on the same page about their performance as well as learn from the different obstacles they faced during that week and find improvement opportunities. On the other hand, having historical data will help you spot trends and patterns in your performance providing you with a deeper understanding of your business. For example, if you implement a change and see that numbers dropped from the previous weeks then it is an indication that the strategy might not be working. 

Progress toward goals and targets

Setting targets and goals is a valuable reporting practice as it not only motivates employees to perform better to reach their goals but also lets you measure your progress in a realistic way. Your weekly performance reports can include KPIs tracking a yearly business goal, as well as smaller goals such as the number of sales over seven-day periods, or followers to reach. The important thing to remember here is that not every KPI will represent your goals in the best way so you need to choose the ones that will provide value to your report instead of overcrowding it with useless information. If you want to see several metrics for different functions, industries, and platforms browse our list of key performance indicators examples . 

A mix of data visualizations

As mentioned throughout this post, the value of modern weekly progress tracking lies in the fact that they are powerful visual tools that make the reporting process accessible to everyone without the need for any technical skills. Including a mix of interactive graphs and charts in your weekly reports is fundamental as they will provide context to your organization’s information and allow you to extract relevant insights at a glance. Tools such as datapine offer a BI dashboard tool that enables you to create interactive weekly progress reports in the form of online dashboards with just a few clicks. Through this, you keep every relevant stakeholder involved in the data analysis process by making it visual and user-friendly. 

• Completed tasks

As one of the prime benefits of weekly reporting is enhancing communication between managers and their teams, your weekly reporting should also include the completed tasks and reached goals of the week. This will help managers stay connected with the different tasks of the team while keeping a record of what has been accomplished in terms of organizational goals. 

Automation features

Considering that modern businesses have their hands busier than ever, it is timely impossible to manually create a report every week without taking away valuable time from other tasks. For this reason, a successful weekly reporting process should include report automation features that will leave the pains of manual reporting in the past and facilitate the way businesses deal with their reports. BI tools such as datapine auto-generate dashboard information with real-time data on whatever time schedule you decide. With just a few clicks you will have weekly status reports with fresh insights waiting to be untapped. 

The Value Of Visuals For Efficient Weekly Reports

As humans, we’re visual creatures and as such, we digest imagery far more readily than linear information.

We live in a highly-evolved digital age where the static reporting strategies of the past are fast becoming obsolete. Rather than wading through pages upon pages of uninspiring statements or figures, now it’s possible to gain a wealth of organization-boosting insights with a simple glance.

Static methods once had their place, but in today’s world, they’re labor-intensive, time-consuming, and more often than not, inaccurate.

Whether you’re talking about a sales weekly report template, a weekly market report, or any other kind of informational offering for that matter - interactive online data visualization tools are the way forward. Interactive weekly status report templates not only allow you to reach out and touch your company’s most valuable metrics- but they also empower you to use them in a way that transforms raw information into actionable insight.

With modern dashboards and tools, you can drill down, zoom in, filter, and access every key insight with ease. Using visual KPIs, it’s possible to keep track of your most important initiatives every seven days to ensure you’re consistently working towards your most important objectives. Tracking your progress this frequently will also help you remain responsive to any sudden changes and issues that will inevitably come your way.

All in all, the value of these types of reporting tools is enormous - and with consistent measuring, monitoring, and tracking, you will see a healthy return on investment (ROI).

Key Learnings For Successful Reporting

As we reach the end of our weekly reporting journey, we hope you have a better understanding of the benefits of tracking progress and status using interactive data visualizations. 

Your weekly reports will provide you with not only an overview of your current performance but also the historical data from earlier weeks, allowing you to understand diverse phenomena in your data. Thus, you will enjoy an efficient decision-making process based on factual information and not simple human intuition.

We defined modern weekly reports, discussed the benefits your business can enjoy from them, reviewed examples for different business scenarios, and concluded with tips for developing a successful report format. To keep your mind fresh here is a small summary of key things you should not forget: 

Why are weekly progress reports important?

• They allow for informed decision-making
• They enable team performance tracking 
• They help spot improvement opportunities 
• They enhance collaboration and communication 
• They improve responsivity

What should a weekly report include? 

• Historical and current insights
• Progress toward goals and targets 
• A mix of data visualizations 
• Automated features 

Now that you know the fundamentals of seven-day analytical tools and methods, you will be able to create an informational strategy that will see you not only reach but exceed your organizational goals on a consistent basis. No longer will you be shooting in the dark, hoping for the best - armed with the right visual tools - you will know exactly what to do in any given situation.

Are you ready to start making your own interactive weekly reports with the help of an industry-leading dashboard tool, then try our 14-day trial completely free and start benefiting from quality reporting today!