Use case · Agencies

The non-billable hours, reclaimed.

Client reports, status updates, and scope tracking are the work you cannot invoice and cannot skip. Cedric runs them per client, on a schedule.

$50 in free credits when you sign up. No card needed.

  • Agency margin is decided by the ratio of billable to non-billable work, and reporting is the biggest non-billable line.
  • Cedric assembles the client report per account, on the client's cadence, from the tools that account actually uses.
  • Scope creep gets flagged early, with the request and the original scope side by side.
  • Each client's context stays separate, so the workspace memory does not leak between accounts.
  • Nothing reaches a client without someone at your agency approving it.

The report is the tax on every retainer

Client reporting is the same shape every month for every account, and across twelve accounts it becomes a full-time job nobody pays you for. It also slips first when delivery gets busy, so your most productive month is the one the client hears from you least.

Only the commentary is your expertise. Everything before it is assembly, and assembly should not consume a senior person's afternoon.

Reporting

Twelve client reports, assembled overnight.

#client-meridianCedric is in this channel

Lucia Moreau9:14 AM

@Cedric prep this month's client reports

CedricAPP9:15 AM

Eleven of twelve are drafted and in the shared folder, each in that client's format. Highlights: Halcyon is up 31% on qualified leads and is the strongest month since we started, Redwood's spend went 12% over the agreed cap on 22 March, and Meridian's tracking has been broken since their site migration on the 14th so three weeks of data are unreliable. I have flagged that rather than reporting numbers I do not trust. The twelfth (Vertex) is waiting on their analytics access, which expired.

Send the report to the client?

Per client, in their format

Each account has its own cadence, metrics, and layout, and Cedric keeps them straight. Nobody gets the generic template.

Flags what it cannot stand behind

Broken tracking is reported as broken tracking, not smoothed into a number that will be quoted back at you later.

Leaves the commentary to you

The assembly is done. The insight, the recommendation, and the relationship are still yours to write.

Scope creep, caught while it is still small

Scope creep arrives as "could you also just", repeatedly, over eleven weeks. Because Cedric is in the client channel and holds the statement of work, it notices the pattern early: six requests outside scope, the original wording, roughly what they cost.

That is a calm week-three conversation instead of a defensive month-three one. The flag comes to you; what to do about it stays a commercial call.

Scope

Six small asks, one real conversation.

#client-meridianCedric is in this channel

Devin Wallace10:02 AM

@Cedric is Redwood still in scope?

CedricAPP10:03 AM

Not really. Six requests this month sit outside the signed scope: two extra landing pages, a report format change, an ad-hoc competitor analysis, and two rounds of creative revisions beyond the agreed three. Roughly 14 hours based on similar past work. The SOW covers monthly optimisation and one landing page per quarter. The competitor analysis is the biggest single item at about 5 hours.

Draft the scope conversation for the client?

Rolling it out across accounts

One client first. Preferably the one whose reporting you dread most.

  1. 01

    Add Cedric to one client's internal channel

    Start with the account team's own channel, not a shared client channel. You want to see how it behaves before a client does.

    Keep it internal for the first month. Everything useful here works without the client ever seeing Cedric.

  2. 02

    Connect that client's tools

    Their analytics, their ad accounts, whatever the report draws on, with scoped access you can revoke when the engagement ends.

  3. 03

    Have it rebuild last month's report

    You already know what that report should say, which makes it the perfect test. Compare its version against the one you sent.

  4. 04

    Put the report on the client's cadence

    Monthly, fortnightly, whatever you promised. It assembles and posts internally for review; a human sends it onward.

  5. 05

    Repeat per account

    Each client gets their own context and format. Adding the second account is much faster than the first.

Compared to how agencies handle this

Most agencies use two or three of these at once, which is part of the problem.

Junior does itReporting templateWhite-label dashboardCedric
Cost per reportBillable hours you cannot billStill needs assemblyPer-client feeCredits per report
Per-client formatsYes, slowlyOne format, bentLimitedYes, kept separate
Notices broken trackingIf they are sharpNoShows a gapYes, and refuses to report it
Flags scope creepRarelyNoNoYes, against the SOW
Scales to twelve accountsAnother hireLinearly worseYesYes
Sends to the client unattendedNoNoYes, on a scheduleNever, approval required

Where this breaks

Client data separation is your responsibility to configure. Connect each client's tools with scoped access, and think carefully before putting Cedric in a channel where several clients are discussed together.

Client contracts may restrict this. Some engagements have terms about which systems may process their data. Check before connecting an account, particularly in regulated sectors.

It cannot save a bad retainer. If the scope was underpriced at signature, faster reporting improves the margin at the edges and does not fix the deal.

The relationship is not automatable. The report is assembly; the trust is you. Agencies that send only what Cedric assembled, with no thinking on top, will read exactly like that to the client.

FAQ

Not necessarily, but keeping accounts in separate channels with separately scoped tool access is the cleaner pattern, and it makes revoking access at the end of an engagement straightforward.

It assembles and posts them for your review. Sending onward to a client waits for someone at your agency to approve, every time.

Not if you scope access per client, which is the recommended setup. Cedric reads the tools connected for the task at hand, and the shared workspace memory is something you control what goes into.

Yes, and many agencies do it for status updates. Be deliberate about it: in a shared channel the client sees what Cedric says, so keep internal margin and scope discussion in an internal room.

Revoke that client's tool connections from the dashboard. Access is scoped per tool specifically so offboarding is a small, clean action.

Credits are consumed per task, not per client or per seat, so twelve small monthly reports cost far less than one deep research project. See [pricing](/pricing).

Ready when you are

Reclaim the hours you cannot bill.

Install Cedric in one account team's channel and have it rebuild last month's report.

$50 in free credits, no card needed.