Hello Reader, ✨Welcome to the nerd party!✨

Before we get into the ops-talk festival of fun let's get started with these highlights:

1. ​My homie Ruby Singh was nominated for a Juno for his collaborative album Vox.Infold! This is one of the best collaboration albums I have ever heard Vox.Infold is an experience. Do check it out. It would be an excellent soundtrack for this newsletter!
2. ​ChatGPT is a text based AI built on language modelling and designed for dialogue and communications that is taking the world by storm. So many interesting grey areas and morality questions have popped up around this topic, but what I love best is how funny it can be!! And while it can be creepily accurate do also remember it is very often totally wrong.
3. ​Today marks the 32nd annual Women's Memorial March. For over 32 years Indigenous women, girls, two spirit and trans people disproportionately continue to go missing or are murdered with minimal to no action to address these tragedies or the systemic nature of gendered violence, poverty, racism, or colonialism. Please consider donating to the Downtown Eastside Women's Center to support the women's march and if you are not in a place to donate please consider volunteering your time.

Ok on to all things dashboards and reports!

I have a very simple philosophy about dashboards and reports: They should be easy to create AND should update in real time, or as as close to real time, as possible!

Which means if you are spending a gang of time updating your reports manually, you are wasting your time.

But how else do you do it right?

As impossible as it seems for reporting to be easy, it's not impossible if you leverage software effectively!

You need to use tools for your work that INCLUDE good reporting capabilities!

If you need to report on your project activity, status, and staff capacity, then use should use a project management tool that offers reporting and dashboards for things like task status, workload, and/or completed work (like ClickUp!) This way when you USE that tool to plan, manage, delegate, and collaborate on your project work, you can create dashboards and reports that are updated as you and your team work on and complete your projects.

If you need to report on all of that project activity PLUS billable hours, invoiced amounts, and budget vs actuals for your project then a project management tool that also includes invoicing and budget reports like Big Time or Workbook would be an excellent choice for your project management and billing needs.

If you need to report on your customers, sales, and/or engagement activity then a CRM with good engagement reporting and robust list segmentation features that also includes marketing tools like Hubspot or Nutshell would be where to invest your efforts.

If you need to report on your stakeholder or donor engagement and fundraising campaigns then using a tool like Keela that has excellent built-in engagement and fundraising campaign tools as well as excellent reporting would be the way to go. (pst! I can get you a 40% discount with Keela! Just reply to this email to get the details!)

Stop spending time documenting work you have already done!

In today's software market there is no reason for you or anyone on your team to be compiling data for reports manually.

Not to mention that no one likes doing redundant tasks. This is not anyone's "lane." This is not someone's perfect job. Folks only do this type or task because they have to. You should be applying the wonderfully dynamic and capable minds of the people who work with you to wonderfully dynamic tasks that only a human can do!

And leveraging the right software for your needs is how you can get there.

Not sure what software is right for you? Start by trying to replace your spreadsheet reports with the reporting available in the software you already use!

If you haven't already done so, click here and select 'Stop Using Spreadsheets Resources' to get my Stop Using Spreadsheets Checklist!

It will take you through a 5-step process that will guide you to the software and processes that can support more efficient and effective reporting! You will also be added to a 5 week email series that is packed with great resources, I highly recommend you check it out!

Until next time!

R*