The Data Bulletin

Your business, in one clear view

The Data Bulletin connects the systems a small business already runs on, keeps one dashboard honest, and sends the owner a short bulletin that says what changed, what it cost, and what to do next.

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What an owner sees

A home services company, eight weeks of leads, quotes, bookings and invoices. Every number below is made up to show the format; the questions are the ones owners ask.

Which marketing channels produce booked jobs?

Leads that came in from each source over eight weeks, and how many of them became a booked job.

Paid search brings the most leads and books one in four of them. Referrals book six in ten. The owner is paying the most for the channel that converts the least.

Sample data, made up to show the format. Not a client's numbers.

About This Data

How many quotes become paying customers?

Of the quotes sent each week, the share that turned into a booked job within fourteen days.

Four weeks below the eight-week average in a row. That is the kind of move a weekly bulletin flags on the Monday it happens, not at the end of the quarter.

Sample data, made up to show the format. Not a client's numbers.

About This Data

Where do cancellations and scheduling gaps occur?

Cancelled appointments by weekday over eight weeks, from the scheduling system.

A third of the cancellations land on Friday. The scheduling data says where; it does not say why, and the bulletin says so.

Sample data, made up to show the format. Not a client's numbers.

About This Data

The weekly bulletin

What arrives in the owner's inbox on Monday morning, written from the same numbers. Sample week.

Week of August 25

For Sample Plumbing and Drain. Sample data.

What changed

Quote conversion fell to 29 percent, the fourth week in a row under the eight-week average of 38. Paid search sent 18 percent more leads than the week before; its booked jobs stayed flat at four. Friday accounted for 11 of the 31 cancellations in the last eight weeks.

What the data establishes, and what it does not

The conversion drop began the week after the price list changed on August 11. That timing is in the data. The reason is not: the 14 quotes that did not book carry no note on why. Until they do, a price explanation is a guess.

Two actions for this week

  1. Call the 14 open quotes older than seven days. Log one line on each: booked, lost to price, lost to timing, or no answer.
  2. Move the Friday 4 pm slot to a confirmation call on Thursday afternoon for the next four weeks.

What we measure next

Conversion on quotes sent after the calls, and Friday cancellations over the next four weeks against the 11 above.

What you get

The dashboard is one part of it. The rest is the judgment, the maintenance and the understanding of your business that keep it worth reading.

Connected data
Your sales, customer records, website statistics and spreadsheets read from where they already live. Less time downloading files and gluing spreadsheets together.
One business dashboard
Sales, leads, customers and operating results in one place, refreshed on a schedule you agree to.
Automated reports
A weekly or monthly update that arrives without anyone preparing it.
Data cleanup and checks
One written definition per number, and figures that reconcile to the source system they came from. When two reports disagree, you find out which one is right.
Performance analysis
Plain explanations of what moved, and the areas worth a closer look. The bulletin separates what the data shows from what still needs investigating.
Monthly review
One meeting a month to decide which actions to take, and what to measure afterward to see whether they worked.

How it works

A paid look first, a fixed build second, and an ongoing service only if the build earns it. The prices are starting ranges; the first projects are priced after I have seen a sample of your data.

  1. Reporting assessment

    $300 to $750

    A review of the reports you build today, a look at sample data from each system, the questions that matter most to you, and a written scope for what comes next. If the answer is that you do not need a dashboard, the assessment says so.

  2. Dashboard setup

    $1,500 to $3,500

    Two agreed data sources, one dashboard, written metric definitions, an automatic refresh, and training for whoever will use it. You own the dashboard and the definitions when it is done.

  3. Monthly analytics support

    $400 to $1,000 a month

    Refresh monitoring, the monthly analysis and bulletin, one review meeting, and a set allowance of small changes. Cancel any month.

Before any work starts you get four things in writing: the software costs, how often the data refreshes, what support covers, and who owns the dashboard (you do). Extra integrations and heavy cleanup are quoted separately, never folded in quietly.

The first engagements run on established reporting tools and reusable workflows rather than custom software, which keeps the setup price where it is.

Who this fits first

One type of business and one recurring problem at a time. Service businesses that already track leads, jobs and invoices digitally come first, because the link between the report and Monday's decisions is easiest to show.

BusinessFirst offerThe data it needs
Home services (plumbing, HVAC, electrical, cleaning, landscaping)Leads to booked jobs reportingLead sources, quotes, bookings, invoices
Small retailers and online storesSales and inventory performanceTransactions, product costs, stock records
Agencies and consultanciesProject profitability and workloadProjects, invoices, time records, costs

A good fit

You rebuild the same report by hand. Two of your systems give two different answers for the same month. Someone in the business will act on what the numbers say.

Not yet

Leads or jobs still live on paper or in one person's head. The fix there is a simple system first, and the assessment will say that rather than sell you a dashboard on top of nothing.

Bookkeepers, web developers and marketing agencies

Your clients ask you for reporting that sits outside your work. If you would rather hand that to someone who reconciles the numbers and sends them back readable, get in touch. Referrals go both ways.

Get in touch

I am Micah McCaul, an independent data analyst and automation consultant. The Data Bulletin is where I publish official economic data with every number linked to its source; the small business work runs on the same rule. Nothing goes in a report that cannot be traced back to the system it came from.

Tell me about the report you keep rebuilding and I will reply within two working days with whether an assessment makes sense. Or write to contact@thedatabulletin.com.

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