The page, from the top
One page is enough. The sample report uses illustrative figures on purpose. A real month should have the same skeleton and your counts. If a line is unknown, print “not recorded”. Do not leave it blank, and do not drop in an industry average.
| Line | What belongs there |
|---|---|
| Period and account | The month, and the Google Ads customer ID, so the PDF matches a login. |
| Paid to Google | The media invoice, tax shown as it appears on the bill. |
| Management fee | Separate. For example £299 plus £59.80 VAT on the Managed plan, as published on 15 November 2026. Never folded into “spend”. |
| Enquiries | Calls and forms from the ads. Tracked calls need the setup in the call guide. |
| Qualified | Passed the four tests on the lead sheet. |
| Booked | A time agreed or the job accepted. If this is missing, stop and say so. |
| Won | Only if you know it. Surveys are not wins. |
| By job type or area | The split you sell. One total is not a substitute. |
| What changed | Negatives, a town excluded, a budget moved. One short list. Name the search terms you refused, not only “added negatives”. |
| Your own name | Clicks from people who searched the company. Keep them off the cost of a cold enquiry. They already knew you. |
| What we will not change yet | A single bad week is not a new strategy. Say what you are leaving for another month. |
An annotated month, with made-up counts
Illustration, so you can see which line changes the decision. Paid to Google £1,000. Management £299 plus VAT £59.80. All-in £1,358.80. Enquiries 18. Qualified 9. Booked 3. Cost per booked job £452.93. Job types: two call-outs booked, one installation booked, no servicing bookings. The useful sentence is not “£452.93”. It is “servicing spent its share and booked nothing, so that budget moves, and the installation stays”.
The home page uses a smaller illustration, £240 of ads and four booked plumbing jobs at £60 each, and labels it as an illustration. Do not let that £60 wander into a report as if it were your firm. A report that borrows someone else’s example is a brochure.
On the Managed plan the pricing page says you see the enquiries the ads brought and the bookings where they can be matched. Managed Plus adds the split by service or area, which is this table rather than a single total. Starter is a lighter monthly note. The report should match the plan you are on, and say which plan that is, so a one-page update is not judged as if it were a call and a full breakdown.
Three checks before you send it, or accept it
- The Google line matches the invoice within a rounding difference you can explain. A report that says £800 while the card was charged £940 is not a view. It is a draft.
- Booked jobs match the sheet. If the sheet says two and the report says five, find the three before the meeting.
- The next action is something you can do in the account: a negative, an exclusion, a schedule, a budget move. “Keep optimising” is not an action.
You should be able to open the account and see the same spend. That requires the access in who owns your Google Ads account. A report you cannot audit is a letter. It can still be accurate. You cannot know.
Google’s search terms report, read on 15 November 2026, does not list every query. Terms without enough activity are omitted. Say so if you are listing what you excluded, and keep the lead sheet as the full list of calls. A report that treats the search terms export as every penny is missing the queries Google did not show, and missing any call that never became a row.
Firms in every UK nation can use this page. The job-type block is where the place shows up: the towns you excluded, the drive that made a job a loss, the week the phone was not covered. Leave the UK-average click price off the report. It does not describe the month you lived.
The first sentence is the decision
An owner who reads one sentence should know whether to spend more. These three are illustrations of the shape. The counts are the made-up month above, not a client.
- Bookings were not recorded. “This is an enquiry report for March: £1,000 to Google and £358.80 all-in for management, 18 enquiries, 9 qualified. Booked jobs were not on the sheet, so there is no cost per booked job.”
- One job type failed. “Servicing spent its share and booked nothing. Call-outs booked two jobs and the installation booked one. Move the servicing budget. Leave the installation.”
- The month covered the bills. “Three booked jobs against £1,358.80 all-in. The gross profit on those three covered the ads and the fee. No change to the towns or the job types.”
If you cannot write one of those sentences, the report is not finished. Adding a chart of clicks will not finish it. The sample report is the layout. This sentence is the point of sending it.
Close the sheet the day before you write the sentence. A report written while Friday’s calls are still “I’ll add them later” will not match the sheet you look at on Monday, and the cost per booked job moves without any change in the account. One sitting, the sheet finished, then the sentence. A booking that comes in after you send the report belongs in next month’s opening line.
Questions from owners
What should a Google Ads report include for a local business?
What you paid Google, the management fee on its own line, enquiries, how many were qualified, how many booked, and the split by job type or area. A sentence on what will change next month, and what will be left alone. Clicks and impressions can sit underneath. They are not the result.
What if we did not record bookings?
Say so in the first lines. Report enquiries, and do not invent a cost per booked job by guessing a close rate. Our pricing page makes that the rule: if the booking system or the sheet is missing, the report shows enquiries only and says so.
Should VAT be on the report?
Show the fee before VAT and the VAT, so a limited company that reclaims it and a sole trader who does not can both read the page. Google’s invoice has its own tax line. Copy that line rather than multiplying a click by 1.2 from memory.
How many job types belong on one page?
The ones you are paying to promote. A plumber’s report that blends burst pipes and boiler installs will always look middling. Two blocks, two costs per booked job. The same for MOT and servicing, or leaks and re-roofs.
Is a dashboard the same as a report?
A dashboard is the live account. A report is the month, with the bookings matched and a decision. Owners who only receive a login do not get the decision. The report should still be checkable against the account, which means you need Admin or at least a login. See who owns the account.
What is a wasted click worth mentioning?
Search terms that are the wrong job, and towns you will not travel to, with the spend beside them. Three examples beat a word cloud. If you added negatives, say which ones, so next month you can see whether those calls stopped.
How do I compare Google Ads with Checkatrade on the report?
Give the directory its own block with the same won-job definition, or keep it off this report and use the comparison worksheet. Mixing the spends produces a cost per job that belongs to neither channel.
Does the report look different outside England?
The lines do not. A firm in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland still needs spend, qualified enquiries and bookings. The towns in the area split will be different. Do not replace them with a UK average.
What should the first sentence of the report say?
The decision, not the click total. If bookings were not recorded, say it is an enquiry report. If one job type spent its share and booked nothing, name that job type and what will change. If the month covered the fee and the ads, say which job types did the covering. A reader who stops after the first sentence should still know whether to spend more.
When should the lead sheet be closed for the monthly report?
The day before you write the opening sentence. Calls still marked as something you will add later will not match the sheet you check afterwards, and the cost per booked job moves without a change in the account. A booking that arrives after you send the report belongs in next month.
Should searches for our company name be in the cost per booked job?
Keep them on their own line. Someone who typed the company name already knew you. Mixing those clicks into a cold campaign makes the cost per booked job look lower than the new enquiries were. The report should also name the search terms you excluded, and say that Google omits some low-activity queries.
Where the figures come from
Checked on 15 November 2026 unless a source prints its own date.
- Sample PPC report. Local PPC Experts. The worked figures on that page are illustrative.
- Pricing. Managed includes a monthly view of enquiries and the bookings that can be matched. If booking data is missing, the report shows enquiries only and says so. Read 15 November 2026.
- About the search terms report. Google Ads Help, read 15 November 2026. Some search terms without enough activity are omitted from the report.