Scenario · The bigger jobs
Package this up for the client
“Can you put all that into something I can send them?”
Turning a set of already-completed checks into something presentable for a client is the last mile of the work, and it's most often done badly by pasting screenshots into a document by hand. This rolls up whatever's already been run into one branded report with a scorecard and a summary per area — the judgment calls about which findings actually matter to this client, and the note that makes a hard finding land well, still belong to whoever's sending it.
What to ask for
The last mile, and the one most often done by pasting screenshots into a document. Everything needed is already on disk as JSON from whichever checks were run; this assembles it.
- Check the inputs are current before assembling anything. Every roll-up reads the output the tools already wrote. If those runs are stale, re-run them first — packaging is not auditing, and nothing in this step will notice the dates.
- Decide who reads it. A practice owner wants a verdict and three actions; a marketing manager wants the detail. The same underlying results support both, and choosing after the document is built means building it twice.
- Roll up the tool output. The client report discovers the JSON the checks already produced, normalises their verdicts, and assembles a branded cover, an executive scorecard, and a card per tool with its top findings linking to the full report. It packages results and never re-runs the audits.
- For a report built from data rather than tool runs, use the report builder instead. A CSV, a set of numbers, a specification of what the document should contain — that is a different input and a different tool, and forcing it through the roll-up produces something shapeless.
- [manual] Read it as the client will. Front to back, out loud if it is going to a practice owner. This is where a technically correct report that reads as an accusation gets rewritten, and no tool catches it.
- [manual] Write the covering note. Three sentences: what we looked at, the one thing that matters most, what happens next. A report sent without it gets skimmed and filed.
- Keep the PDF with the ticket so the version the client received is recoverable when they reply about it a month later.
Packaging is not auditing
The most common failure is a beautiful document reporting a site that has since changed. Step 1 is the whole guard against it, and it is one question: when were these numbers taken?
What this does not cover
Judgement about what the client should be told. It rolls up results that already exist into one branded document; it does not decide which findings are worth raising, soften a bad result, or write the covering note that makes the report land well. It also re-runs nothing — a report built from three-week-old audit output is a report about a site as it was three weeks ago, and it will not say so unless you do.