Where do my own numbers go?
Google Ads can tell you it produced 42 enquiries last month. It cannot tell you eleven were tyre-kickers, nine became quotes, four turned into jobs, and those four were worth $31,000. Nobody at Google knows, because it happened on the phone, in a van and in your accounting software.
Every reporting tool has this gap, which is why so many marketing reports feel beside the point: accurate about the half of the journey that happened online, silent about the half that decided whether it was worth doing. A spreadsheet fills the gap. Your own outcomes probably live in one already, or could with fifteen minutes a month.
A sheet is not a database and need not be. One tab, one row per month, and the four or five numbers that decide whether the marketing paid for itself.
How your numbers join the platform numbers
Your sheet is read on a schedule, its date column is matched to the report's date range, and its numbers sit on the same axis as the platform data.
What the platforms know
Impressions, clicks, spend, sessions, form submits: everything up to the enquiry.
What only you know
Quotes, jobs won, revenue, delivery cost, phone enquiries, walk-ins, referrals, refunds.
Side by side, the two columns let the report answer the question that matters: not "what did a lead cost" but "what did a customer cost, and what were they worth". That needs one number from the platform and one from you, and without yours it cannot be made.
The four numbers worth keeping
Unlike the other eight platforms in this series, a spreadsheet has no metrics of its own, so the question changes from "what does this report" to "what is worth recording". Four columns cover most businesses.
What did marketing actually produce?
Jobs won, deals closed or orders shipped: real outcomes, not enquiries. What your advertising is ultimately judged on.
4 jobs won from 42 reported enquiries.One column: a whole numberWhat was it worth?
Revenue collected in that period from those customers. Use money invoiced, not pipeline, or the chart will flatter you.
$31,000 from 4 jobs: $7,750 each.One column: currencyWhat happened off the website?
Phone enquiries, walk-ins and referrals: demand that never touched a form, which otherwise looks nonexistent.
18 phone enquiries no platform can see.One column: a whole numberWhat did delivery cost?
Cost of goods, subcontractors or materials. Turns revenue into margin, which decides whether growth is worth having.
$18,600 cost on $31,000 revenue is a 40% margin.One column: currencyFour columns and a date. Keep more only if you will read them.
| Month | Jobs won | Revenue | Phone enquiries | Cost of delivery |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-01 | 3 | 22400 | 14 | 13100 |
| 2026-08-01 | 5 | 38900 | 21 | 22600 |
| 2026-09-01 | 4 | 31000 | 18 | 18600 |
The hardest number to collect is always the one that decides whether the marketing worked.
Setting it up
Five steps, four about shape rather than content. A sheet a person can read is not automatically one a report can read.
- 1One tab, one table, one header row
Start a fresh sheet rather than adapting your invoice tracker. A report reads a rectangle: one row of column names, data underneath, nothing else on the tab.
5 min - 2Put a real date in the first column
Format it as a date, not text, in one consistent form such as
5 min2026-09-01for the whole month. This column lines your numbers up with the platform data. - 3Name each column the way you would say it aloud
"Jobs won" and "Revenue", not "col_c" or "JW_TOT". The names become your report's labels.
5 min - 4Enter numbers as numbers
No currency symbols, commas, "approx" or "TBC" in a numeric column. Format the display as you like; the stored value must stay a number.
5 min - 5Share it read-only and connect it
Share with the Google account you sign into Clearly with, choose Google Sheets as a source, pick the sheet and tab, and nominate the date column. Nothing is written back, ever.
5 min
Three things beginners misread
The wrong shape
A title row, a blank row, two side-by-side tables, merged headings, a totals row.
The right shape
One header row at the top, one row per month, nothing merged, no totals row.
Misread one
A readable sheet is not a machine-readable sheet
Spreadsheets are laid out for humans: merged headings, blank rows, a summary block off to the right. Each breaks the rectangle a report needs, and the usual symptom is columns named like Unnamed_4.
The totals row catches people most often. It doubles your year, because a report sums the rows itself and cannot tell your total from another month.
The wrong read
Sept 26, 1/9/26 and September in one column, typed by hand.
The right read
2026-09-01 in every row, formatted as a date: sorts and matches without guessing.
Misread two
A date typed as text is not a date
Sheets will happily store Sept 26 as text that looks like a date and behaves like a word. It will not sort or match a report's date range, and a mixed column is worse: some rows work and some vanish.
Day-first versus month-first causes the same trouble more quietly: 1/9/26 is September in New Zealand and January in the United States. The ISO form removes the ambiguity for both people and machines.
The wrong read
"Revenue collapsed in August. The campaigns went badly wrong."
The right read
"Nobody updated the sheet in August. The campaigns were fine; the row is empty."
Misread three
A missing row reads as a bad month
Platform data arrives whether or not anyone is paying attention. Your sheet does not, and a month nobody filled in draws exactly like a month where nothing happened, which prompts a panicked meeting.
The fix is a habit: fill the row on the first working day of the month, and leave a zero where the true answer is zero. A calendar reminder is a fair price for the only numbers in the report that cannot be automated.
In Clearly
Google Sheets is connectable in Clearly today. Choose Google Sheets as a source, pick the spreadsheet and tab, nominate the date column, and your columns become metrics in any block that takes one. Access is read-only: nothing is ever written back.
Every reporting tool can show Google Ads next to Meta. Very few put your own jobs-won column on the same page, and that column turns a report about marketing activity into one about the business. Cost per lead comes from the platforms. Cost per customer, and whether that customer was worth acquiring, needs the column only you can supply.
Keep this one
Column cheat sheet
| Column type | What to put in it | What breaks it |
|---|---|---|
| Date | One ISO date per row, formatted as a date | Text dates, mixed formats, a bare month name |
| Count | Whole numbers: jobs, enquiries, quotes | "about 12", a dash for zero, a blank |
| Currency | The plain number: 31000 | Stored symbols or commas, a formula returning text |
| Label | A short consistent word, such as a location | Free text with changing spelling |
| Anything calculated | Leave it out; let the report divide | A percentage that stops matching once a row changes |
Common questions
Do I need to be technical to do this?
No. If you can make a table with a date column and four number columns, you have done the hard part. No formulas, no scripts, nothing to install. Filling it in monthly is the only real demand.
Can I use Excel instead?
Not directly. The connection reads Google Sheets, so an Excel file needs uploading to Google Drive and opening as a Sheet, which converts it once. If your workflow is Excel-first, keep the master there and maintain a small Sheet with just the summary columns; it is less work than it sounds.
How often does it update?
The sheet is read when the report loads, so an edit appears the next time the report is opened. There is no sync to wait for and no import to trigger. If a number looks stale, the sheet usually is.
What if my sheet has several tabs?
You choose the tab when you connect, and can connect more than one. Keep each tab to a single rectangle with its own header row rather than stacking tables on one tab.
Is my data private?
Access is read-only and scoped to the sheets you choose. Nothing is written back, and the connection can be revoked from your Google account at any time. As with every source in Clearly, the authorisation is held server-side rather than in your browser.
Where to go next
Open a new sheet with five columns: month, jobs won, revenue, phone enquiries, cost of delivery. Fill in the last three months from your invoices, about twenty minutes and probably the most interesting of your reporting year. Then connect it, put it beside your advertising spend and read the two together. Most businesses find one of two things: that a channel they were about to cut is producing the good customers, or that a channel they were proud of is producing enquiries that never close.
The series
All nine Platform 101s, in setup order
What each platform does, what it costs, how to set it up, and what its numbers mean.