An agency client-measurement handoff checklist
The beginning of an agency relationship is the best time to decide what a “result” means. If that discussion waits until the first performance review, the agency and client may arrive with different numbers and no shared way to interpret them.
Why decide what a result means before the first campaign?
It is the month-two review. The agency presents a strong month: reach is up, the new campaign has good engagement, bookings from the ads are climbing. The owner listens, then says the register was flat. Both are looking at real numbers. Neither can reconcile them, because nobody ever wrote down what a result was, who owned the ad accounts, or what the month before looked like.
What tends to happen is that both sides act in good faith and arrive at different numbers. By the time they disagree, nobody can tell whether the marketing underperformed or the definitions never matched. The relationship starts spending its trust on arguments about measurement.
The remedy is a conversation of about an hour, held before the first campaign launches. This checklist is the agenda for it.
Who owns what, and who can grant access?
Start with ownership, because it decides what happens if the working relationship changes.
- Which brands and locations are in scope?
- Who owns the ad accounts, the website, the point-of-sale data and the reporting history? The answer should be the client for all four.
- Who can grant access to each source, and who on the client's side is the contact for each?
- Who reviews and approves changes to tracking or conversion settings? These decide what the ad platforms are told to count, so they shouldn't change quietly. Our guide to what Google and Meta count as a conversion for a restaurant explains why.
- What happens to access and reporting history if the agency and client part ways?
The client should be able to understand and keep its own results. The agency should have the access it needs to do the work without relying on screenshots forwarded at month end. Manager access on the client's accounts gives the agency both.
What baseline should you record?
Write down the current spend, the campaign goals, the locations and the business outcomes the client cares about most. Then define four terms in plain words: a booking, an order, an estimated visit and a sale connected to a paid check. Note what can already be measured and where data is missing.
Here is a made-up baseline. Say a client with four locations spends $6,000 a month across Google and Meta. At handoff, the register is connected at all four locations, reservations at three, and online ordering at none. That one sentence is worth more than any promise. It tells both sides that reservation-driven results at the fourth location, and anything that comes through online ordering, will be understated until those connections exist.
Add each location's register sales for the last quarter, week by week, to the baseline. Without them, nobody can say later whether a good month was the marketing or just the season, and the first review turns into a disagreement about memory.
Don't promise that every guest journey will become identifiable. Agree instead on how uncertain results will be labeled and what the team will do to improve coverage.
What will the reporting promise?
Choose a consistent reporting period and a small set of decisions each review should support. A useful agency report shows what happened, what is known with confidence, what remains uncertain and what the agency recommends changing. We sketched the layout in what a restaurant agency client report should include.
Keep the definitions with the report, on the last page, so a new account manager or a finance reviewer can follow the reasoning without a call.
The handoff is complete when both sides can answer the same question in the same way: What did the marketing appear to influence, what can we connect to paid checks, and what should we do next?
What happens when something changes?
A new location, a new channel or a new data source changes what can be measured. Say so when it happens, and revisit the baseline. Keep a short change log with the date, what changed and who approved it, so a jump in a number can be traced to a cause. Tell the client before the change goes live, not after. A change to a conversion setting is the one most often forgotten and the one most likely to make last month and this month incomparable.
Where restauWant comes in
Nothing here requires our software. The checklist works with whatever tools you use. If you want to run measurement for several clients in one place, the restauWant app lets an agency switch between client brands, with each client's reporting kept separate and each client brand connecting its own register and ad accounts. The Partner Program page explains how agencies work with us.
Next step: Use this checklist with the client before the first campaign review, then revisit it whenever a new location, channel or data source is added.
Agency and client measurement handoff
- List the brands and locations in scope.
- Confirm the client owns the ad accounts, website, point-of-sale data and reporting history.
- Name the contact on each side who can grant access to each source.
- Give the agency manager access, not ownership, on the client's accounts.
- Agree who approves changes to tracking and conversion settings, and keep a change log.
- Record the baseline: spend, campaign goals, locations and the outcomes the client cares about.
- Define a booking, an order, an estimated visit and a sale connected to a paid check.
- Note what can be measured today and which connections are missing, by location.
- Agree the reporting period and the few decisions each review should support.
- Write down what happens to access and history if the relationship ends, and revisit the list when a location, channel or data source is added.
Who should own the ad accounts in an agency relationship?
The client. The agency works through manager access, which the client can grant and remove. That protects the client's history and keeps the agency from being the single point of failure for the numbers.
What should a client keep if the relationship ends?
Access to its own accounts, its reporting history and the definitions the reports used. If those were agreed at the start, a new team can pick up where the last one stopped.
What if the data is too thin to measure well?
Say so in the baseline. Agree how uncertain results will be labeled and what the team will do to improve coverage, such as connecting reservations or online ordering. Don't promise that every guest journey will be identifiable.
What if the client and agency disagree on a number?
Go back to the definitions. Most disagreements turn out to be two different counts of the same weekend. Agree which view each conversation uses, as described in our guide to Verified, Business and Total revenue.
How often should we revisit the handoff?
Whenever a new location, channel or data source is added, and whenever a tracking or conversion setting changes. Between those events, a quick read at each quarterly review is usually enough.
Do we need the restauWant app to use this?
No. The checklist works with whatever tools you and the client already use.
