The Most Useful Reports for a PI Managing Partner's Monthly Review

Most PI managing partners sit through monthly marketing reviews waiting for the answer to one question: did the money we spent produce the cases this firm needs? They don't need impressions, click-through rates, or ad platform dashboards. They need outcome data framed for a business operator — not a marketing team.

This article covers the six reports that generate the most useful conversations in PI partner reviews: what to show, how to frame it, and what to cut entirely.

What Managing Partners Actually Want to Know

Before building any report, get clear on what the reader actually cares about. For managing partners, it's three things:

1. Are we on track to hit our case goals?They want to know whether the marketing and intake funnel is producing the volume and quality of cases the firm budgeted for.
2. Are we spending our marketing budget wisely?They want to know that someone with accountability is watching every significant spend category and making decisions based on performance.
3. What are the risks?They want to know if anything in the marketing or intake pipeline could become a business problem they need to address.

Reports built around these three questions get read and spark decisions. Reports built around impressions, click-through rates, and ad platform performance generate glazed eyes — and follow-up questions that take longer to answer than the report itself.

Report 1: The Case Pipeline Summary

Start every partner review here. It shows the current month's intake funnel — lead to signed case — against prior month and prior year. If the funnel is healthy, confirm it in 30 seconds and move on. If it's not, this is where the conversation starts.

Include:

• Total leads received — current month vs. prior month vs. prior year
• Leads contacted by intake — with contact rate percentage
• Leads screened — with screening rate
• Cases signed — with conversion rate from screened leads
• Cases signed vs. monthly goal — percentage of target achieved
• Cases signed year-to-date vs. annual goal

Keep it to one page. Green for on or above target, yellow for within 10%, red for below. A managing partner should know the funnel status in under 30 seconds — no hunting required.

Report 2: Cost Per Signed Case by Vendor

This is the accountability report. It answers the question every managing partner has but rarely gets a clean answer to: what did we actually pay per signed case, and is that number acceptable?

Show:

• Each vendor's spend for the period
• Cases attributed to each vendor
• Cost per signed case for each vendor
• Cost per signed case vs. target for each vendor
• 90-day trend (up, flat, or down) for each vendor
• Total spend across all vendors
• Weighted average cost per case across the portfolio

Managing partners don't need vendor relationship details. They need to see, at a glance, whether each vendor is performing against its benchmark. The 90-day trend column matters most — a vendor at $2,400/case but improving is a very different conversation than one at $2,400/case and climbing.

For each underperforming vendor, add one line: what's being done and when results will be reviewed. That single line is the difference between active management and passive monitoring.

Report 3: Marketing Spend vs. Budget

Managing partners approved a budget number. They want to know whether it's being spent as planned — not just that it's being spent.

Show:

• Approved monthly budget vs. actual spend
• Variance by line item (by vendor or channel)
• Year-to-date budget vs. year-to-date spend
• Projected year-end spend at current pace

Budget overruns don't alarm managing partners — unexplained budget overruns do. If a line item is over, say whether it was intentional (a new vendor test, an approved reallocation) or a variance that needs correction. Come with context and a plan.

Report 4: Case Quality Distribution

This one connects intake volume to downstream financial performance — and answers the question managing partners often ask but rarely get data on: are we signing the right cases?

Show signed case distribution by severity — current month vs. the prior 3-month average and the same month in the prior year:

• Minor injury cases — count and percentage of total
• Moderate injury cases — count and percentage of total
• Severe injury cases — count and percentage of total
• Cases with surgery or hospitalization — count and percentage

A shift toward lower severity cases is a signal to examine lead source quality. A shift toward higher severity is a positive signal about vendor or intake performance. Partners who review this monthly develop an intuition for what a healthy case mix looks like — and notice when it's drifting.

Report 5: The 12-Month Cost Per Case Trend

This is the strategic lens. Month-to-month cost per case is noisy — one slow month can look alarming in isolation. The 12-month trend cuts through that noise and gives managing partners the context they need to evaluate whether marketing efficiency is genuinely improving.

A simple line chart — monthly cost per signed case, trailing 12 months, with a target line — communicates more than any table. Six consecutive months of decline is a compelling story. Three months of increase with flat case volume is a problem that needs explanation.

Annotate the trend line at major inflection points: vendor changes, budget reallocations, intake process updates, market shifts. Without that context, managing partners will attribute every movement to the marketing team — fairly or not.

Report 6: Top Vendor Performance Summary

Managing partners have opinions about vendors. They hear names at conferences, see their own ads, get sales calls from competitors. A brief performance summary gives them data before the opinion becomes a question in the middle of the meeting.

For each of your top 3 to 5 vendors by spend, show:

• Monthly spend
• Cases produced
• Cost per signed case vs. target
• One-line assessment: performing, monitoring, or action required

This isn't a detailed vendor analysis. It's a one-page confirmation that your top spend categories are actively managed. The full cost-per-case report has the detail. This summary has the headline.

How to Present These Reports

The format matters as much as the content. A few principles that hold across every partner review:

• Lead with the headline.Don't make partners read five pages to get the point. Open with three sentences: where you are vs. case goal, whether cost per case is on target, and the one action item for the coming month.
• Use consistent formatting every month.Partners who see the same layout every month find the numbers in seconds. Redesigning the deck each month adds confusion, not value.
• Avoid technical marketing language.“CPL was $187 with a CPC of $42 and CTR of 3.8%” means nothing to a managing partner. “We paid an average of $1,650 per signed case in February, which is within our target of $1,800” means a great deal.
• Pair every problem with an action.Bad news is manageable. Unexplained bad news isn't. If a vendor is over target, say what's being done and when. Partners handle problems well when accountability is visible.

The monthly partner review is the moment where marketing either looks like a strategic function or a cost center. Firms that build clear, outcome-focused reports for these meetings earn more budget, face less friction, and spend less time defending decisions — and more time making them.