Where do my own numbers go?
Google Ads can tell you it produced 42 enquiries last month. It cannot tell you that eleven of them were tyre-kickers, that nine became quotes, that four turned into jobs, and that those four were worth $31,000. Nobody at Google knows any of that, because it happened on the phone, in a van, and in your accounting software.
This is the gap every reporting tool has, and it is why so many marketing reports feel beside the point. They are complete and accurate about the half of the journey that happened online, and silent about the half that decided whether any of it was worth doing. A spreadsheet is the bridge: it is the one place your own outcomes already live, or could live with fifteen minutes a month.
A sheet is not a database, and it does not need to 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
The mechanism is simple enough to describe in one line: 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 everything the platforms provided.
You keep
One row per month
a date column, then your own numbers
Clearly reads it
On a schedule
read-only, matched on the date column
The report shows
One date axis
your outcomes beside platform spend
What the platforms know
Impressions, clicks, spend, sessions, form submits. Everything up to the moment someone left their details.
What only you know
Quotes sent, jobs won, revenue collected, cost of delivery, phone enquiries, walk-ins, referrals, refunds.
Put the two columns side by side and the report can finally answer the question that matters: not "what did a lead cost" but "what did a customer cost, and what were they worth". That calculation needs one number from the advertising platform and one from you, and until the second one arrives it cannot be made at all.
The four numbers worth keeping
Unlike the other eight platforms in this series, a spreadsheet has no metrics of its own. It has whatever you decide to put in it, 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. The count of real outcomes, not enquiries. This is the number your advertising is ultimately judged on.
4 jobs won in a month where the platforms reported 42 enquiries.One column: a whole numberWhat was it worth?
Revenue collected in that period, from the customers above. Use money actually invoiced rather than pipeline, or the chart will flatter you.
$31,000 from those 4 jobs, an average of $7,750.One column: currencyWhat happened off the website?
Phone enquiries, walk-ins and referrals. The demand that never touched a form, which otherwise looks like it does not exist.
18 phone enquiries, which no platform in this series can see.One column: a whole numberWhat did delivery cost?
Cost of goods, subcontractors or materials. Turns revenue into margin, which is the number that decides whether growth is worth having.
$18,600 of cost against $31,000 of revenue is a 40% margin.One column: currencyFour columns and a date. If you keep more, keep them because you will read them, not because the spreadsheet had room.
| 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, and four of them are about shape rather than content. A sheet a person can read is not automatically a sheet a report can read.
- 1One tab, one table, one header row
Start a fresh sheet rather than adapting the one with your invoice tracker on it. A report reads a rectangle: a single row of column names, then data underneath, and nothing else on the tab.
5 min - 2Put a real date in the first column
Format it as a date, not as text, and use one consistent form such as
5 min2026-09-01for the whole month. This column is what lets your numbers line 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 the labels in your report, so plain words save you renaming things later.
5 min - 4Enter numbers as numbers
No currency symbols, no commas inside the cell, no "approx" or "TBC" in a numeric column. Format the display however 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 the 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 cells over the headings, and a totals row at the bottom.
The right shape
One header row at the very top, one row per month beneath it, nothing merged, and no totals row.
Misread one
A readable sheet is not a machine-readable sheet
Spreadsheets are laid out for humans: merged headings, a blank row for breathing space, a summary block off to the right. Every one of those breaks the rectangle a report needs, and the usual symptom is columns arriving with names like Unnamed_4.
The totals row catches people most often. It looks harmless and it doubles your year, because a report sums the rows itself and cannot tell your total apart from another month.
The wrong read
Sept 26, 1/9/26 and September in the same column, each typed by hand.
The right read
2026-09-01 in every row, formatted as a date, so it sorts and matches without guessing.
Misread two
A date typed as text is not a date
Sheets will happily store Sept 26 as a piece of text that looks like a date and behaves like a word. It will not sort, it will not match a report's date range, and a mixed column is worse still because some rows work and some vanish.
Day-first and month-first ordering 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. Something went badly wrong with the campaigns."
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. On a chart the two are indistinguishable, and the wrong one prompts a panicked meeting.
The fix is a habit rather than a feature: 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. You choose Google Sheets as a source, pick the spreadsheet and the tab, nominate the date column, and your columns become available as metrics in any block that takes one. Access is read-only: nothing is ever written back to your sheet.
This matters more than its size suggests. Every reporting tool on the market can show you Google Ads next to Meta. Very few will put your own jobs-won column on the same page, which is the difference between a report about marketing activity and a report 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.
Column cheat sheet
| Column type | What to put in it | What breaks it |
|---|---|---|
| Date | One date per row, ISO form, formatted as a date | Text dates, mixed formats, a month name alone |
| Count | Whole numbers: jobs, enquiries, quotes | "about 12", a dash for zero, a blank |
| Currency | The plain number: 31000 | Symbols or commas stored in the cell, a formula returning text |
| Label | A short consistent word, such as a location or a service | Free text that changes spelling between rows |
| Anything calculated | Leave it out; let the report divide | A percentage column 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. There are no formulas required, no scripts, and nothing to install. The discipline of 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 genuinely Excel-first, keep the master there and maintain a small Sheet with just the summary columns; it is less work than it sounds and it keeps the report simple.
How often does it update?
The sheet is read when the report loads, so an edit you make now 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 itself is usually the thing that is stale.
What if my sheet has several tabs?
You choose the tab when you connect, and you can connect more than one. Keep each tab to a single rectangle with its own header row rather than stacking several tables on one tab, and both will read cleanly.
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 and give it five columns: month, jobs won, revenue, phone enquiries, cost of delivery. Fill in the last three months from your invoices, which will take about twenty minutes and will probably be the most interesting twenty minutes 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.