The reason a nine-report routine is workable at all is that **you do not do most of it.**

**The system splits into two roles.** One person produces the reports and executes the changes; you make the decisions. That is roughly an 80/20 split of the work, deliberately arranged so that your 20% is the part that actually moves performance.

**Without that split, the routine is not efficient** — at which point you would be better off optimising campaigns by hand.

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-workflow-explainer-4482c637.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? One hundred and seventy-five seconds on the four-step workflow per report, why the report categories have to be complete, and the week-5 to week-25 ramp.*

## **The structure**

**Nine recurring reports:**

**Four weekly.**

**Two fortnightly.**

**Three monthly.**

**Together they cover every aspect of campaign optimisation** — bids and placements, cleaning up waste, adding new targets, and the periodic view of overall performance. See [**The Nine-Report PPC Routine**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/the-nine-report-ppc-routine) and [**The Brand Manager's Calendar**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/the-brand-managers-calendar).

**Run all nine on their cadence and you can be confident nothing is being missed.** That completeness is the point of having a fixed set rather than doing whatever seems urgent.

## **The workflow, per report**

**1. The assistant builds the report** — pulls the export, filters it, formats it.

**2. You review the data and make the optimisation decisions.**

**3. You document each decision in the report.**

**4. The assistant implements them in the campaign manager.**

**Your entire role is step 2 and 3.** Reading, deciding, and writing the decision down.

**Steps 1 and 4 are the bulk of the hours and have almost no direct effect on performance.** They are assembly and execution.

![What you review, and what gets executed](/kb-assets/shot-adv-keywords-view-ce68f0.png)

**Steps 1 and 4 are exactly the parts that shrink when the data assembles itself and the changes apply through rules** — see [**Rule-Based Optimization: Automating Bids and Budgets**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/rule-based-optimization). The judgement in step 2 is yours either way; the question is how many hours sit either side of it.

## **What each report is for**

**They are deliberately different in purpose**, which is why the set works as a whole:

**Bids and placements** — steering existing spend toward what performs.

**Cleaning up waste** — cutting targets that spend without returning, in three different windows.

**Growth** — harvesting new targets and adding campaigns.

**Overview** — the periodic 360° read on where performance actually stands.

**Miss a category and you develop a systematic blind spot**, which is precisely what these routines exist to prevent.

## **Resourcing it**

**The assistant is not optional in this model.**

**Finding and training one takes two to three weeks**, so start before you need them — see [**Onboarding a VA**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/onboarding-a-va).

**And train on the processes themselves**, not on general Amazon knowledge. What you need is someone who can reliably produce the same report the same way every week.

## **Expect a real learning curve**

**This is the part people are not warned about, and it causes more abandonment than any of the tactics.**

**At first it takes longer than you expect. That is normal.**

**By week 5** — around 25–30% faster than week 1.

**By week 10** — noticeably faster, and the decisions are better.

**By week 25** — seamless, and completed with minimal effort.

**So judge the system at week 10, not week 2.** The first few cycles are you learning what each report is telling you, and that cost is paid once.

**If you abandon it in month one because it is slow, you paid the entire learning cost and collected none of the benefit.**

## **Common mistakes**

**Running the system without an assistant**, and spending all your time on assembly.

**Doing the reports yourself "just this once"**, repeatedly.

**Making decisions without documenting them**, so nothing can be executed or reviewed later.

**Dropping reports from the set** because a week is busy, and creating a blind spot.

**Judging the system in week two**, at the peak of the learning curve.

**Delegating the decisions** as well as the assembly. Step 2 is the part that is actually yours.

## **Related**

- [**The Nine-Report PPC Routine**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/the-nine-report-ppc-routine) — the reports themselves.
- [**Onboarding a VA**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/onboarding-a-va) — resourcing the other 80%.
- [**Optimisation as a Calculated Bet**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/optimisation-as-a-calculated-bet) — how to make the decisions in step 2.