A client asks how things are going: who writes the status update?

Thursday afternoon, 4:10 p.m. A client emails: "Just checking in, how is the renovation going? Will I still get the handover on 15 December?" You roughly know the answer. The kitchen is ordered, the electrician comes on Monday, the plastering is a few days behind. But roughly is not enough to send. So you open the schedule, the quote file and your own mailbox, work out what was actually agreed, and write an email you won't have to correct tomorrow.

That takes twenty minutes. The problem is that it doesn't stop at one client.

How this work goes today

In construction, consultancy, logistics and any office with ongoing projects, the question "how is it going?" comes back every week, often from several clients at once. The answer is scattered: a schedule in a spreadsheet, milestones in a quote, agreements in emails, the latest state in your head.

Writing a status update consists of three steps. You gather what is done and what is still in progress. You see what threatens the deadline. You translate that into an email a client understands, without your internal jargon and without promising too much. The third step is the smallest; the first two take the most time.

Take an example, not a measurement: if you have eight ongoing projects and want to send each client an update every other week, that is four updates per week. At twenty minutes per update, that is well over an hour a week, plus all the times a client calls earlier because they heard nothing. That hour comes out of the hours in which you actually do the work.

What a Planner takes over

The Planner is a role from the catalogue that plans tasks and milestones, drafts status updates and flags approaching deadlines. For this work, that means:

1. laying the schedule next to the agreements made and seeing what is falling behind
2. writing a draft email per project with what is done, what happens this week and what the client needs to know
3. naming a deadline that is under pressure before the client asks about it

The role costs 129 euros per month excluding VAT, with 40 tasks per month included. Count a status update as one task: for the example of four updates per week, you stay well within what is included.

Important: the Planner sends nothing. It prepares a proposal. You decide what the client receives.

Why you approve an outcome and not an intention

With many automations you approve a rule in advance: "send a status email to all clients every Friday." That is an intention. You only see what was sent once the client has already replied. With a status update, that is exactly the risk. One wrong date or one promise phrased too confidently and you are left with a client who holds on to it.

At Stilops you first go through a test run. The Planner works out the task on your own data and shows what would happen: this is the email that goes to the renovation client, with these milestones and this date for the handover. You read it the way you read an email from a colleague. If it is right, you approve. If it is not, you adjust it before anything leaves the building.

That approval does not get lighter the longer the role has been running. It costs you a few minutes per update, and that is a deliberate choice: you pay a little speed for it, and you get certainty in return. A status update is a commitment to a client. It should stay with you.

What you gain in hours

The writing itself largely disappears. What remains is reading and deciding, and that goes faster than looking things up and phrasing them. If a check takes five minutes instead of twenty, that saves an hour at four updates per week. That is an assumption you can test yourself: the test run shows how long you really take to review.

The second effect is harder to count. Clients who receive a clear update unprompted every two weeks probably call less. How much less depends on your clients, and we have not measured that. What you can see for yourself is how many "just checking in" emails you still get.

How to start

Choose one ongoing project where the question comes up often. Give the Planner the schedule and the agreements, and let a test run write one update. Read it as if you had written it yourself and watch for three things: are the dates right, does it promise nothing you haven't promised, and does it also say what is falling behind.

If so, you know the outcome is right before the first client sees it. If things are off, you know that too, and then the schedule itself needs to be put in order first. That is also an outcome you can use.