---
title: Looker Studio Reporting Issue — 2026-01-30
type: article
created: '2026-01-30'
updated: '2026-01-30'
source_docs:
- raw/2026-01-30-weekly-end-of-week-call-w-melissa-118575617.md
tags:
- reynolds-transfer
- looker-studio
- process
- reporting
- automation
- quality-control
layer: 2
client_source: Reynolds Transfer and Storage
industry_context: b2b-services
transferable: false
---

# Looker Studio Reporting Issue — 2026-01-30

## Overview

During the weekly end-of-week leadership call, Ben flagged that a Reynolds Transfer contact had complained about receiving automated Looker Studio reports showing data from two years prior. Investigation revealed the report had been configured with a fixed date range rather than a rolling "last 30 days" window — meaning the client had been receiving stale January 2022 data for an extended period without anyone catching it.

The incident exposed a systemic gap: automated client-facing reports were going out without any internal review step.

## What Happened

- Reynolds Transfer's contact reported receiving Looker Studio reports dated approximately two years in the past.
- The root cause was a misconfigured date range — the report used a static date rather than a dynamic/relative range.
- The client had apparently been deleting or ignoring the reports rather than escalating, so the issue went undetected internally for a long time.

> *"She'd been getting the same report for like January of 2022 for years."* — Mark Hope

## Decision: 4-Day Internal Preview Rule

As a direct result of this incident, a new standard process was established for all automated client reports:

**Any automated report sent to a client must also be sent to an internal team member 4 days before the client receives it.**

This gives the account manager or responsible team member time to review the content, verify the data looks correct, and catch configuration errors before the client sees them.

Mark's framing:
> *"It's really dangerous to have a report automatically go to a client that you haven't looked at. The client's going to call you up and go, 'hey, what the hell is this?' And you're going to go, 'I don't know.'"*

## Action Items

- [ ] **Melissa** to brief all Account Managers on the Looker Studio issue and the new 4-day internal preview requirement
- [ ] **All AMs** to audit their existing Looker Studio automations and verify date ranges are dynamic (not fixed)
- [ ] **Ben** to reconfigure the Reynolds Transfer report with a rolling date range and set up the 4-day internal preview automation

## Broader Implications

This issue prompted a wider call to audit all automated client-facing outputs — not just Looker Studio reports. The principle applies to any scheduled or triggered communication sent to clients without a human review step in the workflow.

See also: [[wiki/process/automated-report-review-standard]] (if created) and [[wiki/clients/current/reynolds/_index]] for broader Reynolds Transfer context.

## Related

- [[wiki/meetings/2026-01-30-weekly-eow-call]] — source meeting where this was raised
- [[wiki/clients/current/reynolds/_index]] — Reynolds Transfer client overview