"Same as last week, but split by region this time." That's the whole request. If you're the person who builds the weekly sales numbers at a small online shop, you know the sentence is short because the asker assumes you remember everything that made last week's numbers right.

I build Maildoer, an email assistant, and requests like this one shaped a lot of my thinking. This post isn't about the tool, though. It's about a small habit that makes "same as last week" safe: a standing report spec.

A hypothetical week

Say you're the only analyst at a shop with a few thousand orders a month. Over three emails the founder has told you:

  1. Week one: "Weekly revenue, Monday to Sunday, net of refunds."
  2. Week two: "Take out the staff test orders, they're inflating March."
  3. Week three: "Same as last week, but split by region this time."

Week three is only correct if weeks one and two are still applied. Miss the test-order rule and the new regional view quietly disagrees with every report before it.

The standing report spec

Keep one short file per recurring report. Five sections:

REPORT: Weekly revenue DEFINITIONS - Week = Monday 00:00 to Sunday 23:59, shop timezone - Revenue = net of refunds issued in the same week EXCLUSIONS - Staff test orders (added week 2) CUTS - Total (week 1) - By region (added week 3) OPEN QUESTIONS - Region = shipping address or billing address? CHANGELOG - wk1 created / wk2 exclusion added / wk3 region cut added

The changelog is the part people skip, and the part that saves you. When someone asks why the March total dropped, the answer is one line: test orders were excluded from week two.

Answering "same as last week, but…"

Before you send the new numbers, reply with what "same" means:

Running it as before: Monday–Sunday, net of refunds, staff test orders excluded. New this week: split by region. One question: should region follow the shipping address or the billing address?

That's two sentences of restatement and one question. It catches drift before it reaches a chart.

Pitfalls

  • Applying only the newest instruction. "Split by region" is an addition, not a fresh spec.
  • Silent definition changes. If refunds start counting by order date instead of refund date, that goes in the changelog, not just in the query.
  • Leaving questions unasked. "By region" sounds obvious until two addresses disagree.
  • Specs living in your head. If you're off sick, someone else has to rebuild week three from scratch.

Where the tool fits

The habit above is the main point. Where Maildoer comes in: when the same person emails again, the new message is read together with their earlier ones, not on its own. So "same as last week, but by region" can be checked against the week-one and week-two instructions instead of starting cold. They can also reply to a result to adjust it without restating everything.

If you want to see how that handles one of your own recurring requests, the details are at https://maildoer.com.

How do you keep track of "same as last time" for your recurring reports?