Reporting at a small publisher usually means exporting three spreadsheets, gluing them together and hoping nothing changed in between. By the time the numbers reach a meeting, they're a week old and nobody's sure which version is right.
In Adeptis, subscriptions, circulation, contacts, content, advertising and email data all live in one database. So reporting isn't a separate project. It's there on the dashboard when you log in, built into each part of the system, and available in Metabase when you want to dig further.
The dashboard: what's happening right now
The dashboard is the first thing you see. Counts of contacts, companies and team members across the database, plus the contacts and companies added most recently, so new records get followed up rather than forgotten.
The site traffic panel shows unique visitors per title over the last 30 days and the last 12 months. The figures come from the Cloudflare analytics API and are de-duplicated, so a reader is counted once. They're cached, and if Cloudflare can't be reached the panel says so and shows the previous figures. No silently stale numbers.
Reports built into every part of Adeptis
Most questions are answered where the work happens, without leaving the screen:
- Circulation: the Circulation Age report gives an ABC-style breakdown by request type and age, with ABC priority-tier counts.
- Advertising: the advert report shows views, clicks, unique counts and click-through rate by site, with staff traffic excluded.
- Content: every story in the news CMS has its own views and link clicks report.
- Email: the campaign report shows sent, delivered, opens, clicks and bounces, plus the companies that clicked.
- Media pack: the working figures view shows every selling figure with its source.
And lists throughout the system export to CSV, so the data is never stuck.
Metabase for dashboards and self-serve BI
For everything else, there's Metabase. Our team connects your Adeptis data to Metabase and sets up the dashboards you need, from a board-level view of the business to the daily operational numbers your circulation and sales teams watch.
Because everything sits in one database, a Metabase dashboard can show subscriptions, circulation, contacts, content and advertising side by side. That's the single view most publishers never get when their data lives in five different tools.
Metabase also means your team can ask their own questions. It has a point-and-click question builder, so you don't need a data science team or an SQL expert to get an answer, and Adeptis screens can include an Open in Metabase link to take a list further.
Why Metabase
We chose Metabase because it's clear, quick to learn and good at turning publishing data into dashboards people actually read. It suits everyone from the MD who wants one page on a Monday morning to the analyst who wants to slice things twelve ways.
We recommend it and we set it up. If you already use a different BI tool, talk to us.
How it fits with the rest
Reporting is only as good as the data under it. That's why the de-dupe and gone-away tools matter: clean records make for honest reports. And because access is controlled per user, as described under security and GDPR, you decide who sees what.
Larger publishers and groups get Metabase with Avio too, alongside the finance and month-end reporting covered in Avio reporting and BI. For why joined-up data matters, read why publishers need end-to-end subscription workflows.
Book an Adeptis demo and we'll show you the dashboard, the built-in reports and what Metabase can do with your data.
Questions
Where do the site traffic figures come from?
From the Cloudflare analytics API. They're unique visitors, de-duplicated so a reader is counted once, cached, and marked clearly if they're out of date.
Who sets up Metabase?
We do. Our team connects your Adeptis data to Metabase and sets up the dashboards you need.
Do we need to write SQL?
Not for the built-in reports, and not for most Metabase questions either, since Metabase has a point-and-click question builder. If you like SQL, it's there too.
We already use a different BI tool. Is that a problem?
Metabase is what we recommend and set up. If you're attached to another tool, talk to us and we'll tell you what's possible.