Poll results: Changes to Client Statements

First off—wow! We got a huge number of responses on this poll! Thanks, everyone, for weighing in with your two cents on the Client Statement reports.

If it wasn’t already clear, the results speak for themselves: These reports are incredibly popular among RPM users. Every single person who answered the poll indicated that they often run either the basic Client Statement, detail, or window envelope version of this report.

Most of you (more than 70% of respondents) regularly send these reports out to your rep payee clients, too. Here’s the full breakdown of answers to that question:

After those baseline questions, we got down to the nitty-gritty and asked your opinion on some changes we’re considering making to Client Statement reports.

First, we wanted to know your opinion on page numbering when running reports for a large group of clients. Currently, sequential page numbers can be seen at the bottom of each report (for example, page 34 of 142), even if the individual client’s portion is only a page or two long. About 20% of you requested we keep it that way. However, a much larger portion (more than 50%) of you wanted us to number the statements individually per client (meaning a 2-page statement would always be numbered Page 1 and Page 2, regardless of how many statements were run at the same time). Here are the full results:

Next, we showed you two versions of the basic statement—the current version, and a mockup version with the amount columns moved next to the balance on the right—and asked which you preferred. Here’s what those look like, to refresh your memory:

The results of this question were clear: Most respondents really like the mockup! Over 60% indicated they preferred the change, while about a quarter were indifferent, leaving those who prefer the current format in a small minority.

The last multiple-choice question was about whether we should add return addresses to the Window Envelope statement, which would only be functional if used with a double-window envelope. This change wasn’t quite as popular; in fact, the answers were fairly split, with the “very unlikely” camp of respondents at the top and the “very likely” group in second place. Here’s the graph:

Finally, as always, we included an open call for comments and suggestions at the end of the poll. There were tons of good ideas! We will be reviewing them carefully to see how we can improve this crucial report and make things easier for our RPM users in the process.