Running Your First Audit

For · Operators with a platform connected and a business profile configured
Time · 5 min read
Next · Reading your audit report

A Catalyst Audit reads your ad platform data, verifies it against your business economics, and produces a scored report with evidence-backed recommendations. It’s not a dashboard summary. It’s a performance review that surfaces what’s working, what’s not, and what the numbers actually mean for your margins.

The Short Version

Prerequisites: At least one ad platform connected and your business profile configured. Without real economic data, Trellis won’t generate recommendations.
The wizard is three steps: select a platform, configure your date range, review and submit.
Progress runs through six stages from submission to completion, typically finishing in under three minutes.
Every completed audit produces a quality score (0-100) across seven dimensions, so you can track account health over time.

Prerequisites

Before you can run an audit, two things need to be in place.

A connected ad platform. Navigate to Settings > Integrations and connect at least one account (Google Ads or Microsoft Ads). Trellis needs API access to pull your campaign, ad group, and keyword data. The connection uses OAuth, so you’ll authorize access through the platform’s own login flow.

A configured business profile. Trellis needs to know your average order value, gross margin, target CPA or ROAS, and break-even thresholds. Without these, the audit can’t distinguish a profitable campaign from an unprofitable one. Head to Settings > Business Profile if you haven’t set this up yet. The Setting Up Your Business Profile guide walks through each field.

If either piece is missing, the audit wizard will tell you what’s needed and link you to the right settings page.

The Audit Wizard

Navigate to Audits in the sidebar, then click New Audit. The wizard walks you through three steps.

Step 1: Select Platform

Choose which ad account to audit: Google Ads or Microsoft Ads. Each platform is audited independently. Trellis never mixes data between platforms or transfers assumptions from one to the other. If you want both audited, you’ll run two separate audits.

If you only have one platform connected, it’s pre-selected and you’ll move straight to configuration.

Step 2: Configure

One setting here.

Date range. Pick the analysis window. Preset options include Last 7 Days, Last 30 Days, Month to Date, Year to Date, Previous Month. You can also set a custom range if you need to analyze a specific period: a promotional window, a seasonal stretch, or a time range around a known change.

Shorter windows (7-14 days) are useful for checking recent changes. Longer windows (60-90 days) give more statistical weight and better trend detection. For most accounts, 30 days is a solid default, with enough data to be meaningful and recent enough to be actionable.

Catalyst Audit runs the same single-pass analysis on every audit: same report format, same quality score, same depth at every subscription tier. Completes in one to three minutes.

Step 3: Review and Submit

A summary of your selections: platform, date range, last audit context, and credit balance. Confirm and submit. The audit enters the processing queue immediately.

Progress Stages

Once submitted, your audit moves through six stages. You can watch progress in real time on the audit detail page.

Pending. The audit is queued and waiting for a processing slot.
Fetching. Trellis is pulling data from your ad platform’s API: campaigns, ad groups, keywords, performance metrics, change history.
Validating. The raw data is checked for completeness and consistency. Trellis verifies conversion tracking, looks for data gaps, and flags anything unusual before analysis begins.
Analyzing. Your ad data is evaluated against your business economics. This is where Trellis calculates contribution margins, identifies inefficiencies, detects changes, and builds recommendations.
Generating. The analysis results are assembled into a structured report with narrative sections, data tables, and scored recommendations.
Complete. Your audit is ready to read.

Most audits complete in one to three minutes. If an audit fails at any stage, you’ll see the specific error and can retry or adjust your configuration.

The Completed Audit

A finished Catalyst Audit gives you three things.

The markdown report. A narrative analysis organized by section: account overview, campaign performance, budget analysis, recommendations, and more. Each finding cites the specific data behind it. This isn’t a template filled with your numbers; the report content adapts to what’s actually happening in your account.

Structured recommendations. Each recommendation includes the finding, the evidence, the estimated impact, and a confidence tier. Recommendations are things you can act on in your ad platform; they’re specific enough to execute, not vague strategic advice.

Quality score. A composite 0-100 score that evaluates your account across seven dimensions. The score gives you a single number for tracking account health over time, but the individual dimension scores tell you where to focus. A high overall score with one weak dimension is more useful than a mediocre score across the board, because it tells you exactly what needs attention.

Setting Up Recurring Schedules

Running audits manually works, but most accounts benefit from a regular cadence. Navigate to Settings > Schedules to configure automated audits.

You’ll set four things:

Platform. Which ad account to audit.
Frequency. Daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, or quarterly. Weekly or biweekly works well for active accounts. Monthly is sufficient for stable ones.
Day and time. When the audit should run. Avoid scheduling during peak business hours if you want the freshest end-of-day data.
Email notifications. Get notified when an audit completes, when the quality score drops below a threshold, or both.

Scheduled audits appear in your audit history just like manual ones. You can pause or modify schedules at any time without losing historical data.

What’s Next

Reading Your Audit Report: Understand the report structure, recommendation confidence tiers, and how to prioritize findings.
Setting Up Your Business Profile: Make sure your margins, targets, and cost data are accurate so your audits reflect reality.