What Is Ad-hoc Reporting? Examples, Costs and How to Start

Tuesday morning. The managing director walks past your desk and asks: “Quick one, which five customers haven’t ordered anything in the last 60 days?” The names are somewhere between HubSpot, a lexoffice export and the sales spreadsheet your assistant keeps on his laptop. Ad-hoc reporting is the name for the report that answers that question before the coffee is cold, drawn fresh from the systems where the numbers actually live. This piece explains what ad-hoc reporting is, how it is done today, what it costs, and how a European AI employee like Superkind writes the report straight from Teams.

What is ad-hoc reporting?

Ad-hoc reporting is a one-off report created in response to a specific question that was not planned in advance, drawing its numbers from the operational systems where the data lives. Gartner uses “ad hoc” for analysis designed to answer a single, specific question¹; IBM defines ad hoc reporting as reports generated as needed, on the fly, often by business users rather than analysts². The word is Latin for “for this” - built for this question, this decision, this meeting.

How ad-hoc reporting works

Every ad-hoc report, whether a controller writes it by hand or an AI employee drafts it, moves through the same four parts.

1. The question - someone states what they need in plain words, with a scope and a time window: “Which five customers paid late last month?”, “What is the margin per project on the Westphalia region in Q3?”
2. The source - the data has to come from the system where it actually lives: receivables in DATEV or lexoffice, open items in SAP Business One, deal history in HubSpot, project hours in Excel, stock in a merchandise system. Many questions need two or three of these at once.
3. The gathering - the numbers are pulled, matched by customer, project or cost centre, and the right definition is applied (your “contribution margin” may exclude intercompany, your “late” may mean 14 days past due).
4. The draft and the hand-off - the result is written up with the figure, a short commentary and often a chart, and sent back to the asker in the channel they live in (email, Teams, a shared folder). Nothing contentious goes out without a sign-off.

The hard part is almost always between steps 2 and 3: reaching across different systems, mapping identifiers, and keeping the KPI definitions straight. That is the gap most ad-hoc reporting tools do not close on their own.

Ad-hoc reports with Superkind

Superkind is the AI employee you write to in Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Slack or the Superkind web app, like a colleague. For ad-hoc reporting its job is the slow half: gathering the numbers from the systems where they live and drafting the report around them. It is hosted and processed in Europe, GDPR compliant, with 1,500+ integrations into DATEV, SAP Business One, lexoffice, HubSpot, Personio, SharePoint, Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Snowflake and BigQuery, and it asks you to approve before anything is sent or shared.

1. 1

   You write the task

   In Outlook, Teams or Slack you describe the report in plain words: “Pull Q3 contribution margin by region from DATEV and send me the report by lunch.” No template to pick, no filter wizard.

2. 2

   Superkind gathers and drafts

   It pulls the figures from DATEV, SAP Business One, lexoffice, HubSpot or Excel through its 1,500+ integrations, applies your KPI definitions (your “contribution margin”, your “late”), writes the number plus a short commentary, and prepares the email or chat message.

3. 3

   You approve

   Superkind shows the draft and asks for sign-off. You tweak the wording, approve, and the report goes to the person who asked, or into the shared folder. A colleague can approve in Teams or Slack.

4. 4

   Next time it runs as a routine

   “Send me the regional contribution margin every Monday 8am” runs as a routine, and Superkind already knows your rules.

6 examples of ad-hoc reports from real teams

Six requests that land on controllers’ and department heads’ desks every week, with the prompt that produces each in Superkind. Each is one message in Outlook, Teams or Slack.

1. Revenue drop by product group

The sales director sees a dip in the monthly numbers and wants to know where it came from. The answer sits across DATEV revenue accounts, product codes in SAP Business One and the delivery notes in Excel.

2. Customers who have not ordered in 60 days

The “silent attrition” question. HubSpot has the last-contact date, lexoffice has the last invoice date, and the two never line up without manual effort. See AI for HubSpot for the related tool side.

3. Stock cover after a supplier delay

A key supplier flags a two-week delivery delay. Operations needs to know which parts run out first, before the next production meeting.

4. Dunning rate per sales rep

A classic accounting-and-sales question. The receivables are in lexoffice or DATEV, the sales rep is in HubSpot. See receivables and dunning for how this ties into the dunning routine.

5. Margin per project last week

An agency or project business question. Hours are in a time-tracking tool or Excel, revenue is in lexoffice, direct costs are in DATEV.

6. Allowed customer quote

The common thread: every one of these is a cross-system question with an approval moment. That is the shape of ad-hoc reporting in a real company, and that is why a chatbot that only talks to one dataset leaves most of them unfinished.

Ad-hoc reporting vs. standard reporting vs. a dashboard

The three sit next to each other and are often confused. All facts below describe the shape of each, not any specific product.

The honest line between these: a dashboard shows what has already been modelled; a standard report rerun’s the template; ad-hoc work covers everything else, which is where most Monday-morning questions land. See the 10 best AI tools for ad-hoc reports in 2026 for the tool comparison, and AI tools for controlling for the controller view.

What ad-hoc reporting costs and what you need

Costs split into two parts: the time of the person who writes the report today, and the cost of the tool that writes it for you.

• By hand - a cross-system ad-hoc report typically takes a controller or analyst between one and four hours, between the exports, the reconciliations, and the write-up. At EUR 80 per hour fully loaded, three a week lands in EUR 1,000 to EUR 4,000 per month in time cost per person, before any opportunity cost of the question waiting.
• A dashboard tool with AI (Power BI Copilot, Tableau Pulse, ThoughtSpot Spotter) - typically USD 14 to USD 50 per user per month on the base plan, with Copilot features often requiring additional paid capacity. Fast once the data is modelled in a warehouse, little help with gathering from DATEV, lexoffice or SAP directly.
• Superkind - free to start with up to EUR 150 in credits (no credit card). Business from EUR 50 per month (25,000 credits) for the whole company, unlimited users, no price per seat. A single question draws roughly 10 to 50 credits, a full gathered report 50 to 500 credits, so EUR 100 per month covers up to 1,000 tasks or 5,000 questions (as of October 2026). Prices excl. VAT.

What you need on the Superkind side is light: a sign-up, a connection to the systems the report draws from (Outlook, DATEV, lexoffice, SAP Business One, HubSpot, Excel, SharePoint, your warehouse), and the KPI definitions written down once so Superkind can apply them each time. The company knowledge builds up as a Company Brain that survives turnover.

Data protection and EU hosting

Ad-hoc reports touch customer names, invoice amounts, employee data and project costs. For a German or EU team this is where many requests stall: nobody wants a “quick one” to end up on a US server without a DPA. The practical standard is a signed data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR, a lawful basis under Art. 6, a record of processing under Art. 30, and AI literacy training under Art. 4 of the EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689)⁷⁸.

Safe by default

Your data stays in Europe, under a DPA, with no training on your data.

• Hosted and processed in Europe
• GDPR compliant
• Aligned with the EU AI Act
• No training on your data
• DPA through the Trust Center

For an ad-hoc report that lists late payers by customer or margin by project, this means the names stay in the EU, the model does not learn them, and the DPA covers the whole chain from Outlook to DATEV. See the related controlling tools comparison for how other tools handle this.

So fängst du an - how to start

A short, concrete path. Pick one real ad-hoc report that landed on your desk this week.

From the first task to your own app

With Superkind, the data stays in Europe from the first ad-hoc question to your own reporting app. Four stages, on the margin example above.

1. 1

   Ready in minutes

   Sign up free, ask Superkind in Teams for the Q3 margin by region and watch it come back by lunch, pulled from DATEV and HubSpot.

2. 2

   Tasks become routines

   The same question returns every Monday. “Send me the regional contribution margin every Monday 8am” keeps running as a routine, and Superkind asks for approval before it goes out.

3. 3

   Learns from day one

   Every task adds to your Company Brain: your KPI definitions, cost centres, segment maps, the people who need to see which report. This knowledge is never lost, even when people leave.

4. 4

   Your own reporting app, without starting over

   When it gets more complex, build custom solutions and your own app on the Superkind platform with 1,500+ integrations: your Super App. Built yourself or with us. It all belongs to you.

Conclusion

Ad-hoc reporting is the work that never fits on a dashboard: the specific question, asked today, that needs numbers from DATEV, lexoffice, SAP, HubSpot and the Excel sheet together. The dashboard tools answer half of it, once the data has been modelled. Superkind answers the other half: you ask in Outlook, Teams or Slack, it gathers from 1,500+ integrations, drafts the report and asks for approval before anything goes out, all hosted in Europe. Pick one ad-hoc report that landed on your desk this week, send it as the first task, free, and let the next week’s version run as a routine.

Frequently asked questions

Henri Jung

Co-founder of Superkind, the AI employee teams write to in Outlook, Teams and Slack. Henri helps companies, from small teams to the Mittelstand, hand their routine work to AI - without new tools, consultants or an in-house AI team.