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Introduction
A weekly change log is a report that your Amazon agency should generate every seven days, listing every material change that was done to your account. This includes any campaigns that were changed, what exactly was changed, why they changed it, and what was the outcome. It serves as the operational accountability layer between an agency’s claims and the actual results for the client.
While it’s a very straightforward document, it’s often not provided by Amazon agencies. One reason is that when nothing is done on the account, the change log makes the situation obvious.
This article provides a complete field-by-field template to give you a better idea of the accountability standards on which you can insist. It also offers guidelines for handling conversations about change logs, helping you to identify the reason why an agency might be reluctant to share one.
What a Weekly Change Log Is and Why It’s the Minimum Standard for Amazon Agency Accountability
A weekly change log contains all the changes made to your account, affected campaigns, and the reasons for those changes.
A change log isn’t a performance report. A performance report tells you what has happened on your account and includes metrics such as advertising cost of sales (ACoS), ROAS, spend, and revenue. Amazon agencies typically give you either a performance report or a change log.
However, a brand that spends $2,000 to $10,000/month on Amazon PPC management is paying for decisions, not only data. A change log documents these decisions, their rationale, and effectiveness.
Without a change log, it’s difficult to tell the difference between an active and inactive agency. Both agencies generate a dashboard with metrics, but only one records what they actually did.
Why Most Amazon Agencies Do Not Provide a Change Log
The lack of a change log is rarely an oversight. Usually, it’s because a change log can reveal when an agency isn't operating at the level that the retainer implies.
A Change Log Makes Inactivity Visible
A weekly performance report can’t truly reveal inactivity on your account. If you’re only presented with a dashboard that holds steady metrics, an account that has received minimal attention can look similar to one that has been actively managed.
A change log completely removes that ambiguity because it shows more complex data, such as bid adjustments and negative keyword additions that are tied to an active cycle of harvesting search terms. Either these are documented in the change log, or they’re completely lacking.
Once you have a change log, you can identify campaigns that were running above break-even ACoS for two weeks without a structural response or tests that were described as in progress but never moved forward.
This lack of accountability is a problem for agencies that don’t perform at the level the retainer implies. Their solution is to avoid sharing a weekly change log.
It Exposes the Gap Between Claims and Actions
Many agencies provide vague reports. Their weekly updates include entries using terms like "campaign optimization", "bid management", and "keyword research". This is all unverifiable if there’s no change log.
To the client, a term like "campaign optimization" could mean a full cycle of bid adjustments, each with a documented reason, or a single budget cap change made in three minutes.
Once you have a change log, the entry reads: “We lowered the bid on one keyword from $1.80 to $1.35 because the 14-day ACoS was 52% vs the 38% break-even, with an ACoS correction expected in seven days.”
The first tells you nothing about their work, while the second shows the agency's decision and the reason behind it.
It Creates a Paper Trail for Performance Accountability
When performance begins to decline, there’s no way to tell the reason behind it without a change log. Without one, the investigation becomes a scramble across campaigns, timelines, and bid histories, as you piece together decisions that should’ve been documented as they happened.
With a change log, the answer is available within minutes. You can see whether a particular change occurred during the period in question, enabling you to assess it directly.
It also makes the agency’s decisions visible and traceable, protecting the client when the agency’s own decisions contributed to the decline. This is precisely why agencies are reluctant to go this deep in documentation.
What a Weekly Amazon Change Log Must Include (Field by Field)
A real change log has the following sections, each with different accountability purposes. Here’s what should be in each section and why:
Section 1: Changes Made This Week
At the heart of the change log is an accurate history of all material changes made to the account in the past seven days. Each entry should specify the:
- Campaign, ad group, keyword, or ASIN that was changed
- Old state and new state
- Date of the change
Each entry must be specific enough that any qualified account manager can read it and immediately know what was done, without pulling additional data. General references to the types of campaigns aren’t enough.
Material changes that need to be documented include:
- Changes in bids over 10%
- Changes in the budget over 15%
- New campaigns or ad groups
- Additions or pauses of keywords
- Additions of negative keywords
- Changes in match type
Minor automated bid adjustments below these thresholds don’t need individual entries, but they should be logged as a group so the weekly record stays complete.
Section 2: Prior Week’s Changes
The rationale field is what distinguishes a change log from a simple change record. Each entry needs to tie its reason to particular data, not a general rule or reference to a previous debate.
In the case of a performance-driven change, the rationale should specify:
- The metric that triggered the change
- The time frame over which the metric was measured
- How the result compared to the target or break-even threshold
If the change is structural, the entry should explain why a keyword, campaign, or ad group was paused or restructured. Then, it should also reference spend contribution, conversion performance, or match-type fit.
In the case of an opportunity-driven change in the search term report or performance data, the entry should indicate what was identified and the action taken as a result.
Words like “performance optimization”, “routine adjustments", or “per our last conversation” are too vague. They don’t tell you what caused the decision, what was changed, or what the change was supposed to accomplish.
Section 3: Expected Outcome and Time Frame
For each change that was made, there should also be an expected result recorded. This is the area that agencies typically would rather avoid, because it creates a measurable standard of whether the change worked or not.
The process is very straightforward. You specify the:
- Metric you want to move
- Direction
- Time frame
- Review date
The review date is the most important as it’s what makes the change log an active record of accountability. This means that each action has to be concluded eventually, with either a confirmed outcome or note.
This section separates a simple work log from the one that holds the agency accountable for results.
Section 4: What Was Monitored But Not Changed
This area most agencies overlook, but it’s the one that separates an active account manager from one who’s just going through the motions.
Sometimes the best move is to leave a campaign that’s trending well alone. Knowing that is a professional judgment in itself.
In this case, a manager who’s merely going through the motions has nothing to record, while an active manager does.
Without this field, a week when everything was reviewed and intentionally left alone looks exactly like a week when nothing was reviewed. Those are different actions and the change log is the only place that shows it.
Section 5: Next Week’s Priority Actions
This section is the field that represents the future. It includes the actions that the manager plans to take in the upcoming week and why.
This step does two things. It creates a commitment that can be checked in the following week and demonstrates that the team is thinking proactively, not reactively.
The Complete Change Log Template
Copy this and send it to your agency today:
💡Pro Tip: Before signing with an Amazon agency, put the weekly change log into the contract as a formal deliverable, not an informal expectation. Include a line item in the deliverables section specifying the format, frequency, and all the required fields. If an agency is confident in its work, it won’t object.
What Good and Bad Change Logs Look Like
The easiest way to check the usefulness of the change log you receive is to compare it to the following concrete example. This is the same campaign change, documented in two different ways.
A Useless Change Log Entry
Date: May 5, 2026
Change: Adjusted bids across Sponsored Products campaigns
Rationale: Performance optimization
Expected outcome: Improved efficiency
A Useful Change Log Entry
Date: May 12, 2026
Campaign: SP | Exact | Supplement | Protein Powder
Keyword: "best protein powder for women"
Change: Bid reduced from $2.10 to $1.55
Rationale: 14-day ACoS 61% vs 38.75% break-even. 142 clicks, 7 conversions (4.9% CVR vs 12% account median). Overbid relative to conversion rate.
Expected outcome: ACoS to fall below 45% within 7 days at current CVR. If CVR doesn’t improve after 14 days at the new bid, we’ll evaluate pausing.
Review date: May 19, 2026
Here, the entry specifies a particular data trigger, comparison to a benchmark at the account level, directional hypothesis, and contingency plan.
Either ACoS fell below 45% or it didn’t. Either way, the account manager’s decision is on record.
The Seven Questions That Reveal Whether Your Amazon Agency Is Doing the Work
These aren’t trick questions. Any professional manager should be able to answer the following seven questions without hesitation.
If any of the answers show defensiveness or are simply vague without enough information, treat it as red flags.
1. “Can you send me last week’s change log?”
Every agency that actively manages the account has this document ready or can do it in less than 30 minutes. If the agency doesn’t have it, it means they haven’t built that discipline, or they did nothing last week and so there’s nothing to document.
For example, at Olifant Digital, we prepare a weekly change log for each account we manage, and we automatically share it with the client. There’s no need to request it.
2. “What specific bid changes did you make this week and why?”
The question isn’t what they worked on, but what changes they applied. It should include an answer with campaign names, keywords, and before-and-after numbers that prove the work was really done. For example, at Olifant Digital we track every bid change by keyword, the data that caused the change, and the expected result.
A vague reference to "bid management" or "optimization" suggests they probably didn't make any changes.
3. “Which keywords did you add as negatives this week, and what triggered each?”
One of the constant missed tasks for agencies is managing negative keywords. A manager should actively manage an account and have negatives weekly as part of a structured cycle for harvesting search terms.
At Olifant Digital, we record negative keyword additions in the change log, along with the specific search terms, the campaigns they were applied to, and the spend or irrelevance data to justify the addition.
4. “What was the expected outcome of the changes you made last week, and did it materialize?”
To answer this question, the agency should’ve documented an expected outcome at the time the change was made, and tracked whether it happened.
Agencies often can’t answer this question because they never track expected outcomes for each change.
At Olifant Digital, every change log entry has an expected outcome and a review date. Then, the following week’s log records whether that outcome was hit or missed.
5. “What is your current TACoS per ASIN for our top 10 products?”
A team that reports total advertising cost of sales (TACoS) per ASIN on a weekly basis has this number available. If they report on a blended account ACoS, they first have to go and find it. At Olifant Digital, we report TACoS weekly as a standard line item per ASIN, not pulled on request.
6. “What did you review but decide not to change this week, and why?”
This is one of the hardest questions for an agency that did nothing. An active account manager that does the actual work can tell you all the specific campaigns they reviewed, the data they saw, and the reason they held the position.
At Olifant Digital, when we leave items unchanged, these are documented in Section 3 of the weekly change log. This means the decision not to act carries the same accountability as the decision to act.
7. “If you left tomorrow, how long would it take a new account manager to understand what has been done and why?”
A complete change log allows a team to rebuild a full decision history of an account in less than an hour. Without one, it takes a team weeks to get a new manager ready, because all the knowledge about the account is in one person’s head.
When that person is gone, it goes with them.
For instance, Olifant Digital’s change log is a complete operational record. Any qualified specialist can read twelve months of entries and know the entire decision history of the account before touching a single campaign.
What an Agency’s Response to Change Log Requests Reveals
How an agency responds to this request will tell you more than the change log itself. Here are the four common response types and what they mean:
Response Type 1: They Send One Immediately
Every agency should have a documentation process and so this should be their reply.
A well-formed change log will include the five sections described in this article, with expected outcomes associated with specific review dates and a clear data argument for each entry.
A change log with the correct structure but a vague or generic rationale is only for show.
Response Type 2: They Send a Dashboard or Performance Report Instead
A change log and performance report aren’t the same, and many agencies confuse the two.
A performance report shows what happened to the metrics, whereas the change log shows precisely which decisions were made and what was the reason behind them.
Point out this difference to the agency, ask again for a change log, and watch what they return.
If they send you a vague activity summary without a structured record of changes, rationale, and expected outcomes, the agency doesn't have a change log process and is unlikely to build one for your account.
Response Type 3: They Explain Why You Don't Need One
Some agencies will provide you reasons why you don’t require a change log. For instance, they may say that a proprietary dashboard already presents everything. It doesn’t.
Data is shown on a dashboard. Decisions are logged in a change log.
Then, some might argue operational transparency is an unnecessary burden on the client or that the detail would be confusing.
These are reasons an agency uncomfortable with accountability would share instead of producing one.
Response Type 4: They Go Silent or Deflect
The loudest signal is when your request goes unanswered in the first 48 hours or the conversation is moved to another topic in your next meeting.
An agency that’s actively managing your account and has the documentation ready has no reason not to share it. An agency that’s inactive has every reason to avoid this conversation.
How Olifant Digital Handles Change Logs and Weekly Accountability
Every account is always managed by senior specialists and receives a weekly change log. It includes all the material changes that were made in the previous seven days, the data rationale for each change, and the expected outcome with a review date.
Olifant AI, our proprietary Amazon PPC and account management platform, runs the monitoring layer that keeps daily optimization and weekly change log creation operationally consistent across 50+ accounts. It surfaces bid anomalies, search term data, and ASIN-level performance shifts on a daily basis so the change log reflects real decisions on real data, not a weekly review of what the dashboard showed on Friday.
This change log is sent to every client automatically every week. It’s not forwarded on a request, nor is it provided as a monthly hidden PDF.
As such, accountability isn't an optional add-on. Results are driven by operational discipline. If a change doesn’t work, we catch it in seven days, not the next monthly review.
For example, the previous agency Spade to Fork, one of our clients, worked with shared reports with no actionable data. The agency also didn’t use margin or velocity to adjust PPC strategy.
Instead all the products in Spade to Fork’s range received the same PPC strategy. As a result, ACoS increased year over year without the agency sharing a path for how to decrease it.
However, with our clear tracking and proactive approach, Spade to Fork managed to increase its Amazon revenue growth by 46% in 44 days. It’s also worthwhile to mention that this result was achieved without ad budget increases, proof that in some instances the best place to start is to improve your current systems first.
The change log isn’t a deliverable every agency will offer, but it’s the standard that any professional agency that’s managing funds on behalf of a client should meet without being asked. If yours doesn’t deliver it, that’s your answer.
In that case, get a free marketing plan with Olifant Digital. We’ll audit your account, show you every change that wasn’t made, and what accountable Amazon management looks like. If we don't improve your Amazon results within 60 days, our 60-day money-back guarantee means you don't have to pay.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Should an Amazon Agency Report Every Week?
An Amazon agency should send a change log and performance report each week. The change log should show what was changed, why it was changed, and the changes’ expected outcomes. The performance report should list metrics such as ACoS, TACoS, spend, and revenue. Most agencies will just give you performance reports, but the change log is especially important as it’s the only way to tell if the agency is actively managing the account or just reporting data.
How Do I Know If My Amazon Agency Is Actually Doing Anything?
Ask for the weekly change log. It details every change to the account in the last seven days, the data rationale for each change, and the expected outcome with a review date. If the agency can’t provide this, either nothing was done, or the work wasn’t documented.
Can I Ask My Amazon Agency for a Change Log?
Yes, you can and should. A change log is a standard professional deliverable of any agency managing money on behalf of a client. It’s not rude or unusual to ask for one. It’s like asking a financial advisor for trade confirmations. If your agency resists or deflects the request, it’s a red flag.
What Is the Difference Between an Amazon Agency Report and a Change Log?
An Amazon agency report with performance metrics shows ACoS, spend, revenue, ROAS, and TACoS. This report tells you what happened. A change log explains which actions were taken, which campaigns were modified, what changes were implemented, why they were made, and the outcomes.
How Often Should an Amazon Agency Make Changes to My Account?
With an actively managed account, you should be seeing material changes multiple times per week. If you’re spending more than $5,000 per month, it means bid changes, at least one negative keyword harvest, and one or more structural decisions per week. For accounts spending $50,000 or more a month, daily optimization is the standard. A week in which nothing happens at this level is a week of no activity.
Alex is the founder and CEO of Olifant Digital, where his team manages over $100M in annual Amazon client revenue across 50+ brands, and he runs a 7-figure Amazon brand of his own. That operator background shapes how the agency works: every tactic is tested with his own money before it reaches a client account. He oversees PPC methodology, creative, and conversion rate across all client accounts to make sure Olifant Digital scales brands profitably.
Mike reviews every Amazon article on this blog for strategic and technical accuracy before it publishes. As Director of Amazon Growth at Olifant Digital, he sets marketing strategy across client accounts and personally audits PPC at every stage of growth. He brings 8 years of daily Amazon operations across 7 and 8-figure brands including Beauty by Earth, Ekster, and Bullstrap, the kind of hands-on depth most agency directors delegate away.
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