I've been in client-facing roles for over 10 years (client success, account management, B2B SaaS) and this problem has followed me everywhere I've worked.
We track everything on boards, but come Friday someone's still sat there manually writing "here's where things stand" emails to every client. Every week. By hand.
The options I've tried all fall short somewhere. Guest access shows clients too much and you end up paying for seats. Dashboards are just charts with no context, so clients don't get much from them. And the reporting apps I've looked at all spit out spreadsheets, which is fine for management, but you're not sending a client an xlsx and calling it an update.
So I'm seriously thinking about building a small app to fix it. Rough idea: you pick a board, tick what the client is allowed to see, and it automatically sends them a branded, plain English update (done, in progress, up next, waiting on you) on whatever schedule you set. It goes out as an email plus a link they can open without logging into anything. Flat price, no matter how many clients you've got.
Before I sink my evenings into it, would that actually solve a problem for you, or have you already cracked this some other way? Genuinely happy to be told it's a rubbish idea. Rather hear it now than after I've built the thing.