Log Shipping Monitor Server Instance
If you are doing log shipping, I would highly recommend (and the best option I believe) you do have a separate monitoring instance. The monitoring instance could be in Express Edition so you don't have to worry about licensing. You just need to know that after you setup log shipping and you then in the future want to change the monitoring instance or add one, you may need to reconfigure your log shipping. The upside is that you can use the monitoring instance for multiple log shipping and have the view of all the primary/secondary databases status in one location. Once you completed the log shipping setup with monitoring instance, on the monitoring instance, right click on the instance -&gt; Reports -&gt; Standard Reports -&gt; Transaction Log Shipping Status.

For reporting side of things, you need to disconnect the users/clients when doing a restore or wait until no one is connected to the database (delay restore). So plan for it. Another thing to be mindful of is that you can't add indexes or statistics on secondary database during standby mode. Doable but personally i would not use log shipping for reporting (only for DR purpose).

Personally, I would consider and recommend transactional replication for reporting. This gives you more control on your reporting database as you can create indexes, stats, create objects, etc on the subscriber database.

HTH