Working with Your Sales Data
The Rain system has versatile reports for working with transaction and item sales data. These include the End of Day, Sales Summary, Sales by Item, Sales Tax, Transaction Detail, Voided Transactions, Margins and your Sales by State reports.
You can get to this part of the system by clicking Reports in the blue Admin Toolbar, then clicking either your Dashboard or the specific report you need.
The End of Day Report
The End of Day Summary Report is very unique and useful, and likely will be the report you use most often to access transaction information. The report has three sections, and we're going to explore what they do and how you can best make use of them.
Net Sales and Receipts
The top section of the End of Day Report has a breakdown of your revenues, showing Product Sales, Class Sales, Service Sales, Rental Sales, and anything else is lumped into Misc Sales. In each of these areas, you can click the blue arrow next to the item and see a breakdown of Taxable and Non-Taxable Sales. These add up to give you your Total Net Sales.
In the Total Receipts column, we add to the Total Net Sales the Taxes you collected, along with other items that don't count toward Net Sales, such as Account Payments, Layaway Payments, Rent to Own Payments, and Gift Cards Purchased. The Report then breaks out items already factored into your totals where the report subtracts funds that were for Returns as well as Discount amounts.
Tender by Till
The middle section of the End of Day Report breaks down how you received the funds for the day into the different types of Tender (payment methods) you accept, and breaks it down further, showing Tender by Till. This section is especially useful at the end of your work day so you can compare your cash drawer count for cash, checks, cards, and other forms of payment against what the system is reporting for your revenues. For more information on Opening and Closing Your Till, please click here and scroll down to the section with that title.
Transactions
The bottom section of the End of Day Report shows each transaction that went through the system for whatever period you are viewing. You can Sort the Transaction Rows by any of the column headers just by clicking on them, but by default they will be displayed in chronological order, with the latest transactions at the bottom of the list. You can click on a Transaction ID to open the transaction in a side panel, and you can do Returns, Voids, reprint Receipts, or adjust transaction info such as the Date, Customer, Notes, and Payment Methods then Save your changes, if your User permission level allows.
NOTE: Because of the complex, three-part layout to the End of Day Report, it does not have the option for Export. You can, however, Print the report to your full-sized printer.
The Sales Summary Report
The Sales Summary Report goes into more detail than the End of Day on your Net Sales for whatever period you are viewing. By default, it will open showing you your current month's data, but of course you can change to a specific date or date range, if you like. In addition to the basic information about each transaction, the Sales Summary Report shows your Cost for the items in the transaction, any Liability you incur, the dollar amount of your Profit, and the percentage Profit Margin. You can both Print and Export this Report as needed. Please note that if you don't have Cost values in for your products and services, the profit margins in this report will not be accurate.
Sales by Item Report
To see specific details about individual items you sold in a given period, a good option is to use the Sales by Item Report. By default it will open displaying data for the current month. There are numerous ways to Filter your results, and of course you can set your Date or Date Range to whatever you need. Just remember this is an Item-based report, so it will show all items sold that fit your time range and filters, so if you are looking at a time frame longer than one month, the report may not be able to load because of the sheer amount of data.
In this report you can click on any of the Item Names to open that item if you need to edit it. Please note that doing so will take you away from the Report, and if you come back you will have to reset your Date and Filter preferences. You can Print and Export the Sales by Item Report.
Sales Tax Report
Your Sales Tax Report will break down your revenues by taxable and non-taxable, and will split them out by your different Tax Jurisdictions. You can apply whatever Date or Date Range you need, and you can Filter by Location (if you have multiple Locations set up in the system) and by Till. You can also either Print or Export your data, as needed.
Transaction Detail Report
The Transaction Detail Report is one of the most useful we offer in the Rain system. It features two major 'modes', offering you the ability to filter in a lot of ways, whether you are viewing Item or Department results.
In the Item View, you have all the information offered by the Sales by Item report, but you can also see the original transaction (by clicking the Transaction ID number) and the Customer. So this is a useful report if you need to see which customers bought from a certain Department or Category in a given time period, or how many of a certain item were sold in the period you're searching. Please note that clicking on the item's Name or on the Customer will take you to those entries and you will leave this report, and when you return, you'll have to reload your Date and Filter preferences. As with other item-based reports, the higher your sales volume, the more data this report will be fetching when you load it, so you may have to limit your searches to quarterly or monthly results.
Also note that items that do not have Cost values entered for them display a 100% profit margin, which throws all of your reporting off in that area. So it is important to enter Costs for all items in the system if you want your reports to be accurate.
The Department View of this report is also extremely useful. It allows you to see how your sales in the period you're viewing break down across all your Departments. Please note that it will only show departments that had sales revenue during the period in question, so any you don't see won't have had any sales. This report in both the Item View and the Department View can be either Printed or Exported.
Voided Transactions Report
The Voided Transactions Report is one of two areas where you can still see transactions that you have Voided in the system. The other area is the History tab when you click to view the details of a Customer. Please note that while you can click the Transaction ID to view the voided transaction, you will not be able to adjust anything or do any Returns. You can either Print or Export your results, as needed.
Margins Report
This is another report that breaks down your sales data by Department. The Margins Report focuses on the difference between the total dollar value of the Costs of the items you sold and the totals of their selling prices, their Net Sales, giving you your Profit Margin for each Department that had sales during the period you are searching. It is extremely important to have Cost values in the system for all of your products and services in order to have accurate results in this report. You can Sort the Margins Report by any of the column headers, and you can Print the report, as needed.
Sales by State Report
The Sales by State report can look at long periods of time (it defaults to the last full calendar year) and breaks out your total sales by state and province. So for example, if you sell in Canada, the report will show your totals for each province, as well as any sales you might have done in U.S. states. You are also able to see the total number of transactions by state/province. Clicking on the column headers will sort the data by that column, clicking again will reverse that sort. You can print or export the data as needed.
Please Note: This report is currently in Open Beta status, so to view it in your list of reports, click on the gear-shaped button on the far right side of the blue Admin Toolbar and go to Beta Features. Scroll down the list and turn it on, then scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.
Coming Up Next: Learn how to work with the reports that track inventory data.
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.