If you only look at one report regularly in your software it should be the Monthly Sales Comparison report. This report is great for retailers as it enables easy comparison between two trading periods - usually a year apart. The most important competitor your business has is your performance from a year ago.

Generating the Report

  1. On the top menu bar of Retailer, click on Reports -> Sales Reports -> Monthly Sales Comparison.
  2. In First Date Range, enter the Start Date and End Date for the current/later period.
  3. In Second Date Range, enter the Start Date and End Date for the previous period to compare to.
  4. Tick Itemise Instore/External Source to separate instore sales from external sales (e.g. webstore) on the report.
  5. If you ticked the box in step 4, Select Source will appear. In Select Source you can choose between:
    • Select All - Selects all sources.
    • Selected - Allows you to specify the sources to report on. Tick the sources you want to appear on the report.
  6. In Select Departments, choose between:
    • Select All - Selects all departments.
    • Selected - Allows you to specify the department(s) to report on. Tick the departments you want to appear on the report.
  7. In Options:
    • Exclude Home Delivery & Subagent Orders - If ticked, items charged through customer/subagent billings will not be shown.
    • Exclude Agency - If ticked, items in an agency department, such as lotto, will not be shown.
    • Show Department Categories - If ticked, each department will show a break-down for each of its categories.
    • Show Suppliers - If ticked, each department will show a break-down for each of its suppliers.
  8. Choose whether laybys are treated as sales on the date of their creation or as sales on the date of their completion. 
  9. Click Preview or Print.

Reading The Report

There are 3 main columns as well as a summary at the end of the report.

The columns are the 2 date ranges being compared and the variance between these 2 date ranges. Longer date ranges (3-6 months) give a more accurate and average report.

In each date range you see the following:

  • Department – Name of the department and category being compared.
  • QTY – Quantity of items sold in the date range
  • Discount – Total amount of discount applied to those sales
  • Total Sales – Total dollar value sales during the date range
  • Total Sales % - The percentage of sales this department has contributed to overall sales in the store

The summary area shows Total sales for the date range as well the number of sales and average sale items and values. Everything is also given a variance percentage in the 3rd column.

If Itemise Instore/External Source was ticked, 2 additional sections are added to the bottom of the report:

  • Instore vs External – Compares sales totals separated into instore sources and external sources.
  • Sales Basket Dissection – Compares the average sale total, average item value and average number of items per sale for each source of sales.