Using Sales Summary to Report on Poor Selling Items


What is the Monthly Sales Report?

The Monthly Sales screen in Sales Summary is an overview of your stock items and shows how well, or not, they are selling, over a year from the selected order date.

What information is contained in the Monthly Sales Report?

The Monthly Sales screen displays all the stock items held on your system, including Run to Zero items but excluding discontinued stock, with the following information per stock item:

  • Stock pricing, for example stock value, current stock buy and sell price.
  • Stock levels both current and available.
  • Supplier information, for the preferred supplier, such as currency, buy price, code.
    Note: there can be no guarantee that the supplier listed is actually the supplier that the items were purchased from originally.
  • For the whole year and also broken down into 12 monthly periods:
    • Sales
    • Credits
    • Lost Demand

Notes:

  1. The information displayed is for sales orders not invoices.
  2. Stock lines with a red background are run to zero items.
  3. The Order and Available levels are for the current site.
  4. The sales, credit and lost demand amounts are across all sites.

Benefits of Using the Monthly Sales Report

The Monthly Sales report gives the user an indication of how well their stock lines are performing. There may be stock items that should be discontinued because they are slow sellers or selling better than anticipated so it may be worth expanding the range.

Once the user has returned the results in a grid they can either print the report it or send the information to Notepad, see Printing the Results below. The user is able to specify which columns they wish to print out, for example the stock code and description and the yearly totals, so they can make informed decisions about their stock lines. The results can be sent directly to Excel by saving the file as a .csv export rather than saving the file as a text file and then importing it into Excel.

How to Access the Monthly Sales Report in Sales Summary

To open the [ Sales Summary | Management Reports | Monthly Sales ] screen:

  1. Open Sales Summary:
  2. Click on the [ Management Reports ] tab, the Monthly Sales screen will be the first screen loaded.

Examples of Using the Monthly Sales Report to Report on How Well Items are Selling

The two examples below describe how to report on non and slow sellers and report on stock items that are selling well.

Show Non and Slow Selling Items For the Year

  1. Open a Sales Summary screen (show me how)..
  2. Open the [ Management Reports | Monthly Sales ] screen.
  3. Change the Start from Order Date to 01/05/201? to view performance over the past year.
    Note: in this example the column for Month 1 will be for May 201?.
  4. To show the current value instead of quantity tick the Show Value (not Qty) checkbox (Optional).
  5. To hide the discontinued items tick the Hide Discontinued checkbox (Optional).
  6. To view items that are marked as Publish to Web on the [ Stock | Detail | Options ] screen and are published on your e-commerce site, tick the Publish to Web checkbox and then turn the traffic light filter to green (Optional).
    Note: leave unticked to see items not not marked as Publish to Web.
  7. To view items marked as Publish to Catalogue on the [ Stock | Detail | Options ] screen, tick the Publish to Catalogue checkbox and then turn the traffic light filter to green (Optional).
    Note: leave unticked to see items not marked as Publish to Catalogue.
  8. Filter the grid by level 2 stock type by selecting the stock type from the drop down and turn the traffic light filter to green (Optional).
  9. Filter by supplier by clicking on the the green opening folder icon is normally linked to the opening of a dialog box that allows the user to browse and select a value or range of values button, selecting the supplier and turning the traffic light filter to green (Optional).
  10. Press the Go button to populate the grid.
  11. To sort the grid to view the slow selling items focus in the Whole Year - Sales column and either:
    1. Left click on the Sales column header, or...
    2. Click on the Grid Menu button button found to the left of grid column headings and select Sort Ascending Ctrl+D from the options, or...
    3. Press Ctrl+D.
  12. The slow selling items will be displayed at the top of the grid which can then be printed, see Printing the Results below.

Show Best Selling Items For the Year

  1. Open a Sales Summary screen (show me how)..
  2. Open the [ Management Reports | Monthly Sales ] screen.
  3. Change the Start from Order Date to 01/05/201? to view performance over the past year.
    Note: in this example the column for Month 1 will be for May 201?.
  4. To show the current value instead of quantity tick the Show Value (not Qty) checkbox (Optional).
  5. To hide the discontinued items tick the Hide Discontinued checkbox (Optional).
  6. To view items that are marked as Publish to Web on the [ Stock | Detail | Options ] screen and are published on your e-commerce site, tick the Publish to Web checkbox and then turn the traffic light filter to green (Optional).
    Note: leave unticked to see items not not marked as Publish to Web.
  7. To view items marked as Publish to Catalogue on the [ Stock | Detail | Options ] screen, tick the Publish to Catalogue checkbox and then turn the traffic light filter to green (Optional).
    Note: leave unticked to see items not marked as Publish to Catalogue.
  8. Filter the grid by level 2 stock type by selecting the stock type from the drop down and turn the traffic light filter to green (Optional).
  9. Filter by supplier by clicking on the the green opening folder icon is normally linked to the opening of a dialog box that allows the user to browse and select a value or range of values button, selecting the supplier and turning the traffic light filter to green (Optional).
  10. Press the Go button to populate the grid.
  11. To sort the grid to view the best selling items focus in the Whole Year - Sales column and either:
    1. Right click on the Sales column header, or...
    2. Click on the Grid Menu button button found to the left of grid column headings and select Sort Descending Ctrl+U from the options, or...
    3. Press Ctrl+U.
  12. The slow selling items will be displayed at the top of the grid which can then be printed, see Printing the Results below.

Printing the Results

The results can be printed using the following options:

  1. Send to Notepad allows the user to send all or only selected data in the Grid to Notepad. This can be saved to external files, printing or importing into a spreadsheet program.
    Note: saving as a .csv file creates a file that is opened in Excel.
  2. Print Grid allows the user to display a report listing the information in the grid.

Did you find this article helpful?