Four reports that answer the questions a manager actually asks about sales: what sold, who bought it, which brands carry the business, and what isn't moving. All four show revenue, cost and gross margin side by side.
| Report | Answers |
|---|---|
| Sales by Item | Which products make money, not just which sell |
| Sales by Customer | Who buys, how much, at what margin, and when they last did |
| Sales by Category | Which brands or product families carry the business |
| Top / Slow Movers | What to reorder, and what is sitting in the warehouse |
Before you start
- Pick your date range. All four default to the last month.
- Optionally filter to one Department (store, branch or van).
Steps
- Go to Reports → Sales Analysis and pick a report.
- Set From and To.
- Optionally choose a department.
- Choose what to Rank by — revenue, quantity, margin or margin %.
- Read the totals on the right of the filter bar; export with the buttons at the top right.
Understanding margin
Cost is taken from the stock movement each sale creates, so margin is only real for stocked goods. A service, delivery charge or fee has revenue but no stock cost.
To keep this honest the reports do two things:
- Margin % is worked out only over the revenue that actually carried a cost. A row of pure service revenue shows a dash, not 100%.
- A note under the filters tells you how much of the period's revenue had no stock cost, so you can see at a glance how much of the picture is stocked goods.
Finding dead stock
Open Top / Slow Movers and switch Show to Slow movers. Unlike the other reports, this one also lists stocked items that sold nothing at all in the period — which is usually the exact list you're after. Rank by quantity for units, or by revenue for money tied up.
Tips
- On Sales by Customer, rank by Last sale to get a lapsed-customer list — accounts that used to buy and have gone quiet.
- Compare the same month across two years by running the report twice and exporting both to Excel.
- Filtering by department shows one branch's or one van's performance.
- Sales by Category groups on the item's Category, so however you have organised the catalogue — by brand, by range, by supplier — the report follows.
Common problems
- Margin looks far too high. → Some of that revenue has no stock cost. Check the note under the filters: if most of the revenue is uncosted, you're mostly looking at services, not goods.
- An item shows revenue but zero cost. → The sale didn't record a stock movement, usually because the invoice had no Delivering Department set. Fix it on the invoice and the cost appears.
- "Showing the top N rows only". → The list was trimmed, but the totals still cover the whole period. Narrow the dates or filter by department.
- A customer is missing. → They bought nothing in this date range. Widen it.
- Numbers don't match the Profit & Loss. → These reports cover sales only. The P&L also includes other income, and applies period adjustments. Use the P&L for statutory figures and these for sales management.