How to create a report on yesterday’s sales activity

Waiting for traditional reports is often a long and frustrating process because these reports are usually generated by the IT department and can take time to be completed. Oftentimes, factors change, making it obsolete by the time the report is received. Reporting doesn’t have to be time-consuming, static, or at-risk for inaccuracy. Instead, data analytics makes reporting simple, quick and intuitive.

Traditional reports are often cobbled together from a number of data sources, such as ERPs, CRMs, and combined using a spreadsheet. While spreadsheets are useful in business, they should not be used to combine businesses data as they are notoriously error-prone. An error in a single cell will invalidate the entire report. Spreadsheet errors can quickly become a financial disaster.

Using a data analytics solution that is compatible with your ERP system enables users to access data in real-time and across any dataset. With Phocas, reports can be generated with just a few clicks of a button, and your data drilled into for deeper insight.

Create reports in Phocas

With Phocas, everyone can quickly generate custom reports. For example, one of the most common information sales reps want to know is ‘What did I sell yesterday’ or, in the case of sales managers, ‘What did my reps sell yesterday?’ Here’s how simple it is to create a report to see what customers purchased yesterday:

• On the dashboard select the name of the sales rep. In this example, we’ll call her ‘Shelly.’
• Next, select the time period, ex: current month.
• Click on mode and select ‘transactions’ to see sales by date. This will list everything Shelly sold yesterday.
• The measures tab allows you to select a variety of measures you may want to include, such as value, cost, profit, margin %, average quantity in a period, and much more.

Save a favorite and share with your Sale Reps

One of the things that sets Phocas apart is the ability to make changes to your saved views, we call those favorites. To save a favorite, select the star in the upper right-hand corner and select ‘save favorite’. A dialogue box will open where you can designate yourself as the owner, name the report, and add a description for more detail. Lastly, you can export the report into an email and subscribe Shelly to it. Now the report will be delivered to her inbox every day.

When you share a report within Phocas, the receiver only sees data relevant to them and their security settings. This time-saving feature eliminates the need to manually alter each report. Users can also schedule the generation of reports at specific times, for instance, every Monday morning.