Sales managers need to analyze turnover, gross profit and other key sales performance indicators on a regular basis. Purchasers, are more interested in the dynamics of purchase volumes, vendors' performance and purchase prices. Whereas logistics/inventory managers need information on inventory turnover, analysis of inventory movement, and statistics on inventory value.
You can use analysis reports to create customized reports based on records of your posted transactions, for example, sales, purchases, transfers and inventory adjustments. In a customizable report, the source data, which is derived from the item ledger (with associated value entries), can be combined, compared and presented in meaningful user-defined ways. In this sense, the analysis report is very similar to a PivotTable report in Microsoft Excel.
Example
You can create your personalized report that focuses on your key accounts in terms of total turnover both in amounts and quantities sold, gross profit and gross profit percentage during the current month, and have it compare those figures with the results from previous months or the same month last year, and calculate deviations. All this can be done in one and the same view, with the possibility to navigate to the cause of identified problem areas by clicking the AssistButton to access details on the level of individual transactions.
The analysis report consists of the objects that you want to analyze (for example, customers, customer groups, sales people and so on) represented as lines, and the analysis parameters, that is, the way you want to analyze the object, represented as columns (for example, profit calculations, periodic comparisons of sales amounts and volumes or periodic comparisons of actual and budgeted figures).
Example
You can set up lines like these:
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Computers
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Displays
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Spare Parts
Then you can set up columns like these:
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Sales Current Month
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Sales Last Month
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Sales in Pct. of last Month
Setting Up Line and Column Layouts
In the Analysis Report window, you can view different line and column layouts according to what you have set up. You set up your lines or line templates in the Analysis Line Templates window. In this window, you can define the name of the report and the objects you want to show in the lines of your report. You set up your columns in the Analysis Column Templates window. In this window, you can define the name of the column template and the analysis parameters that you want to show in the report as columns. In the Analysis Column Templates window each line represents a column in your report. Note that analysis lines and analysis columns are independent from each other.
Example
Based on the lines and columns you have set up, the program will aggregate the result of your report in the Analysis Report window, using a matrix like this:
| Sales Current Month | Sales Last Month | Sales Last Month % |
Computers |
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Displays |
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Spare parts |
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Total |
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You can, for example, set up one set of lines and several sets of column layouts to show monthly and annual reports respectively.