We all recognise the importance of knowing how much money is being made and spent and what’s being sold, but often this analysis comes at the end of the month, resulting in weeks of lost opportunity to make changes and get back on track.
The fast-paced nature of business today, combined with the huge leaps in data and tech, mean that we’re able to access meaningful data much more frequently, which means you can keep on top of opportunities and red flags before they pass you by.
Don’t wait until the end of the month to start getting into data and figuring out why some things are working and some things aren’t. Weekly reporting makes it easier to connect with the key people in your business, and to understand the flow of the business, which enables you to take proactive steps to improve or make changes, the very next day, not the next month.
We recently hosted a Kounta Masterclass on how you can use our Insights tool to make reporting quick and easy, and in it we highlighted the four key areas that should be reported on weekly. Being across your data all the time enables you to connect with your team daily, so you can identify wins and opportunities, reward great behaviours and jump on problems sooner.
Weekly reporting essentials
1. More than just the top line.
When it comes to reporting, tracking how much money’s coming in the door is pretty obvious. But as much as knowing how much you’re making is important (and fun!), there’s a lot of value to be found by digging a little deeper. It’s not enough to simply know the numbers, you have to understand what they mean to your business and how they represent levers you can pull to affect change.
Breaking down your sales by hours of the day, or your transactions by days of the week, and looking at this data weekly (if not daily) is going to give you tangible things to discuss with your team and a much better picture of trends and forecasts.
2. What your customers are buying and why.
Having the ability to regularly track what your customers are buying from you (and what they aren’t), is a really important step. Using our Insights reporting tool, you’re able to track top-selling POS categories to see what’s not performing as well as it could be, and so you can think about how to support your team to sell more of whatever it is they’re struggling to move.
You can also break your reports down into different product groups, most improved products and most popular. This dive into the detail lets you really see the true story of your business on a day-to-day basis – it’s important to identify where you’re getting value and what lessons you can apply to other areas of the business.
We chatted to Green Beacon venue manager, Charles McKay, who said that by far the report that helps him most is tracking individual product revenue each week.
“When we release a new product, we watch the demand closely. Naturally, new items pull sales of other products down, but eventually, the effect wears off and things even out. If one product sells too fast or slows sales of another, we’ll need to make a change. Without Insights, staying on top of all these fluctuations is very difficult”.
3. People power.
There’s no denying that people are a key indicator of your business’s success. Without a killer crew and loyal customers, you’re not going to get far. For this reason, your reports need to focus on breaking down how your staff are performing and who your best customers are.
Internally, you should be looking at the contribution your staff make to revenue and their average transaction value. By looking at what these top performers are doing well, what behaviours they exhibit, and how they deal with customers, you can extrapolate learnings that can be applied to the rest of the team, as well as reward that team member for their excellent results.
From a customer perspective, you should be using regular reporting to identify who your high-value customers are, so that you can celebrate them and really nurture that relationship so they keep coming back.
We chatted to dynamic duo, Fleur Caulton and Josh Emett, from NZ’s Rata and Madam Woo, about how they use their reports to keep their customers happy.
“It just means constantly understanding what your customers want – what they’re using, as far as our product, what they’re buying, and then understanding what their buying patterns are. Then, giving them the things that they like rather than the things that they don’t.”
4. Cashing in.
At least once a week you should be reporting on how money is coming into your business and really digging into this data. Are less and less people paying with cash? Are integrated payments on the rise? Are more people using ordering apps such as HeyYou?
The question you’re really asking is, how do people want to pay? If you get more customers ordering the way they want and paying the way they want, you’ll inevitably keep them coming back. Being on top of these payment trends means you can take a critical view of how you’re payment processes are set up and think about whether they’re serving you the best they can.
