Sales analysis report

[meden]

Hi Community
I'm trying to understand why my sales analysis report is behaving as it is... I want to find out what our top 10 bestselling dresses are for a particular reporting period, and I am not interested in the sizes at this time - however when I generate the report it inserts random (or so it seems) size breakdowns.

If you look at the screenshot attached you will see that 9 dresses list as I want them to but for some reason it has listed the sales of the Montreal Camel & Black twice, once by name (with the correct total order value) and then directly underneath it the same dress by size (without the total value)

To add to my confusion the size breakdown of the Montreal dress sold in that period is size 10 = 2 sold, size 12 = 1 sold, size 14 = 3 sold so for some reason the report is grouping some sizes together but not others.

If I increase the number of top selling products to include, say, 25 dresses, this happens more and more obviously, some products display just the name but some break down to sizes sold - but it is not consistent. This happens whatever reporting date range I select.

Hope somebody can point me in the right direction?

[Krithika]

Morning Mick

I have raised this issue with the team for looking into a fix for a future release. Thanks for bringing it up. I'll update here in case I am informed about a reason for this behaviour.

Regards

[meden]

Thanks Krithika - just in the process of sending Alan in support a snapshot of the issue

[Jan]

Have you changed the name or the product references at all, the products are grouped by a combination of the product reference and the name (up to 255 characters).

Cheers,

[meden]

Hi Jan
No, I never touch the product references (apart from removing it from the end of the url) and all the products are newly created for the new site. Support suggested a workaround whereby I set up the products as follows:

Hidden product to have the price.
Permutation details, to have pricing of associated Product
Main Product to have Sum of Component Prices.
Component as a separate order line.
No Main order line for main product

This would tidy up the report but still show the sizes sold - which we don't want (we want to know our most popular styles, not sizes of styles)

The report generated in exactly the same way on V10 & V11 by the way

[Jan]

It might be possible to modify the report to include just the data you need (so to just group by product reference rather than by the variations), let me know if you would like me to look into this, if we did do this for you then there would be a small charge for the work.

Regards,

[meden]

Hi Jan
That would certainly be something we'd be interested in - can you email me with details please? mick[at]theprettydresscompany.com

[chris ashdown]

It might be possible to modify the report to include just the data you need (so to just group by product reference rather than by the variations), let me know if you would like me to look into this, if we did do this for you then there would be a small charge for the work.

Regards,

Please can you copy me aswell Jan with details etc

[Jan]

Sellerdeck : There is a little bugette in the report, if you make two sales for a picture frame and then set the top n value to 2 for product type and run the report you only get one item listed, this is because the item is listed like this :

Photo frame 2
Blue 1
Red 2

and so only photo frame and blue appears. Obviously people are not going to realistically use 2 for top n but I used that figure to illustrate the problem in an easy to reproduce way.

I will email you chris / mick.

Many thanks,

[Krithika]

Thanks for that Jan. It is an oddity

[Jan]

Hi Krtihika,

It's because the report uses topx function of crystal reports, the other thing I noticed is that the report orders the options by their quantity and so they can be separated from their parent consider this scenario :

Sales :

Sparkly dress -- blue - 5 sold
Sparkly dress - red - 3 sold
Spotty dress - blue - 10 sold
Spotty dress - purple - 1 sold

This is shown on the report for quantity like this :
Spotty dress - 11
- blue - 10
Sparkly dress - 8
- blue - 5
- red - 3
- purple - 1

imagine that multiplied by a whole shop full of dresses, with similar combinations of sizes and colours and you would be unable to see which option went with which dress.

I think it should be shown like this

Spotty dress - blue - 10 sold
Sparkly dress -- blue - 5 sold
Sparkly dress - red - 3 sold
Spotty dress - purple - 1 sold

Doing that would solve both problems.

Cheers,

[Krithika]

Thanks for the detailed scenario Jan. I have added it to the report.

Regards

[meden]

Just to update the thread - Jan created a report for me that works a treat and doesn't display unwanted/confusing information; thanks Jan!