Meaningless reports?

[zgap111]

I've just tried these two reports:

[REPORT 1] Reports > Sales > Sales Analysis
Selected:
from x, to y,
More Options: Include orders with: all ticked
Summary: Ticked
Sales by country: Ticked
Remaining 3 not ticked.

Result:
Total Value of Goods ordered: £3743.26
Total Cost of Shipping: £604.70
Total cost of Tax: £554.43
Grand Total: £4902.39

--------------------------------

[REPORT 2] Reports > Sales > Tax Summary
Selected:
from x, to y, (same dates as REPORT 1)
More Options: Include orders with: all ticked

Result: [This report is very slow!! First time I ran it, I thought the program crashed with "Not responding" for a long time, until one time I just left it, and a report popped out of the printer 5 minutes later!]

Zero Rated 0%:
Order Value Excluding Tax = £51.69
Tax = £0.00

VAT Normal:
Order Value Excluding Tax = £3191.90
Tax = £554.43

TAX GRAND TOTAL = £554.43

--------------------------------------

REPORT 1: Grand total = £4902.39
REPORT 2: Grand Total = £51.69+£3191.90+£554.43=£3798.02

--------------------------------------

Both reports had the same from/to dates.
Both reports have the heading: "Orders placed between XX and YY"

The TAX figures are the same. GOOD.

The GRAND TOTAL are not the same. BAD

The Grand Totals should be the same. Right? But it's not.

Is there a problem with these reports? At the moment I don't feel confident at all in using any of the Sales reports in Actinic.

Tak.

[Nadeem]

Hi Tak

Not really had much issues with the reports, one thing about the Sales Analysis is that the "More Options", if ticked are taken into account, therefore if you tick them all then the report has to find which of those conditions are true, if they are all met then they will be on the report.
For tax summary not really sure about that, that would need an investigation, so I would suggest in getting in touch with Actinic Support on this. They would need your snapshot to check it

Kind Regards

[zgap111]

For both the More Options are all ticked.

The tax figures for both agree, so there's some sort of element to the two reports that is correct.

Since the Tax is agreed, I can now assume that there is something wrong with the Goods Value.

So I don't understand why the totals are different.

I will post a thing to support, and at the same time will make a manual analysis of the data over the weekend.

Tak.

[fleetwood]

Hi Tak

I remember encountering problems with the tax report a couple of years ago, but don't think I ever got to the bottom of it, and simply don't use that report.

Do you by any chance have goods that have tax set at something other than 0% or 17.5%?

The system allows for other tax rates to be set (exempt and custom), and I wonder if you have some goods set as exempt (maybe by accident), and the tax summary report ignores these - as a report, it shouldn't, as a tax summary should show ALL tax types - but its just a stab in the dark at the anomaly.

[zgap111]

Thanks for that suggestion, I'll look into that also over the weekend.

Our products are all 17.5%, except books which are Zero VAT.

Tax report is essential for us, since we don't want to pay 17.5% to the VAT man for sales that are 0%!!

We've just upgraded from v6 to v8, and during v6 I remember that the reports were meaningless to us, but at the time we had two systems for prepaid orders and we re-entered the Internet sales into our existing system.

We've decided to ditch the old system and use Actinic v8 entirely (as it took extra time to re-enter the orders), but the reports in v8 still seems to be meaningless to us - it's probably the same ones.

At the moment I'm using the actual payments received to be the sales figure.
I can't even check this with Actinic as I can't find a report in Actinic for Payments received in a given period of time - the reports in Actinic only seem to give reports based on the Order date alone.

Tak.

[fleetwood]

The reports in Actinic are pretty poor for accounts purposes.
I have it on my impossibly long 'to do' list, to write my own one day, using Access, or Crystal Reports (if I ever locate a cheap enough copy).
If its any help, I use the main sales report for my tax calculations, and ignore the Tax Summary report. The VAT appears to report correctly (other than well known rounding errors, which Actinic promise to fix one day), its just the sales figures that differ between the reports, and you can take them from the Sales report.
JAn at molened also offers a report configuration / customisation service, which might help if you want more detailed reports.

[zgap111]

Weekend Analysis Results!!

Note: I used a different date period for my weekend investigation, so the figures I mention here do not relate to my original post. However, using a different set of dates still produced a difference.

Here goes! The main problem with the differences were caused by:

===================================================
[1] The TAX Summary lists orders ONLY from the UK and EU. So orders from the US, Australia etc, were not listed.

Martin wrote: "The system allows for other tax rates to be set (exempt and custom), and I wonder if you have some goods set as exempt (maybe by accident), and the tax summary report ignores these - as a report, it shouldn't, as a tax summary should show ALL tax types - but its just a stab in the dark at the anomaly."

So you're right Martin! It has left non-EU (standard no VAT applicable countries) out!

- There is a TAX tab in the Business settings, I'm not sure whether adding an extra zone would help. (Currently we have 3 zones - UK, EU, and "No Tax Levied")
- In the Tax Summary report, under "band id" where does the tax code of "000" for zero rates, and "301" VAT(Normal) come from?

This then left a £15 difference.
===================================================
[2] A UK transaction of £100+£5Carriage+VAT, which we applied a -15% on the
View Order > Totals > Surcharge/Discount Percent

We did this to give a 15% discount on the goods ordered.

The TAX Summary has this down as Order Value = £105
It should be £100 less £15 plus £5 Carriage = £90

A £15 difference.

The Sales Analysis figures adds up to reflect the £90+VAT figure
===================================================

Therefore the TAX Summary Report cannot be used as it is inaccurate.

Regarding Sales Analysis report, I did a test.

Since it is based on order date, we usually use software that prints reports based on invoices, so once a report is done based on invoice dates and we don't back date invoices, that report is final.

The Actinic Sales Analysis report is based on orders, and since our orders are not immediately invoiced (for various reasons this cannot be done, eg items need processing before shipping), we have orders that are shipped and invoiced after the order date.

On my test, we still have outstanding orders during period X, so I shipped & paid it on Actinic on a date that is outside period X.

When I do the same Sales Analysis report the figures are different. It has the extra item I just invoiced. That means the report for period X is not final until all orders are completed during period X.

We don't back order anything. I'm not sure what effect Back-ordered items have on these reports.

I hope that Actinic will include an option to do reports based on dates other than the order date.

[fleetwood]

That means the report for period X is not final until all orders are completed during period X.

Yup, this is another very annoying feature of the report.
Like many others, we too can't process all orders as received due to stock availability issues, which leaves some incomplete orders carrying over from one month to the next.
The only workaround we use, is at the end of a reporting period, finalise ALL orders, before running the report. For orders which we haven't yet completed, we cancel them, so that they are zero for that period, but at least closed, and then manually re-enter them into the next period, so they become dated in the next time period.
Its a very messy waorkaround, and inaccurate accounting, but is the only way we can make use of the inbuilt sales report.
Without this, we would have to move the sales/tax reporting to an additional program eg re-neter evrything into Quicken, which I don't want to do!

What it boils down to, is that Actinic is a good order processing system, but not a good accounting system.