3 Easy Steps to Creating Your Weekly Sales Report Template on Google Sheets
What is a Sales Report?
A sales report refers to a document summarizing the sales activities of the organization. It contains information on sales volume, leads, new accounts, income, and costs for specific periods of time.
Apart from providing information on a company's sales performance, sales reports help in forecasting future sales, assessing the success or failure of sales pitches, and the performance of sales representatives on the basis of calls made and proposals delivered.
Sales reporting data acquired, for example, from a point of sale (POS) system, can be used to determine industry-wide sales trends so that the company can take steps to enhance its performance in comparison to its competitors.
Sales data can help a company assess its sales process, sales approach, and other initiatives for growth, as well as to identify areas for improvement.
Reports provide information on daily sales, weekly sales, and monthly sales, recording data at each stage of the sales process and analyzing the findings to make sales forecasts.
A business owner needs to know the factors driving and obstructing sales to gauge the performance of the business. Sales reports provide the raw material for business analytics. Predictive analytics, in this regard, draws from historical sales data and allows a foodservice business to better prepare for future sales spikes and lulls.
Once business owners are able to adequately interpret the sales data, they'd have a better sense of the areas on which to focus the energies of the sales team. Sales reporting lets business owners understand problematic issues like the reason for a team member bing unable to close deals, or one sales representative going great guns, while another unable to drive deals past the initial stages of the sales pipeline.
An organization looking for actionable insights on its sales performance would be served well by sales report templates. These templates help companies collect and analyze sales data and give ales managers the information needed to make smart business decisions.
Why are Sales Reports Important to a Business?
1. Sales reports help shorten the sales funnel or the customer's path from initial brand awareness to final product acquisition. Sales reports provide information on the quality of sales leads.
Not every lead is worthwhile for the company. Some leads may have lower contact/response rates than others, and some sources may bring in leads that are repeatedly of low value.
Businesses gain extensive data from sales reports, allowing them to prioritize high-quality channels, prospects and queries, warn sales teams of potential leaks as far as assigned and contacted leads are concerned, and advocate increasing or lowering budgets for specific channels.
2. Sales reports generate critical business intelligence reporting data that gives sales managers detailed insights into who their most loyal customers are, the number of prospects the sales pipeline contains, the cash flow status, areas of the business generating the highest revenue, areas the sales team should focus on, which days of the month business is brisk or slow, what lags need to be corrected, and so on.
This information enables a sales manager to make sound business decisions, keep track of the company's customer base and performance, and spot and handle problems before they become major issues.
3. Employee performance reports establish standards that sales reps must strive for, and tying performance to rewards ensures that employees will be motivated to give their best. As a result, the sales team's productivity and total sales volume will increase.
4. Sales reports allow a company to make its sales process and products more targeted and focused, thereby saving resources and time. Sales reports, for example, will alert a business owner about low quality leads and poor response rates unworthy of attention.
Creating a sales report template on Google Sheets can be time-consuming and tedious.
There are so many different templates to choose from and it’s hard to know which one will work best for you.
3 Steps to Creating a Weekly Sales Report Template- Step 1
To start off, data need to be imported from the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This can be done by going straight to the CRM system and producing a report that contains records and information required. This can be exported to a Comma Separated Values (CSV) file. Google Sheets can then be opened and the CSV file imported.
Alternatively, you can use a spreadsheet management system like Coefficient to directly import data from the CRM account to Google Sheets.
Coefficient links with any information source, bringing live data into Google Sheets. It is also able to export information to business systems and automate spreadsheet workflows.
Coefficient a Google Sheets sidebar app streamlines the process of creating weekly Sales Reports by automating the transport of data from data warehouses. It can be accessed from the Add-ons option on the Google Sheets menu.
To prepare a sales report template, select 'Import Data' from the Coefficient popup panel, and then select the CRM system you use as the data source.
The imported data should be visible on Google Sheets within a few seconds after you authorize Coefficient to connect to your CRM software.
You can pick and choose data fields that are to be included, ensuring that you only deal with the data you need. Even if the data in your CRM system changes after syncing with Google Sheets, you need not create new data imports. Data is automatically updated with the help of Coefficient so that business owners do not have to enter data manually.
Step 2
Dashboards turn dry data into attractive visual presentations and provide users with an overview of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at a quick glance. Users, coworkers, and clients can better understand data pulled from spreadsheets through the use of tables, charts, and graphs, which are visually appealing and easy to read.
To create a dashboard in Google Sheets, open the spreadsheet that contains the relevant information. Select all the data that you want to include in the chart. Then navigate to the Insert tab on the menu bar and from there, select Insert Chart.
In the Chart Editor, Google Sheets automatically offers a chart for you to use, labeled 'Suggested'. The Chart Editor appears on the right-hand side of the spreadsheet. Under Setup in the Chart Editor, there are options to edit the chart type and data range.
You can change the title and add your own formatting preferences for the chart's texts, colors, and other elements.
Dashboards will give you information on Restaurant Sales in an easily digestible format. This information can be interpreted and a future course of action determined.
Step 3
You may use a trendline for your Sales Forecast data in the chart, and it will be seen as an intersecting data line. Select the column for projected sales, then click the little box on the left-hand side of Trendline in the Chart Editor section.
You may use data labels and choose from a variety of formats, including polynomial, linear, exponential, logarithmic, moving average, and power series.
This chart can be interpreted with the help of Data Analytics and should give business owners a decent idea of how much money sales reps made during the week, allowing them to determine if the business goals were met. It would also serve as a tool for the sales team to make necessary improvements in their sales activity.
It’s tough to keep your sales reports updated, especially when you’re juggling a team of employees.
You want to be able to produce quick and accurate sales reports, but you don’t have the time or resources to do it.
What's Better Than Spreadsheets?
Creating sales reports using spreadsheets does have its benefits, but today, cutting-edge technology in the form of restaurant management software solutions promises even bigger benefits. CRM systems, POS systems, and sales reporting software solutions ensure that comprehensive sales reports are easily created and interpreted.
A single CRM system can store what multiple spreadsheets contain and can perform the function of a number of apps, including activity reports for each team member, sales data, contact data, emails, calendars, documents, and much more. You won't have to look for information in dozens of spreadsheets, file folders, or email threads, because all the information would be stored in the CRM system.
Plus, storing and updating all the information in one place ensures that the information is correct. To get a complete picture of your business and sales funnel, you need not ask for individual reports from every salesperson, or cross-reference sheets.
A spreadsheet can't tell you whom to call, when meetings are scheduled, or what follow-up action was missed. However, a CRM system is able to do so.
A CRM, unlike a spreadsheet, is able to share data, events, and tasks across several users. A number of users can access a CRM system simultaneously, make edits, and the CRM system can monitor their activities separately.
Zip POS Dashboard, which is available on the Hubworks app store, offers restaurant sales reporting solutions, and assists in integrating POS data and extracting significant business insights. Data on metrics like sales per labor hour, net sales, and so on must be analyzed in order to make Sales Forecasting accurate.
The Zip POS Dashboard software features hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly reports, as well as automatically generated graphs and charts and detailed KPIs.
Users of restaurant management software get real-time and immediate access to a variety of data generated through the POS system. The performance of restaurants may be followed in real time by business owners utilizing a cloud-based software platform, even when they are many miles away from the restaurant. This is a key advantage for businesses like restaurant chains, which operate across multiple locations. Reports can be read and evaluated on the go with the help of mobile apps on a handheld device.
Restaurant management software avoids errors caused by manual processes by completely automating data reporting and analysis.
Automatic generation of POS reports ensures that sales tracking is never tiresome, inconvenient, and dull. Viewing and analyzing reports can be done in a quick and hassle-free manner using the built-in features of restaurant management systems, such as data visualization tools. This allows restaurant employees to turn all their attention to customer service and improve the Customer Experience.
Top 3 Sales Reporting Software for Restaurants
1. Zip POS Dashboard-
A bit about Zip POS Dashboard has been discussed in the preceding section. With this software solution, users would get real time access to insightful information generated by the POS system.
The software provides all the data entrepreneurs need to expand their businesses. They don't have to assign staff to manually tally the figures because POS reporting is automated and available on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.
Managers can review their POS reports on the go with the help of a smartphone app, rather than having to log into the office computer to access sales reports.
Using POS data analysis, you can figure out how your organization has been functioning. Automatic graphs and charts allow entrepreneurs to thoroughly analyze the performance of their business.
2. Salesforce CRM-
It's known for its automation capabilities, which allow sales reps to improve productivity. Sales reps can use the Salesforce solution to find leads that promise the most value and that they can target in a focused manner. In addition, Salesforce CRM provides other technologies like the Salesforce Sales Cloud, that can help sales reps considerably. Real time customer data can be generated with the help of this software solution.
Salesforce can provide reports, sales predictions, and territory models for users, enabling them to make key decisions. The features of this software solution can also be expanded by integrating it with other Salesforce products.
Furthermore, it has the potential to work in tandem with external applications such as accounting platforms, and helpdesk solutions.
3. HubSpot Sales-
Key features of this program include report templates and custom reports, sales pipeline management, integration with Outlook and Gmail, sales automation, and so on. The product comes with a free trial. When a prospect conducts activities like starting an email account or clicking a link, the platform immediately notifies users. HubSpot Sales also allows contacts to be easily imported.
Even salespeople with no coding experience can take advantage of this program to automate sales processes. Follow-up emails can be automated without appearing impersonal.
HubSpot Sales integrates with HubSpot CRM, allowing business owners to track the sales pipeline and performance of sales reps. If an organization has simple sales management requirements, it can choose the Free Sales reporting plan.
Sales reports are a necessary evil.
They take time to create, which is time you could be spending making sales.