What is a weekly sales report?
A weekly sales report is a summary of a company's sales performance over the past week. It typically includes information such as the total number of sales, the total value of sales, the average sale price, and the number of new customers.
How a Weekly Sales Report Can Help You Chart a Roadmap to Success
What is a Weekly Sales Report?
A weekly sales report refers to a summary of the sales activity of a company over seven days. It is essentially a business intelligence document that provides information on the volume of sales, new leads and prospects, revenue, and costs over a certain span of time.
Apart from weekly sales reports, you can have daily sales reports, monthly sales reports, quarterly sales reports, and yearly sales reports. Sales reports can also cover longer periods, but a business may prefer reports covering shorter time spans so that it can fine-tune its strategies more frequently, and micro-manage its affairs. Sales reports looking at a wider horizon, on the other hand, may be used to see the long-term impact of policy changes.
Sales reports, when equipped with actionable insights, allow a deeper analysis of the sales performance of the company as a whole, and that of its sales representatives. They also afford a better understanding of the reasons for the success or failure of a sales pitch. On the basis of this sales reporting and data analysis, organizations can forecast future sales, prepare for demand surges and declines better, and tie up loose ends.
In the case of restaurants, information on sales may be collected from the point of sale. POS data can point toward the overall sales patterns in the industry, which can help a business frame appropriate strategies to take on competitors. A sales performance and sales activity report is, therefore, an important decision-making tool for businesses.
What Goes Into a Restaurant's Weekly Sales Report?
A weekly restaurant sales report needs to include information on the money earned, the ways in which it was earned, and a summary of the most vital information. It would depend to a large extent on the kind of restaurant and the specific objectives of the restaurant. For instance, a pizzeria may want separate reports on takeout, dine-in, and delivery orders, whereas a restaurant that also houses a bar may want separate reports on food and beverage sales.
Indeed the most important component of restaurant sales is the revenue earned through selling food and drinks. It constitutes a restaurant's core function. Food sales reports tell business owners which menu items are popular and which don't have takers. They also highlight days and periods within a day that attract most traffic and those that don't.
If your restaurant makes retail sales or sells gift certificates, you need to track those items as well. Sales reports may also include food delivery charges that restaurants receive separately.
The revenue earned may be offset by discounts, or free/complimentary items. Data, in this regard, will show which promotional initiatives are working.
A deeper analysis of sales reports will also give you an idea of which payment methods customers prefer, and will help track the performance of your employees in terms of sales.
Sales reports are crucial to the progress of a business.
A well-written sales report can help a business make better decisions.
How Can a Weekly Sales Report Help You Succeed?
1. A weekly sales report helps shorten the sales funnel. A sales funnel refers to the journey of a customer from initial brand awareness to final product purchase. By analyzing sales reports you will know the quality of your leads and the probability of leads turning into actual customers. This information will also allow you to determine which leads are to be pursued further.
2. Sales reports help identify the most loyal customers of an organization. They explain the organization's cash flow to its sales managers; point out the number of prospects in the sales pipeline (or, the number of potential customers at different stages of the purchasing process); highlight the departments that draw the highest revenue; show days of high/low customer traffic; and unearth areas that could be improved. These constitute crucial business intelligence data that can help the organization plan better.
3. Sales performance reports help set benchmarks for sales reps. Those who are able to meet these standards and exceed them may be rewarded. Recognizing and rewarding good performance motivates sales reps to strive better, which ultimately boosts employee productivity and sales volumes.
4. With data supplied by sales reports it is possible to make product offerings and sales activities more focused, saving the organization time and money. For instance, analyzing sales reports can help businesses identify leads that have a poor response rate. Time and money can be saved by bypassing such leads.
How to Create a Weekly Sales Report?
You can create sales reports yourself using spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. You can also consider spreadsheets like the Daily Planner Template, Weekly Sales Activity Report, Sales Leads Template, Marketing and Sales Lead Goal Calculator, and the Sales Tracker Template. Spreadsheets, despite their limited scope and capability, let you have a tighter grip on sales reporting and analysis. A better alternative is fully automated customer relationship management (CRM) software.
The way a sales report template is created on Google Sheets will give you a fair idea of how spreadsheets are useful in sales reporting. This requires active human effort to capture data, choose the right templates, analyze the data, work out formulae, and maintain the data pool. Let's now consider in detail the creation of sales reports using Google Sheets.
Firstly, you need to import data from the CRM system. You may use the Coefficient app on Google Sheets to automate the transmission of data from large data pools. From the popup panel on Coefficient, choose 'Import data'. Choose your CRM system as your data source. Soon the imported information will appear on Google Sheets.
Choose your data fields in order to ensure you are not wasting time dealing with data you don't need. Since the Coefficient app helps you automatically update data, you need not manually enter the data.
Data visualization plays a key role here. Dry data is turned into visually-appealing presentations in the form of tables, charts, and graphs, which are easy to understand and provide a better overview of sales key performance indicators (KPIs).
Dashboards can be created in Google Sheets by selecting the 'Insert Chart' option from the 'Insert' tab located on the menu bar. The 'Chart Editor' option recommends charts you could choose. You can access options for editing the data range and chart type from 'Setup' under 'Chart Editor'. The title of the chart can be modified and unique formatting preferences for the color, texts, and other aspects of the chart can be added.
While creating sales reports you must clearly know for whom you are creating the reports, and what their specific needs are. For instance, if you are creating a presentation for the sales team, you need a detailed discussion on the sales team's performance in terms of the sales KPIs. Top management may, on the other hand, want a more to-the-point summary. Once you know your target audience and how deep you need to go with your sales reporting, you will be able to determine which data sets to include and which ones to exclude.
Can You Use Restaurant Management Software For Your Reports?
Restaurant management software doesn't just create sales reports, it makes the reporting more efficient.
A basic sales report template works well when you are dealing with a small sales team, a small number of sales reps, a limited cash flow, and a small sales volume. However, spreadsheet reports have their limitations. For instance, they need a great deal of manual effort to be created and maintained. The insights are also very rudimentary and documents cannot be shared with multiple users.
This is where restaurant management software comes in, solving many of the problems that spreadsheets cannot. With the help of POS systems, CRM systems, and sales reporting solutions, comprehensive reports can be produced and interpreted with ease.
A single CRM system, for example, acts as a mighty repository, housing information contained in scores of spreadsheets, email threads, and file folders. Accumulating all the information in one place has the added advantage of obtaining a complete picture of your business without requiring you to approach sales reps individually for data, or having to cross-reference spreadsheets.
Moreover, CRM software is an intelligent and intuitive tool that informs you about the clients to target, meeting schedules, and any follow-up action that may be necessary. A spreadsheet cannot afford you that luxury.
Also, unlike a spreadsheet, a CRM system allows several users to access it and make edits simultaneously.
Another defining feature of cloud-based restaurant management software is its ability to be accessed in real time and on any handheld device. This is particularly beneficial for multi-chain restaurants, and business owners can go through and make sense of a range of information generated by the POS system, business intelligence dashboard, or data reporting system even when they are far away from the site of their restaurants.
Furthermore, since the sales report generation by CRM software is a fully automated process, restaurant employees need not bother about collecting, maintaining, and presenting data. All those onerous tasks are taken care of by smart technology, while employees can focus on matters like customer service that need immediate attention.
A lot of people are daunted by the idea of writing sales reports.
They are not as difficult as you think they are if you have the right tools.
Top 3 Restaurant Management Software Solutions
1. Zip POS Dashboard-
This is a business intelligence and analytics solution available on the Hubworks app store. It provides an in-depth analysis of the data collected by a cloud-based POS system. Automated sales reporting and analysis ensures that manual labor and its attendant errors can be done away with. The Zip POS Dashboard solution can also be accessed through a mobile app, which allows data to be viewed and interpreted at any time and from any place. The software also supports automated data visualization so that data is easily digestible.
2. Pipedrive-
This software lets you add deals, the value of the deals, the probability of winning those deals, and their anticipated date of closure. This information is then arranged and tracked. The software offers colored cues to warn about deals that may go cold. Pipedrive helps automate every stage of the sales process, from scheduling calls to email marketing. The most important KPIs can be maintained in a centralized location. With Pipedrive live notifications are available whenever a contact clicks or opens your email so that you can follow up with your sales lead.
3. Hubspot Sales-
With the help of this software, you'll know when an email is opened by a lead. This information allows you to follow up at the right time to quickly close deals. Hubspot Sales allows the most effective sales emails to be turned into templates. In fact, a repository of useful sales content can be built up, and documents can be shared right from the Outlook or Gmail inbox. This software lets you automatically collect call details, prioritize sales calls, make or record calls from your browser directly, and log them in the CRM automatically.
Conclusion
A sales report is a vital source of business intelligence data for an organization. It informs a business owner if the sales teams are doing their job well and if the sales performance of the organization is on the right track. Armed with this information, the organization can make its strategies sharper and more effective.
A sales report tells the business owner which elements of the sales strategy are functioning well and which ones have to be fine-tuned. For instance, a restaurant that has introduced digital menu boards will be able to measure their effectiveness by analyzing sales prior to and post the initiative.
A sales report allows sales reps to take judicious calls by providing them with timely and accurate data. In the case of a restaurant, interpretation of past Restaurant Sales records will help produce effective sales/demand forecasts, which in turn ensures that the restaurant is neither saddled with unusable stocks during periods of low traffic nor does it run out of supplies during busy phases. Robust Sales Forecasts also help businesses optimize employee scheduling and control labor costs.
While creating sales reports it is also important to determine the target audience, scope, and purpose of the reporting. Using sales reporting/CRM software can deliver better results than depending solely on spreadsheets.
Business managers and operators don't often know how to write sales reports.
This article can help you put one together.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I write a weekly sales report to my boss?
A weekly sales report should include a summary of sales from the past week, as well as any plans for the upcoming week. This report should also include any new leads or opportunities that have been generated, as well as any challenges or obstacles that have been encountered.
What is the purpose of a weekly sales report?
The purpose of a weekly sales report is to track sales activity over time and identify trends. This information can be used to make decisions about pricing, promotions, and product mix.
How do I create a weekly sales report in Excel?
To create a weekly sales report in Excel, you will need to first create a table with the necessary columns. Next, you will need to enter the data for each week into the appropriate columns. Finally, you will need to create a chart that displays the data in the table.
How do you write a weekly sales report?
Start by creating a basic template that you can use every week. Include headers for the date range covered by the report, as well as sections for sales totals, new customers, and any other relevant information. Then, simply fill in the template with the necessary data each week and submit it to your boss or supervisor.