Fourth Analytics: Understanding the 01. Sales Dashboard

Overview

Fourth Analytics allows users to export dashboards, reports, and graphs so that the data can be further analysed and shared within their business. This article explains the ’01. Sales' dashboard – which uses sales data from the Rota module in Workforce Management (WFM).

The tabs within the 01. Sales dashboards are:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Period
• Year
• Trend

Data is shown based on the financial calendar provided by the customer. See - Fourth Analytics: Understanding the Financial Calendar.

Fig. 1- The 01. Sales Dashboard

Available Sales Types

Data feeds into Fourth Analytics once daily from the core application – Workforce Management (WFM).

Types of transactions:

• Actual Sales
• Forecast Sales
• Budget Sales
• Last Year Sales

Actual Sales – Workforce Management can be either updated manually within Rota/Schedule or automated via an EPOS provider. The Sales data is then exported to Analytics. If you see any issues with the data in Analytics – you should refer back to the rota module or Fourth Analytics: Reconciling WFM Sales Data. 

Forecast Sales – Forecast Sales are populated manually in the core solution by the Manager responsible for scheduling employees.

Budget Sales – Budget Sales can be requested to be loaded once annually or an FTP folder can be provided, so the Budget can be loaded as necessary by your business. Please speak to your Fourth contact if you would be interested as these options are chargeable.

'Last Year' Sales – Last Year's Sales are the Actual Sales for the same day in the previous year. 

Please note: Data refreshes incrementally, and periodically. So there may be circumstances when data changes in the rota, but not in Analytics. Two examples:

1. Actual sales data for a location were sent to Fourth, late. They appear in the rota, but not in Analytics - as the data is no longer captured in the automatic refresh.
   
   
2. You have uploaded your budget sales for the next 52 weeks, but can only see data for up to 6 weeks into the future. This is because the period captured in the automatic refresh only picks up dates a certain distance into the future. 

Like for Like Reporting

A daily 'Like for Like' (LFL) flag (yes or no) can be configured for each location. The flag is stored by date and allows WFM Analytics customers to filter Sales for this year and last year based on LFL status.

For more information on 'Like for Like' reporting please visit Fourth Analytics WFM UK: Like for Like Functionality.

Fig.2 - Like for Like Reporting