Top 10 Reports a Rep Cannot Live Without!

This is your guide to must-have reports in Play for PC. These reports can help you with customer profiling, setting appointments, finding that lost customer, and identifying opportunities that could have otherwise been missed. You cannot live without these reports!

If you don’t have some of these reports, or if you can’t see one of the reporting modules altogether, contact your home office to have your permissions changed.

Sales Analysis

To launch Sales Analysis, click the top-level Reports menu > Sales Analysis:

1) All Orders Within One Year

The first report you just cannot live without can be used to develop profiles for your customers. Having a good handle on your A, B, and C level stores will help you target each group with different sales tactics and marketing materials. Click the Level 1 drop-down menu and choose Customer (Bill To). Then, click the Single Range option to define a time period of one year. Click the Run Report button in the bottom-left to preview the report. To export the report to Excel, which will provide customer contact information, click the Export to Excel option and then click Run Report:

Keep in mind that you can specify a Limit To Type next to the Level 1 drop-down menu of All, Best, or Worst. Additionally, you can enter a value in the Count field, which defines the number of results to return. You can also choose to report on Dollars or Quantity. In the example below, a report will be generated for the top 10 customers based on the dollar amounts they’ve spent in the last year.

2) Customer Sales Comparison

This report will display all your customers and compare orders written within the date range you specify, up to one year prior, for the same time frame. You’ll also see the number of orders placed compared to the dollar amount of those orders with an average order total and percentage variance.

Set Level 1 to Customer (Bill-To) and choose Comparison under the Date Range section. You can enter the date range this year compared to the same date range last year. Notice that the time periods can be adjusted if they don’t contain the exact same days:

3) All Sales Orders Not Complete (sorted by highest dollars)

This report will help ensure you are completing each order that is written. You’ll see all sales orders that do not have a status of Confirmed sorted by highest dollar amount so you can finish the larger orders first!

Select Sales Order in the Level 1 drop-down menu and click the Highest $ option as the Sort By method. To see all orders, click the No Limit option under Date Range. Make sure the only boxes checked in the Sales Order Status To Include section are: Pending, Quote, and HFC. Click the Run Report button in the bottom-left:

Report Limits

Report limits allow you to drill down even further into the data displayed on the report. We’ve already covered date ranges as well as sales order statuses and types.

a) Agency Limit tab

• Click the Select Criteria buttons at the bottom to limit the report by sales location, sales rep and order taker. As a sales rep, your name is automatically populated.

 b) Supplier / Product tab

• Click the Select Criteria buttons at the bottom to limit the report by supplier, product lines, and individual products.
• To set a product limit, you must first select the supplier and product line.

 c) Customer Limit tab

• If you’d like to generate a report on one or multiple Bill-To records, you can set customer limits.
• To add a customer limit, search for the customer name in the top-left field and then check the box next to the customer in the Search Results

 d) Ship To Limit tab

• Click the Select Criteria buttons at the bottom to limit the report by Ship To State, Ship To City, and Ship To Zip.
• The Ship To limits will display any state, city or zip code that is on a sales order. Keep in mind that you will not necessarily see every zip code in your territory - only those that are associated with sales orders

e) Territory Limit tab

• You can report on sales orders by territory. Each sales order with an assigned territory will display when using these limits.
• If the report does not seem accurate, your Brandwise admin may need to run a territory replacement. If territories are changed, this process associates every past sales order with the current territory configuration.

4) Appointment Settings 

Now that we’ve discussed report limits, let’s dig a little deeper by running a report to look for opportunities to set appointments with customers at shows. It will generate a simple list of all customers who placed an order at a specific sales location and/or during a certain time period. Select Customer (Bill To) in the Level 1 drop-down menu. Specify the date range of the show on which you’d like to report. Make sure that only Show and Showroom options are checked in the Sales Order Types To Include section. If your customers shop on Reach, make sure to select Exclude Web Orders in the Web Orders section to exclude those orders from your search results. To export the report to Excel, which will provide customer contact information, click the Export to Excel option and then click Run Report:

If your orders were stamped with a sales location, you can also limit the search results to just that sales location by clicking the Agency Limit tab. Then, click the Select Criteria button under the Sales Location section:

Click the sales location you want to use as a limit, and then click the [] button to move the sales location to the right side. Click Done: You’ll see that the report is limited to the sales location chosen. Click Run Report:

5) Opportunity Report

Let’s run an Opportunity Report with two levels of reporting. This report will display a list of your customers and the suppliers they’ve ordered from for the date range defined. It gives you insight to the suppliers that are being purchased by customers so that you can recommend new orders for other potential suppliers. Select Customer (Bill To) in the Level 1 drop-down, and then select Supplier in the Level 2 drop-down. Define the date range and then click the Run Report button:

6) Best Suppliers

This report will display your top 10 suppliers in the system based on order quantity or dollar amount. You can also set a date range to determine the best supplier for that time period. The report results will include sales order quantity, sales order amount, sales order average, and percent of above sales order average.

7) Direct Orders

This report is a list of all direct orders that have been entered in the system. These orders were not placed through Brandwise. You could use this information to find opportunities to connect with these customers and begin entering their orders in Brandwise. To limit your sales order type, you will need to uncheck all types except Direct:

8) Top 50 Orders

This report will display your highest dollar amount or highest quantity orders within the time range specified. Select Sales Order from the Level 1 menu. Select Best from the Type menu. Enter a value of 50 in the Count field and select to report by Dollars or Quantity. Click the Run Report button in the bottom-left:

Basic Customer List

The Sales Analysis module reports on sales. If you just need to generate a list of all your customers in Play using Customer Labels, see the article here.

9) Customers With No Orders In The Past Year

Let’s create an opportunity report using Customer Labels by analyzing which customers had no sales orders within the last year. Make sure you clear the previous report by clicking the Clear All Customers From List button located on the Customer List Tab:

On the Selection Criteria tab: 1) check the box next to Limited By Sales Order Activity, 2) specify a date range of one year, 3) select Who have no Sales Orders within date range in the Sales Order Limits section, and 4) Click Add Customers To List:

Then, click the Customer List tab to print mailing labels or create an export file:

The Report Menu

The last report we’ll run can be found under Reports > Report Menu. You will see the reports are broken out into a variety of categories:

10) Product Changes

The Product Changes report will display all changed products that have been loaded on the server. The changes can range from new product additions to updated product pricing. This is helpful when you need to review updated products from a certain supplier. Select Products under Category and then Product Changes under Reports. Select a supplier from the drop-down menu. If your supplier has product lines, you can limit that as well. The Product Change Date Time drop-down menu will display the date that the new product was imported and a count of how many products have been changed. Click Preview or Print to view, save and print the report.

Report Menu Summary

The Report Menu offers some simple, pre-built reports. Now that we’ve run one of them, we’ll describe a few more to give you an idea of what to expect.

• Under Sales, several agencies use the Weekly Sales Order Log to keep track of orders.
  • This report runs the last week of orders and can be run as-is. You can select a rep group or sales rep if you like. This report will pull the sales orders for the person who is logged in to Play.
• Under Products, there is an option to run a Product Catalog This report will provide information about each product currently loaded into the system.
  • If you’re running the report for more than one supplier, you can insert a page break at each new supplier or product line.
• Under Customer, you can run a Customer With No Sales report to view customers with no sales orders.
• Under Vendor, you can run the Invoice Less than Sales Order by Rep
  • This report shows orders with a status of confirmed where the order total is higher than the invoice amount. This will give you an idea of what commissions have yet to be paid on your orders.
  • It will also show a comparison of your booked orders versus the orders that have shipped if that information has been tracked by your agency.

There are other reports that help you find useful information and are largely self-explanatory. Please take a few moments to explore the Reports Menu to find out which reports will be best for you!