Choosing What's In Your Store Report Email

TL;DR

Your nightly store report email is built from sections: sales by product type, payments, purchase orders, payroll, discounts and more. You choose which sections show up and how. Go to Dashboard → Reporting → Store Report, click Manage Automatic Nightly Reports (bottom left), then click What Reports to send & how to send them next to the report you want to change. Every section has two ticks. Send As Content puts it in the body of the email. Send As Attachment adds it as a spreadsheet file. Each report period (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual) keeps its own choices, so changing your daily email doesn't touch your monthly one.

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The note at the top of your daily email says "You can now define which reports come as content in this email and which come as attachments," and tells you to click the gear/settings button. This article walks you through that screen and explains the few behaviours that surprise people.

Getting There

1. Open the Dashboard → Reporting → Store Report. You can also type "store report" in the search box.

2. In the bottom-left corner of the Store Report window, click Manage Automatic Nightly Reports. This is the button your email calls "gear/settings."

3. The Store Reports Settings window opens. The When to Send Reports box lists each report period:

   • Send Daily
   • Send Weekly
   • Send Monthly
   • Send Quarterly
   • Send Annually

   Tick a period to have that report emailed automatically. Next to each one is a What Reports to send & how to send them button.

4. Click What Reports to send & how to send them beside the period you want to change. A window opens with that period's name across the top, such as Daily Report Settings or Monthly Report Settings.

The same Store Reports Settings window also has the list of people the reports go to (When sending Store Reports, send to these contacts). Use the + button beside the list to add someone.

The Two Ticks on Every Section

Each section of the report has its own box with two ticks:

• Send As Content puts the section right in the body of the email, so you can read it without opening anything.

• Send As Attachment adds the section as a separate spreadsheet file. That's handy if your bookkeeper wants to open the numbers in Excel.

You can tick one, both or neither. Tick both and you get the section in the email and as a file. Tick neither and the section is left out completely.

Your ticks save as soon as you click them. When you're done, click Close.

The one thing to know about Send As Attachment

If you have never clicked a section's Send As Attachment box, it follows that section's Send As Content box. So if you untick Send As Content, the section drops out of the email entirely, even though Send As Attachment still looks ticked.

If you want a section as an attachment only (in the files but not in the email body):

1. Click Send As Attachment once to untick it, then click it again to tick it back on. Now it's your own choice, and it stands on its own.
2. Untick Send As Content.

Once you've clicked a Send As Attachment box, it keeps whatever you set, no matter what the Content box says.

Payroll works differently. Its Send As Attachment box already stands on its own. The payroll spreadsheet keeps coming as an attachment until you untick that box yourself, even if you've turned off Send As Content for Payroll.

What's On the Settings Screen

Here's what each box on the settings screen covers:

• Sales by Product Type: how much you sold in each product type.

• Sales By Payment Type: your sales split by how customers paid.

• Purchase Orders: the purchase orders for the period, with a total.

• Payroll: employee hours for the period.

• Humidors: temperature and humidity readings for your humidors, marked green, yellow or red against your acceptable range. This section only appears for cigar and tobacco shops.

• New Accounts: customer accounts created during the period.

• Discounts: discounts given, grouped by type. Under Include These Discount Types you choose which kinds to list: Manually Set, Manually Set w/ Override, Account, System and Employee. Use the Greater Than column to show only discounts above a minimum. Tick Ignore Admin for a type to leave out discounts rung up by admin users.

• Account Important Dates: upcoming customer dates such as birthdays. Inside it, the Important Contacts Report box does the same thing for only the account types you pick. Use the add and remove buttons beside its list to choose those account types.

• Sales Tax: your sales tax summary for the period.

• Sales Tax Line Items: sales tax broken down by line item.

Each Period Keeps Its Own Settings

The Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly and Annual reports each remember their own ticks. Turning Payroll off in Daily Report Settings leaves Payroll on in your weekly and monthly emails. To change a section everywhere, open each period's What Reports to send & how to send them and change it in each one.

Also, not every section is part of every period:

• The daily report has no sales tax section. Sales tax only appears in the weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual reports. That's why the two sales tax boxes on Daily Report Settings don't change anything.

• The Store Report you run yourself has its own settings too. When you open Store Report and click Generate Reports, the section boxes right there in that window decide what's included. They're separate from the automatic emails.

That's why the same day can look different depending on how you pulled it. Your nightly daily email uses Daily Report Settings, and a Store Report you run by hand for that same day uses the boxes in the Store Report window. If the two don't match, compare the ticks in both places.

If You've Never Changed Anything

A section you've never touched is on. Out of the box, every section is included in the body of the email, with every discount type listed and no minimum. If your email is longer than you'd like, the fastest fix is to open Daily Report Settings and untick Send As Content on anything you don't read.