What the till tells you.
WHAT THE SYSTEM RECORDS
Every transaction What sold, when At what price Who served
WHAT TO EXAMINE
Sales by day and hour Sales by item and category Margin by item Transaction count and average value Voids, discounts and refunds
WHAT SALES BY HOUR TELLS YOU
When to staff, and when to open.
WHY THAT MATTERS
Staffing to a uniform pattern wastes money and fails at peaks.
WHAT AVERAGE TRANSACTION VALUE TELLS YOU
Whether customers are buying alongside.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT A LOW FIGURE
Examine placement, prompting and range.
WHAT ITEMS BOUGHT TOGETHER TELLS YOU
What to place near each other.
WHAT SLOW ITEMS TELL YOU
What to stop stocking.
WHAT VOIDS AND REFUNDS TELL YOU
Errors, or losses.
WHAT TO REVIEW WEEKLY
Sales, margin and the exception reports.
WHY WEEKLY
Monthly review finds problems too late to act on.
WHAT TO COMPARE
This period against the same period last year.
WHY LAST YEAR RATHER THAN LAST MONTH
It accounts for seasonality.
WHAT TO ACT ON
Anything that changed without explanation.
WHAT TO AVOID
Collecting data nobody examines Reacting to single days
WHAT TO SHARE WITH STAFF
Figures they can influence.
WHY
People cannot work toward numbers they never see.
