Profit Report

[JohnHeart]

For one night I've been experimenting with this software. I was so excited that it has a feature of Total Sales Report.

I entered enough items on the Stock Table thinking that R Price stands for Retail Price and S Price stands for Selling Price. I also filled in the Inventory column.

After that, I tried the Purchase menu. Entered items from the stock table and closed the sale.

When I tried to look the reports on Total Sales I was dismayed. Net Sales and Gross Sales have the same value. It's correct because Total Tax is 0.

It's right. This is a cash register. It only say how much sales the store got.

It has nothing to say how much gross profit has earned from the sale. Other POS software has the following:

• - Total Cost
  - Gross Profit
  - Sale Average
  - Profit Average
  - Gross Margin

I read the online manual again, and found out that R is for Regular and S is for Sale. There is a special column that Dale has added -- the Cost column. This could be used as a column for retail cost of an item. And could generate gross profit simply by using the formula S Price minus Cost.

So, aside from Sales Reports and Merchandise Reports, I wish there's a Profit Report.

[Andrew]

John,

If you refer to previous forum postings - this has been suggested before. I believe you can export the data (I haven't checked the prior recommendations Dale has made on this topic) and use a spreadsheet application to very easily calculate profit.

[JohnHeart]

Wouldn't be a good additional feature to actually see it live inside DHPOS reports instead of exporting it to Excel? Having a

• - Total Cost
  - Gross Profit
  - Sale Average
  - No. of sales
  - Profit Average
  - Gross Margin

[Dale Harris]

JohnHeart,

It would be very nice if each individual user had every report they wanted calculated exactly the way the desired.

By looking at the stock table and extremely guessing, I estimate that there are approximately 21,856 possible different reports that could be generated. (And for those of you who are into partical physics, there would also be an additional 21,856 anti-reports.)

I would like to say, "This would take a while to code." But whenever I say that the response is always, "Just do the 5 reports that I want and screw the other 21,851 that other folk might really need (or 43,707 if you include the anti-reports.)

Of course the other folk want me to screw your reports and just do theirs.

Well like a mother with 140,000+ children I cannot choose a favorite kid and do only his (her?) reports so I solve this problem by the simple expedient of ignoring it completely, am I clever or what?

But I do offer the option of being able to export any portion of the stock table to any spreadsheet software where everyone can roll their own reports. Have fun!

BTW, I have often wondered how anyone could do an acurate profit report over time considering that in that time span, for each item, you may have had several different "cost" prices as your vendors change their prices and several different "sell" prices as you change your prices? I guess that will have to remain a mystery to me.

BTW2, You do know that you can set up the merchandise reports to give you a "cost" or "sell" value for your inventory?

[Andrew]

Wouldn't be a good additional feature to actually see it live inside DHPOS reports instead of exporting it to Excel?

JohnHeart,

We have a precious commodity here - it's code space, and there isn't a lot of it left due to the limitations of the language DHPOS is written in.

This kind of suggestion doesn't make the final cut because - well, the functionality is already there. In this example, by way of data export.

To code it in would mean other features which have been on the development table for a long time: customer accounts, credit integration, gift vouchers etc would have to be sacrificed to make way for some extra reports.

Anyway I think Dale's summed it up nicely in his usual unique manner.

[JohnHeart]

Thanks Dale & Andrew for a quick reply.

BTW2, You do know that you can set up the merchandise reports to give you a "cost" or "sell" value for your inventory?

Yes, I do. I don't know if I should go on this long procedure reading the inventory cost and sell value before and after the sales so I could get the total profit.

• before sales:
  sell - cost = difference 1
  
  after sales:
  sell - cost = difference 2
  
  total profit:
  difference 1 - difference 2