The Analytics Module: Eight Pages, One Habit
There is one question a stack of invoices can never answer: what is actually happening in this shop?
Invoices answer “who paid how much”. Financial reports answer “profit or loss this month”. Both are true, both are needed — and neither explains why this month differs from last.
The Analytics module exists for the question that is left over. Not a second set of reports with competing numbers, but a way of reading the same transactions from angles an invoice never shows: per item, per customer, per technician, per payment method, per fault type.
Eight pages sounds like a lot until the pattern shows. Four are about transactions — Repairs, Sales, Purchases and Live. Four are about people or things — Customers, Suppliers, Staff and Products. Transaction pages answer “what happened”; the others answer “to whom”.
This tutorial does not walk through all eight; that is what the other tutorials are for. It settles one thing only, and it is the thing most often missing: knowing which page answers which question — so you do not open seven pages chasing an answer the first one already gave you.
Before you start
- At least a month of transactions. Analytics reads patterns, and five transactions have no pattern.
- View permission for the analytics pages you want to open — each page carries its own.
Steps
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Open the Analytics menu and learn what is in it
There are eight: Live, Repairs, Sales, Purchases, Products, Customers, Suppliers and Staff. The first four are about transactions, the rest are about who or what. That split decides which questions each one can answer.
Eight pages, one menu. -
Understand how it differs from Financial Reports
Reports answer "how much" for bookkeeping: profit and loss, cash flow, balance sheet. Analytics answers "why" and "who": which items earn, which customers return, which technician fails most often. Both read the same data.
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Set the period once, at the top
Every analytics page has a start and end date filter in its header. All cards, charts and tables below follow that period — no block quietly uses a different range.
Set the period once at the top; everything below follows it. -
Learn the four tabs that never change
Transaction pages use Trend, Period, Rankings and Breakdown. Trend shows direction day by day, Period compares two ranges, Rankings sorts the top performers, Breakdown splits the numbers per item, per person or per payment method.
The same four tabs on every transaction page. -
Start with Repairs or Sales, never with Products
Those two hold your actual money. Products, Customers, Suppliers and Staff answer follow-up questions — and follow-up questions only help once you already hold the main one.
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Read the people pages once the core numbers are clear
Customer Analytics shows who returns and who came once and vanished. Staff Analytics shows each person as technician and as cashier. Both read the same transactions from a different angle.
Pages about people answer a different kind of question. -
Print if you must, but do not make it the habit
Every analytics page prints as it stands. What helps more is opening it regularly, once a week in a quiet hour, because the value sits in the change between weeks — not in a single printed sheet.
What you end up with
You know which analytics page answers which question, how it differs from Financial Reports, and you have a way of reading your shop numbers that does not depend on a stack of invoices.
If something goes wrong
The Analytics menu does not appear at all
View permission for analytics pages has not been granted to your group. Ask the shop owner to open it under Access Rights. Each analytics page has its own permission, so some may be open while others are not.
The page opens but every number is zero
Check the period. The default range does not always cover your transaction dates, especially in a newly used shop or early in the month. Widen the range before concluding the data is empty.
Analytics numbers differ from the Profit and Loss report
That is expected when the periods differ, and when the basis differs: analytics counts completed transactions, accounting counts journal entries. Align the date range first, then compare.
The page feels slow on a wide range
Numbers are computed when the page opens, with no stored summary table. A full year in a busy shop genuinely takes time. Narrow the period, or open it in a quiet hour.
Related tutorials
- Tutorial
Live Analytics: Numbers That Move on Their Own
The one analytics page with no period filter — and why.
- Tutorial
The Breakdown Tab: Six Measures, Every Angle
Qty, revenue, discount, cost, profit, margin — so the numbers compare.
- Tutorial
Lite Financial Reports
The bookkeeping side: profit and loss, cash flow, receivables.