Reporting Best Practices
Wondering how to know where you are in the process? Need to see the data at specific points to ensure you’re on track. Great! Below are the recommened reports from iPoint and VITAL along with a description of what they are typically used to identify.
Mix Analysis
If you’re a VITAL member you know how important the mix of equipment, parts and labor are! This report gives you that inforamtion for all Sales Orders. Additionally, there is a tab located in the bottom left hand corner of Designer where you can find the same information on an individual SO. Reports>Sales Order>Mix Analysis
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Sales Order Production Report![Sales Order Production report]( "Sales Order Production report")
How much of the work for a Sales Order (SO) has been delivered to-date; how much remains to be delivered? This report shows the total amount of the SO sold, and how much has been delivered vs not delivered. It also shows the labor hours sold with the SO, how many of those hours have been used, and how many remain. Important stuff for managing SOs! Reports>Sales Order>Production
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Customer Current AR Report
Who Owes Who How Much? Good cash flow management includes being sure to request progress payments in a timely fashion, as the SO moves forward.
The goal is to have the customer funding the SO, before the work is actually performed. When this is the case, the customer will have an RFP credit balance. We owe the customer. That’s good.
The SO Production report (above) shows how much money we’ve requested for a SO (RFP Requested) and how much of a credit balance remains for future work (RFP Credit Balance)
When the customers credit balance won’t cover the next round of work to be done on a SO, it is time to issue an RFP. And it goes without saying that if the customer has product and labor that are delivered and there is not a credit available, we need to have an active strategy for collecting the money. Reports>Customer Reports>Customer Current AR
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Item Stock Summary Report ![Product Manager Stock Report]( "Product Manager Stock Report")
VITAL refers to this as the Product Manager Stock Report
What Items Do We Need to Order? The SO Production report shows you how much product remains to be delivered to a SO, but which items might these be? The Item Stock Summary report shows, by SO, what items have been sold, and if items have been Requested, Ordered, Staged, or Delivered to each SO. Based upon when the next round of work for the SO is scheduled, it may be time to order products that have been sold, but not yet ordered. Reports>Sales Orders>Item Stock Summary
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Sales Order Funds Available/Needed
This report shows parts and labor that have been sold and delivered, and invoiced to the customer and if there is an open balance. This is useful for triggering Delivery Invoices and making sure that the product is delivered on jobs that you are trying to close and to easily idenify that you need to create and RFP and get additional funds from your client. The Avail/Needed Column positive numbers indicate that the RFP credits are greater than the delivery invoice charges. Negative numbers mean that there are not enough RFP credits to cover the total of delivered parts and labor. Reports>Sales Order>Delivered Not Invoiced
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Labor Time
VITAL recommends running this report every Monday morning to identify how much time is left on your Sales Order and that you communicate this with your Lead Technician. This provides them with valuable information so they understand exactly how much time they have left to work with. Reports>Sales Order>Labor Time
Production Report
VITAL refers to this as the Sales Pipeline
This report is ideal for companies using the RFP billing process as it lets you see the value of goods and services that have been delivered to the customer. You’d use this to determine if additional funds are needed from the customer to pay for the items delivered to them. Note: Click on a sales order to open it in a new window.This report should be run without dates, to capture all records and with Archived SOs hidden. Reports>Sales Order>Production Report
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Sales Order Summary
VITALrefers to this as the Sales Written report
Although this report can be run at any time and provide great information, VITAL recommends running this report for the dates of the previous month to see the value of sales. The report will capture any Proposal that has been converted to a Sales Order within the date range. Reports>Sales Order>Summary
PO Line Report
This report should be used to identify where your equipment is within the process (requested, ordered, staged, delivered). Run it and summarize by Sales Order, Vendor and Item to see all of your SOs at one time. This report can also be run at the SO level to view only the items related to it. Additionally, you can see all of this information without a report by clicking into Product>Product Manager in your SO. Reports>Purchase Order>Line Report
