What Do I Get In Report Toaster (that I don't get in Shopify?)

What Do I Get In Report Toaster (that I don't get in Shopify?)

What do I get out of Report Toaster that I don't get in Shopify? 
I already get reports in Shopify - why do I need Report Toaster?
Why should I upgrade my Report Toaster Account?

If you find yourself reading the above and having similar thoughts, then this is the article for you!  :)

Really the topic is quite broad, so what we'll try and do is break it down into 5 main areas:
Export Options, Better Reports, New Data, More Customization, and Premium Support

Export Options

Having the most comprehensive and specific dataset in the world won't do you any good if it doesn't get to where it's needed most.

In Shopify, anybody you want to view reports will need to be added as a collaborator account (which is especially problematic for anything external).
If you want to export the data, you have to do so manually - downloading to either CSV or JSON (and even then, not everything is available for export!).

In comparison, Report Toaster lets you export to CSV, JSON and PDFs - with the latter including any charts and dates from the report. 

But better yet, you can use Shared Links to provide anyone immediate access to Shopify data. Bookmark the link, and you can view live data in your browser at any time. 
You can also utilize Scheduled Reports also allow for automated delivery of key reports on a regular basis - perfect for creating alerts or anything else you might need on a regular basis.

Info
With Scheduled Reports, this even works with Google Sheets, so you can send reports directly to your Google account. 

All of this can save you hours of time from compiling everything manually yourself. Report Toaster gets you what you want, where you want it, and you won't have to lift a finger. 

Better Reports 

Shopify is good at providing a lot of the basics, but there are certainly some gaps.

So if you're just looking for the highlight reel, here's a sample list of some things we think no Shopify merchant should ever have to live without: 
  1. Frequently Bought Together - used for tracking popular combos of items, which is great for stores that are looking to bundle or discount certain products.
  2. Product Pick List - used to see the total quantities of everything that needs to be fulfilled without having to go through every order individually.
  3. Fulfillments by Location - used to see your sales totals fulfilled on a per-location basis.
  4. First Time vs Returning Sales - used to see the % split, orders, sales, and crucially, the AOV for each 
  5. Aged Receivables - used to see unpaid balances and which customers owe you money so you can followup accordingly.
  6. Revenue Recognition - used for accrual-based accounting, vital for stores that only recognize revenue when orders have been fulfilled.
  7. Customer LTV - used to see key customer metrics like total spent, LTV, AOV, Purchase Frequency, lifespan days and more.
  8. Product Cleanup - used to see which fields are missing from your products (e.g. missing costs, images, product types etc)
  9. Sales Velocity - used to see not just what sold but how quickly on a daily basis and how long current stock will last as a result.
  10. Stock Intake & Sales Velocity** - used to accurately measure real velocity so you can see how fast items are selling based only on when items are in stock.
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**This uses our Inventory History feature, which is enabled upon request and therefore works on an ongoing basis. Contact us at support@cloudlab.com to enable this for your account. 

You can check out more of our reports in the Knowledge Base here.

New Data

No matter what your plan type, Report Toaster has a number of unique fields that are either difficult to access in Shopify or just plain don't exist at all:
  1. Item Cost (COGS is available but not Cost on a per-item basis)
  2. Net Profit (Gross Profit is available, but you can't factor in things like Shipping, Shipping Costs and Transaction Fees for an overall total). 
  3. Transaction Fees (for Paypal/Shopify Payments gateways), Paid Amounts (how much the user paid) and Total Due (for aged receivables).
  4. Products Not Sold (for dead stock)
  5. Shipping Costs (for Shopify Shipping)
  6. Device ID (for identifying sales from a specific POS terminal).
  7. Repeat Rates (for repeat purchases)
  8. Shipment Status (and tracking links, where available)
  9. Inventory Location (and inventory-specific reports) 
  10. Returns by Line Item (with Return Locations, Return Notes, and Return rates) 
In other cases, you know the data exists somewhere in Shopify, but it's hard or even impossible to include on certain reports:
  1. Product Images (visible on Products but not on the reports themselves)
  2. Customer Addresses (visible on Orders or exports, but not on reports) 
  3. Metafields can be added in Shopify, but can't be used in custom fields.
  4. Line Item Properties & Note Attributes (visible on Orders or exports, but not on reports). Even then, this includes all of them - there's no way to separate these out.  
  5. Fulfillment Data (Shopify doesn't have fulfillment reports, so a lot of this has to be done manually on orders or via filtering a sales report) 
  6. Quantity and Net Quantity (Items Sold (ex Returns) vs Items Sold (inc Returns). These are sometimes (but not always) available.
  7. Inventory History (Shopify provides some limited functionality, but we have our own solution that can be combined with sell through for a more complete solution).
Report Toaster aims to bridge that gap by pulling data from all of the different places in Shopify and consolidating it into easy-to-use reports.

More Customization

Report Toaster is designed from the ground-up to make it easy to create your own custom reports.
Just like Shopify, we support the ability to adjust the dates (1), filters (2), columns (3) and sorting (4) on a report - see here. 



Of course, we've added a lot more capabilities they don't have: 
  1. More Date Options: As well as the options in Shopify, we offer relative periods (e.g. 5 months ago, 3 months from now), future dates (e.g. next 3 days), precision down to the minute/second, and more flexible Comparison Ranges
  2. Better Filters: Clearer AND/OR separation, Filtered Groups, Metric Filters, Saved Filters for future use, and more data points to choose from. 
  3. Levelled Sorting: Sort by multiple columns (e.g. Sort by X then by Y)
  4. In depth Metrics: Not just Net Sales, but get averages, min/max, % of total and so much more.
Better yet, we can even combine several fields and make brand new calculated fields for your account. See here for more info. 

Oh and one more thing (and arguably the most important...)

Premium Support 

Yes, clearly one of the best reasons to use Report Toaster app is the help you get from our Support!

Whether it's via the AI, Email, or the resources in our Knowledge Base, our team is committed to helping our customers make the most out of the app.

Collectively our team has over 20 years (!) of Shopify experience, and with several thousand customers using the app every day, we're experts at getting you the right reports to suit your business. :)

But hey, don't just take our word for it. Check out some of the reviews from some of the people we've helped over at the app store! 

Hopefully this gives you a hint of some of the powerful capabilities you gain using Report Toaster that you'd don't get from Shopify.

But if you have any further questions about using the app, feel free to reach out to us at support@cloudlab.com and we'd be glad to get you sorted!



 




 


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