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: New Data, Better Data, Custom Reports, Export Options, and Better Support

New Data

One of the important things to cover right from the start is that Shopify offers very different reporting capabilities based off your plan type. 



Therefore for Basic and Shopify customers, Report Toaster is an easy choice as they can't customize reports or save them for future use. 

But the key thing to note here is that 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.
For example:
  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)  
  4. Products Not Sold (Dead Inventory)
  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) 
And that's just for starters. We're constantly adding new fields to our reports all the time, so this list can only get larger as we add more critical data to our app. 

Better Data

In other cases, you know full well that the does exist somewhere in Shopify, but are hard or impossible to utilize in certain reports. 
For example:
  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 currently you can't include them on any reports 
  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 only provides month-end timestamps and it isn't available for use. We have our own rather than providing complete day-to-day snapshots)
Report Toaster aims to bridge that gap by pulling data from all the different places in Shopify and consolidating it into easy to use reports.

A lot of the time we can even combine several things together to make brand new custom fields. 

For example, our Sell Through report can take the basic Shopify metrics of how much you sold vs how much you have in Stock to calculate a Sell Through Rate.
Then our Sales Velocity report can go one-step further, using these numbers to work out your Daily Quantity Sold and Days of Inventory remaining based on this current rate. 

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We can even combine this with our Inventory History if you like, calculating how much you sold based on how long the product was even in stock to get a true sense of your stock movements. 

Custom Reports

Report Toaster is designed from the ground-up to make it easy to create your own custom reports.
Once you find a suitable template from the lefthand menu, you can easily adjust: 
  1. Dates - To run the report in the timeframe you select. As well as Last dates we have Next dates, precision down to the minute and second, 
  2. Filters - Introduce a filter to narrow down the data to very specific results. 
  3. Columns - Add, remove, and change the order of any Columns on a report. 
  4. Sort - Change to sort by any column, both ascending and descending. 


Check out our basic guides for more information on customizing a report. 

Of course we had to take things one step further...
  1. More Date Options: As well as Last Day, Week, Month etc we can offer relative periods (e.g. 5 months ago, 3 months from now), 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.
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Not quite finding what you need?  Then we can even build custom fields to suit your individual account - see here for more info.

Export Options

Once you find the data that you need and you have it displayed the way you want, then you can start looking at how to export your data.
After all - 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.
  1. In Shopify you're limited to exporting data via CSV (and even then, not everything is available for Export!)
  2. In Report Toaster, you export your data into CSV, JSON, or PDF. These extra formats really help when trying to access your data elsewhere, such as importing into 3rd party applications. 
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Moreover, you can even create Scheduled Reports for automated delivery of key reports on a regular basis.
Or why not try Shared Links - giving somebody a direct link to a single report that they can bookmark and check live data at any time. 

All of this means that Report Toaster essentially gets you exactly what you want, exactly where you want it.

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

Better 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 Chat, 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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