Analytics and revenue forecasting

Reports tell you what happened. Analytics is about direction: whether the trend is up, when your shop is actually busy, and what next month plausibly looks like.

Analytics is one of the Cool Features, included in every account. It needs a few months of trading before it has anything worth saying.

What "revenue" means on this page

Every revenue figure in Analytics is gross revenue — the total on your receipts, which is what customers handed over:

Item prices	included
Discounts	subtracted
Service charge	added
Tax	included
Cost of goods	not deducted
Rent, salaries, utilities	not deducted
Interest and tax expenses	not deducted

The Tax line is the one that catches people out. If you charge tax, part of every unit in these figures is money you collect for the tax office and pass on — it was never yours. What you actually keep is the Profit Trend card, and Reports shows gross, net and collected tax side by side for any period you pick.

The What's in this? button on each revenue card shows this same breakdown without leaving the page.

The month you are standing in

The last point on every chart is the current month, and it only holds the days that have happened so far. Ten days into a month it will sit roughly a third of the way up a normal month — which looks like a collapse and is not one.

It is drawn as a faded dashed line for exactly that reason, with a note saying how many days are in it. The forecast ignores it entirely and uses completed months only.

Revenue and profit trend

Monthly Revenue & Profit plots twelve months of both. Read them as a pair, because the interesting cases are when they disagree:

• Both rising — growth. Keep doing it.
• Revenue up, profit flat — you are buying sales. Costs are rising with volume, or discounts are doing the work. Check the cost ratio in Reports.
• Revenue flat, profit up — better buying, less waste, or a price change landing. Worth knowing which, so you can repeat it.
• Both falling — a trend, not a bad week.

Best Month and Worst Month, with Average Monthly Growth, give the range you are actually operating in.

Month-over-month breakdown

This is the most useful block on the page, because it does not stop at "profit fell". It names the biggest cost, the biggest drag, and each driver's effect on profit — so a bad month comes with its cause attached rather than leaving you to guess.

When the business is running at a loss it also states what it would take to stop the operating loss and to break even overall. Those two numbers are concrete enough to plan against.

Peak hours and busy days

Peak Hours Analysis and Daily Traffic show when your customers actually arrive, rather than when you assume they do. This is a staffing and prep tool before it is anything else:

• Roster your strongest people into the peak, not evenly across the day.
• Prep to the peak's size, and stop prepping into the tail — the most common source of end-of-day wastage.
• Put promotions in the quiet hours. A discount during your peak mostly discounts customers who were coming anyway.

Weekly Revenue Comparison puts this week against last week and the week before, which is the horizon at which you can still change something.

The forecast

Revenue Forecast projects forward from your history. The dotted line is the projection and the band around it is a flat ±15%.

It will not project at all until you have six completed months, and it says so on the card until then. Three months is enough to draw a straight line and nowhere near enough to mean one: with that little history a single quiet month sets the entire direction, and extending it ninety days turns one soft August into a business apparently in decline. Between six and nine months the card marks itself indicative, because one unusual month still moves it noticeably.

If your projection is falling, read that number of months first. A decline drawn from six months is worth investigating; the same shape from three is mostly telling you about one month.

Take that band as a rough guide rather than a calculated one. It is the same 15% on every month, so it does not widen the further ahead it looks — real uncertainty does, and three months out is a good deal less certain than one.

Read the band, not the line. A forecast built from your own past assumes next month resembles the last several — which is exactly what a fiesta, a competitor opening, a road closure or the rainy season breaks. It is a planning aid for stock and staffing, not a number to sign a lease against.

Use the bottom of the band for commitments you cannot reverse, and the top for capacity you might need.

Turning it into decisions

What you see	What to do
Peak two hours, staff spread evenly	Move people into the peak
Profit flat while revenue grows	Check cost ratio and discount totals
One weekday consistently dead	Promotion, shorter hours, or prep less
Forecast band widening	Your months are inconsistent — find out why before expanding
A named cost driving profit down	Take it to expenses

Frequently asked questions

Is Analytics free?

Yes. Analytics and revenue forecasting are included in every account, alongside the on-screen reports and the Manager's Daily Report.

How accurate is the revenue forecast?

It extends your own trading history forward and shows a ±15% band around the projection. It is reasonable for stock and staffing decisions and unreliable for anything unusual — a holiday, a new competitor, a change in your own hours. Treat the band as the answer, not the line.

How much history does Analytics need?

Several months. With one or two months of data the trend lines and the forecast have too little to work from, and the month-over-month breakdown has nothing to compare against.

What are peak hours used for?

Staffing and prep. Knowing that two hours carry most of your day tells you where to put your best cashier, how much to prep, and when a promotion will actually attract new customers instead of discounting the ones already queuing.

Why does my profit fall while revenue rises?

Usually costs growing with volume, discounts, or wastage. The month-over-month breakdown names the biggest driver directly, which is faster than working backwards from the totals.

Next: Price Lab.