Microsoft® RMS Tip

Making Reports Changes on the Fly

Running reports, which detail and total your sales by department and by supplier (and for that matter, by supplier within each department), is essential to understanding your store's profit centers.  Smart retailers need to be aware of the percentages of their overall sales each of these areas represent. However, due to incomplete item entry, (i.e. not properly assigning these departments/categories and suppliers to each item in the system), these reports can become skewed.

A good way to fix this is to take advantage of the "Active" nature of RMS reports. Run an Item Value list, and sort by department.  Any items that are not assigned to any department will appear first in the report. Right from the report, you can then double-click on the item lookup code, and assign the item to the proper department. Refreshing the report periodically will remove the items from the "black hole" and into the proper departments. Sort the report by supplier, and do the same process. Finally, if you utilize categories, repeat the process for categories. 

Now, your sales summary reports will be truly indicative of the performance of your departments and suppliers.