Sales report: how to create one and what to look at

A sales report is a summary of the sales department’s results for a chosen period: the sales plan, actual results, differences between them, their causes and the head of sales’ actions. To create one, agree on what counts as a sale, collect data using the same rules and put the main conclusions at the start. On the first screen, the business owner needs to see the size of the problem, its confirmed cause and what the head of sales is already doing.

The report has twenty figures. There are calls, meetings, invoices, the total value of deals and percentages compared with the previous month. The owner scrolls through the file and starts working out for themselves where the shortfall came from. After the owner’s questions, the head of sales goes looking for explanations. So the report has been submitted, but the analysis is only beginning — and the owner is the one who starts it.

Cutting the file down to five figures is not enough. If the head of sales brings figures without a decision of their own, a short file leaves the owner with the same work. I believe a head of sales’ report should show what they have already investigated and where they really need the owner’s authority. Let’s look at how to put together such a document, including a completed example.

How to create a sales report

Start with the purpose of the report. The owner uses it to decide whether to intervene in the department’s work, change limits or allocate additional resources. The head of sales needs a different level of detail to allocate today’s calls. If these tasks are mixed together, the top of the document will be taken up by surnames and activities, and you will have to look for the conclusion at the bottom.

Agree on which event counts towards the actual result

The “sales” line may contain the value of signed contracts, shipments or payments received. Choose the measure you need and name it in full. The sales plan and actual result must count the same event: a sales plan for payments received cannot be compared with the value of invoices issued.

Contracts and shipments do not disappear from the records. They are shown separately when they explain progress towards payment. There is a separate analysis of why meeting the sales plan for contracts does not answer the question about the business’s money: Sales seem to be coming in, but there is no money. What is the department actually achieving?

To begin with, a short note next to the measure is enough: the period, event, data source and rules for refunds and partial payments. For example: payments received from customers during a calendar month according to the accounting system; a partial payment is included at its actual amount, and a refund to a customer reduces the total for the month in which it took place. This is a chosen rule for the report, not a universal definition of revenue.

Separate the first page from the breakdown

It is useful to build the first page around five points:

Result: sales plan, actual result, the difference in money and the percentage of the sales plan achieved.
Main difference: which area produced the shortfall and which offset part of it.
Basis for the conclusion: order numbers, event dates, a message from the customer or other available evidence.
Head of sales’ actions: what has already been done, what has been assigned and when the result is due.
Owner’s decision: a specific choice with its consequences, or a statement that their involvement is not currently needed.

After this page come the details by salesperson, product, source and deal. You do not need to throw them out for brevity. The first page’s job is to guide the reader: if the problem lies in repeat orders, the owner immediately knows which breakdown to open if necessary.

A figure deserves a place at the top when a decision depends on it. The number of calls will be needed if the head of sales is explaining why the required share of customers in the database has not been contacted. By itself, a call count next to a shortfall in money does not link the two.

How to compile a sales report

The document’s contents have been agreed. Now the head of sales needs to organise its preparation so that each update changes the data while the rules stay the same. An ordinary spreadsheet will do for the first version; a ready-made report in the CRM system will also work if it shows the events you need.

Step 1. Set the period and the date up to which data is available. Specify, for example, the whole of September and the time payments were last checked. If payment data is imported with a delay, the report must clearly show the date up to which it has been received. Without that explanation, an empty row for yesterday looks like there were no sales.

Step 2. Collect records with fixed reference numbers. A report on payments received needs the payment number, date, amount, order number, customer and salesperson responsible. Add the enquiry source and product if you will need to make decisions about them. The payment number helps remove duplicates when combining exports; the order number links the money to the deal.

Step 3. Do not multiply the amount when combining records. If an order contains several products, the full payment must not be repeated on each product row. Keep one payment record for the total; for a breakdown by product, split the amount using the agreed rule. Otherwise, the report by product will show more money than the company received.

Step 4. Compare with the saved sales plan. Put the sales plan approved before the start of the period next to the actual amount. The difference in money equals the actual amount minus the sales plan. The percentage achieved is the actual amount divided by the sales plan, multiplied by 100%. If the sales plan is zero, do not calculate a percentage: show the amount and explain why there is no sales plan.

Step 5. Break down the difference and add the conclusion. First by the groups used to build the sales plan, then by causes within the group with the problem. The amounts must add up to the overall total. If only part of the shortfall has been explained, give the remainder its own row with the amount and a deadline for finding the cause.

The head of sales carries out the last step. An export knows which amounts to add up. It does not, by itself, tell you why a customer has not paid or what action will change the situation. The stated cause must be based on a fact: a message about incorrect payment details, a missed shipment, a confirmed refusal. “Customers take a long time to decide” does not explain a specific amount.

Example: what lies behind achieving 88% of the sales plan

An illustrative example, not a RENTROP case study. All amounts, deadlines and actions below are set for this exercise. The department reports on payments received from customers for September; there are no refunds in this example. The sales plan is 5 million roubles; the actual amount is 4.4 million. The sales plan is 88% achieved, with a shortfall of 600 thousand.

The original sales plan has two groups: repeat customers and new customers. Here, a new customer is a customer who paid for an order for the first time in the reporting month. The rule is the same for the sales plan and actual results, and each customer belongs to only one group.

Repeat customers: sales plan 3.5 million, actual amount 2.6 million. Difference: minus 900 thousand.
New customers: sales plan 1.5 million, actual amount 1.8 million. Difference: plus 300 thousand.
Overall total: minus 900 thousand plus 300 thousand equals minus 600 thousand.

Here is what was lost in the overall figure. The shortfall in repeat sales is one and a half times as large as the shortfall for the department as a whole. Extra money from new customers covered part of it. Giving all salespeople the same instruction to increase their activity will not explain what happened to repeat orders.

The head of sales breaks down the 900 thousand by the orders whose payments were included in September’s sales plan:

400 thousand — shipment delayed. Under the agreed terms, two customers pay after receiving the goods. The warehouse did not send the orders out on time; this is clear from the dates. The head of sales agreed new delivery dates with the logistics team and told the customers.
300 thousand — incorrect payment details on invoices. The customers requested corrections in writing. The head of sales made sure the invoices were sent again and instructed the salespeople to obtain confirmation that the documents had been accepted for payment by 12:00 on 2 October.
200 thousand — cause not established. The records contain only the salespeople’s notes saying they are waiting for payment. The head of sales instructed them to find out what was preventing payment and attach evidence for each order by 16:00 on 2 October.

The breakdown adds up: 400 plus 300 plus 200 equals 900 thousand. One order goes into one group of causes. No amount is hidden under “other” without further action.

Three states are distinguished here: the cause has been established and action has started; an internal error has been corrected, but payment has not yet been received; the cause is unknown. A corrected invoice does not add money to September’s actual result. A new delivery date does not close the shortfall either. The report keeps the financial result and shows progress on the work separately.

What the first screen of this report looks like

A completed example for the owner:

September, payments received: 4.4 million out of 5 million roubles, 88%. Data checked as at 1 October.
Difference: minus 600 thousand for the department. This includes minus 900 thousand for repeat customers and plus 300 thousand for new ones.
What has been established: 400 thousand is delayed along with the shipments, 300 thousand because of errors in invoices. The explanation for 200 thousand is being clarified, with a deadline of 16:00 on 2 October.
What the head of sales has done: agreed delivery with the logistics team and made sure the invoices were corrected. The assigned salespeople are collecting confirmations from customers by 12:00 on 2 October. Links to the orders and documents are in the breakdown.
Owner’s involvement: not currently required. Work is proceeding within the agreed spending limits and terms of sale. If an exception is needed, the head of sales will present a separate choice with the amount and consequences.

The last line only makes sense alongside the previous ones. The owner can see why the head of sales can handle the situation themselves. They do not have to approve the routine task of sending a corrected document.

Sales reports by month

A monthly report is needed to show changes that get lost in daily fluctuations. For each completed month, save the sales plan, actual result, difference, percentage achieved and main cause of the difference. Also save the change in the actual result compared with the previous month. These are two different comparisons.

Let’s continue the illustrative example:

August: sales plan 4 million, actual amount 4.2 million roubles. The sales plan was 105% achieved and exceeded by 200 thousand.
September: sales plan 5 million, actual amount 4.4 million roubles. The sales plan was 88% achieved, with a shortfall of 600 thousand.
Payments received rose by 200 thousand, approximately 4.8% compared with August. Meanwhile, the sales plan rose by 25%.

September brought in more money, although the percentage of the sales plan achieved got worse. The owner now has something to ask the head of sales: which orders and actions the extra million in the sales plan was based on. These numbers do not support the claim that the department started selling less. If the company’s budget was already based on 5 million, however, the shortfall remains a real issue to resolve.

Show an unfinished month separately, with the date the data covers. Compare payments received in the first part of October with the sales plan for that part of the period, or with the same part of September. Comparing them with the whole of September will inevitably show a decline. Divide the monthly sales plan evenly across the days only where this schedule matches the payment terms.

Keep the calculation rules too. If refunds have only been deducted since September, August must be recalculated in the same way, or you must note that the figures are not comparable. Save an amended sales plan as a separate version with the date of the decision: do not erase the original commitment after receiving the actual results.

Conversion rates need additional rules: you cannot automatically divide the number of payments in a month by the number of new enquiries from the same month. We examined this error in detail in the article Increasing conversion rates matters to us. Why do new enquiries distort the report?

What to assign to the head of sales and how to check the result

The owner’s decision is to approve the contents of the first page and the process for raising exceptions. They assign data collection, finding the causes and the salespeople’s work to the head of sales. Here is wording you can use for the instruction:

By 15:00 on the third working day, prepare a report for the last completed month. On the first page, show the sales plan and actual result for the agreed measure, the difference in money, its breakdown, confirmed causes and your actions. Show the unexplained amount separately with a deadline for finding the cause. Attach a breakdown by individual order. Put questions for me in a separate item: what you propose I decide, what resource is needed and what will happen if I refuse. If no decision is needed from me, state this clearly.

When reviewing the report, it is enough to trace one difference from the amount at the top through to the evidence and action. The amounts add up, the cause is confirmed, the person responsible is named and the deadline is set — the report lets you oversee the head of sales’ work. If the owner has to come up with the first action themselves after reading it, the document should be returned to the head of sales with that specific comment.

An urgent restriction cannot wait until the report is due. If the agreed terms need to change today for a deal to move forward, the head of sales presents the choice today. The regular report records decisions that have been made, but is not a reason to delay them.

When collecting figures eats up the head of sales’ time

Another problem is when information is spread across deals, sources and salespeople, and the head of sales assembles the picture manually each time. RENTROP has AI ROP for this task: sales team analytics shows figures, the sales funnel, salespeople and money by source. The service reads the data; the head of sales sets out the causes, actions and request for a decision from the owner.

The owner used to go through twenty figures to understand where their involvement was needed. A good report gets this work done before the file is opened: the head of sales has already analysed the difference and left the owner only the choice that is really theirs to make.