Acumatica gives businesses several ways to turn operational data into information they can use to make decisions.
Three of the primary options are dashboards, generic inquiries, and prebuilt reports. Each presents information differently and can serve a different purpose when reviewing sales performance and customer activity.
Dashboards provide a visual, real-time view of information across the business. On the sales side, a customer-focused dashboard can give users a broad look at activity throughout the customer lifecycle.
Depending on how the dashboard is configured, users may be able to see information such as:
This type of dashboard can help sales representatives, managers, and other team members quickly see what's happening without moving between several screens.
Acumatica includes prebuilt dashboards, but they can also be customized based on the information individual users or teams want to see. Widgets and data points can be added or adjusted so users see relevant information when they log in.
Dashboards can also be filtered by customer. For example, a user could select a specific account and immediately see that customer's open orders, sales opportunities, purchasing history, and recent activity.
Because the information is dynamic, the dashboard updates as filters change. If a customer's sales were unusually high in November but noticeably lower in January, users can identify that trend and begin looking into what may have caused the difference.
Another benefit is the ability to drill into the underlying data. Rather than stopping at a monthly sales figure, users can open the transactions contributing to that total and continue into individual sales orders or other supporting information.
When users need more flexibility for analyzing data, Acumatica's generic inquiries can provide another level of detail.
One example is the Sales Profitability Analysis inquiry. This view can display information such as the sale date, net sales, cost, margin, and margin percentage for individual transactions.
Users can then filter the information based on several criteria, including date range, salesperson, item or item class, customer, and sales order type.
This flexibility makes generic inquiries useful when users want to answer more specific questions about performance. For example, a business could review profitability for a particular customer, compare margins across an item class, or identify sales with margins above or below a certain amount.
Column-level filtering provides even more control over the results. Users can narrow the data based on values within individual fields and save those filters for future use.
Generic inquiries can also include totals, allowing users to see aggregated net sales, costs, margins, and average margin percentages for the selected data.
Like dashboards, these views support drill-down functionality. Users can move from summarized information into sales orders or related customer information without having to separately search for those records.
Acumatica also includes a range of prebuilt reports for users who need information presented in a more traditional format.
One example is an accounts receivable aging report. Users can select parameters such as the reporting date or a specific customer and generate a formatted report showing the corresponding information.
Compared with a generic inquiry, these reports tend to be more structured. They can include headers, footers, and other formatting that makes them well suited for printing, exporting, emailing, or sharing with others.
Reports are also drillable. Hyperlinked values within a report can take users directly to the related customer, invoice, sales order, or other underlying record.
Other sales-related reports can provide information such as daily sales profitability, including net sales, costs, and margins over a selected period.
While prebuilt reports generally offer fewer filtering options once the report has been generated, users can establish parameters before running them to control the information displayed.
The best reporting option depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
Dashboards work well when users want an at-a-glance view of activity and trends. They can help teams monitor performance regularly and quickly identify areas that deserve further review.
Generic inquiries are better suited for users who want to explore the data in greater detail. Their filtering capabilities make it easier to answer specific questions and analyze information from several different angles.
Prebuilt reports can be a good choice when information needs to be presented in a consistent, formatted document that can be printed, exported, or shared.
Businesses don't have to rely on only one approach. The same information may be useful in several formats depending on who is using it and what decision they're trying to make. By matching the reporting format to the business need, organizations can make Acumatica data easier to access, analyze, and use as part of day-to-day decision-making.
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