How to analyze sales data with pivot tables

Sales analysis is performed with historical sales data to get insights about trends; usually this is comparison of one time period to comparable period in the past: year-over-year or month-over-month sales, sales this month compared with the same month last year. With sales analysis you can answer on questions like:

• what products (product types) are best-sellers?
• best and worst sales managers (shops, divisions, channels of distribution, regions etc)?
• what is average check?
• business grows as expected or not?

SeekTable turns your sales data (transactions, orders) into sales analysis report that shows the trends by product type, region, or time period. With pivot table you can determine both opportunities and potential problems. If you didn’t meet your sales goal, you can drill down to sales of a specific product or location to see what exactly is stopping you.

You can check Northwind DB demo to get some examples of sales data reports.

How to perform sales trend analysis:

1. Export sales data to CSV. Most payments providers and e-commerce solutions have this function:

   Paypal

   How do I download my PayPal transaction history?

   Stripe

   open "Balance History" and click on "Export" button

   2Checkout

   use Billing Activity Download wizard (Reports section)

   Chargify

   use "Export" link: exporting data how-to

   Shopify

   use "Export" button on the "Orders" page: Export orders to CSV

   Prestashop

   use "SQL Manager" to run SQL query and export results to CSV, or use addons

   If your sales data is stored in SQL database and it is accessible from internet you can use it as a data source directly.

2. Upload CSV file into your SeekTable account.

3. Create sales reports by time periods, product type, location. Choose metrics like "sum" and "average".