5 Facts about Running Reports Dispensary Owners Should Know

What are reports anyway? How do you access them, and why do you need them in your business?
Reports are valuable pieces of information that allow you to look at your business collectively, without bias. They're tools that help you optimize your savings and bottom line, while also helping to give you clarity where you previously may not have had it.

1 - What does running a report mean?

Running a report high level means that you are pulling information from somewhere within a software system, and generating a report of how those numbers compare to one another.

Typically this will be a one time report, however some software systems allow you to run reports hourly, tracking and measuring items in real time while others give option for scheduled reports.
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Learning about how to harness the power or reporting, and understand what reports will work best for your business, could save you time money, and give you a behind the scenes look at the health of your company.
With an abundance of different reports at your fingertips, it’s important to understand what they tell you, and how they differentiate!

2 - What are some different types of reports.

Reports could tell you many different things about the health of your business , from labor costs, to sales reports.
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Knowing what report is right for you, and how to leverage that information can get you ahead.

Some systems allow you to pull different data from different part of your system, depending on what you need to know.
Others allow you to set up alerts, so that when certain thresholds are hit, you are automatically alerted and don't have to check in minute by minute.

Here are some popular report types that can help you understand your business more that you can use within the KayaPush software for example.
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Labour Cost and Sales Reports including: 

• Total Detail: This report has everything, from total labour cost, Sales Summary, labour summaries (by department, cost center, and position), and employee summaries.
  
  
• Daily Summary: This report has the same details as above but the numbers are broken down daily. These reports are useful in comparing day to day operations. — you can choose any day.
  
  

• By Time Period: This report will compare time periods that are pre-set up. For example: you can compare lunch and dinner periods but you must have these time periods previously set up (in period labels).
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• Employee Summary: This report is key in creating schedules. This is where you can see the hours and cost of each employee, broken down by their positions. This is also the exactly the same as the bottom part of the total detail report.
  
  

Labour Reports including:

• Labour Cost (Current Real-Time): This report is shows you daily sales summary reports by revenue centers, departments, and positions of the current day that the report is run. The data is the most up to date and it shows you details like labour budget, amount and the variance.
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• Labour Hours Report: This report shows you how many hours have been worked, and it is organized by employee position. This is great for calculating tips, but please note this also takes into account off run hours. If you make an adjustment after a pay period, the hours will vary.

Clock Hours Reports including:

• Clock Hours Report – This report shows you all the records that your employees have clocked in and out. The report is alphabetically organized by employee Name, and it includes everything from their clock in/out comments, total hours, approved hours, positions, and department names between the date or date range you select.
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• Report By Position: This report shows you all of the above, but it is sorted by an employee’s position.
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• Report By Time Period: This report displays the employee's name, positions, clocked in/out times which will be allocated to the period labels created. This report also shows the amount of hours worked within the period labels as a percentage. This report can also be shown by date or date ranges. Period Labels must be created from the Company Setup first before you are able to use this report.
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• Clock Hours Department Summary Report: This report displays the hours summary based on Positions and Departments. This includes providing you the total labour based off Number of Employees, Regular, Overtime, Doubletime and Total Hours. This report can be shown by date or date ranges. Period Labels must be created from the Company Setup first before you are able to use this report.

Department Summary Reports including:

• Department Summary Report: Usually you would look at this after you look at your journal and you are able view the report by pay run periods. When the reports are generated, they show you pay roll summary break downs, as a whole or for the whole company, and by cost centers. They also summarize employee pay by cost center(s), and you are able to see how how high or low cost centers are.

• Period Comparison: This report is the same as above, but you can compare two pay roll runs. It gives you the difference of the two runs, in regards to hour and pay. It breaks it down as a whole by department and hours and you are able to compare pay run dates.

The Profit Center Report :

• This report is used by locations that are POS integrated and display a detailed view of sales from your created Profit Centers. These include all types of cannabis sales and any other report codes that get included. The report will display labour costs, however it leaves out the labour costs that are not assigned to a Department.

The Audit Clock Approval Report :

• We highly recommend looking at this report before you run your payroll. It displays the employee worked hours and/or any discrepancies that require management overview such as missing salary, overtime hours and shifts that have not been approved.
  
  
• When granting permissions, you must click the report to give further permissions. These reports will be in blue text.

The Schedule Hour Report:

• This report is very similar to the Clock Hours report, however instead of displaying the clock in/out times, it displays the actual scheduled times. It displays the Scheduler as a report with a breakdown of Regular, Overtime, Doubletime hours and shift tag information as well as the total break time and comments left at time of clock in/out.
  

The Cost Center Report :

• This report displays your Cost Centers and the employees that have been assigned to them. It also displays the employees that have not been assigned to any Cost Centers. For more information on creating Cost Centers.

The Employee Information Report:

• This report displays a list of active and/or inactive employee information. It displays the employees first and last name, as well as the status of the employee and the status date. It also gives you the option to include selected additional employee information. (Example: SIN, phone, address, position, last day worked etc.)

The Statutory Holiday Report:

• When generated for the desired Statutory Holiday, this report will display a list of all active employees and their Statutory eligibility. It calculates the employee Statutory Holiday pay based off your provincial regulations and displays in detail how the Statutory Holiday was calculated by displaying each employee's Regular Hours and Gross pay total.
  

For the Payroll Summary Reports including:

• Payroll Summary: This report will display the pay period in which the chosen dates fall under, the total gross pay, as well as the total government remittances from both the employee and employer. It also provides the option to view these totals sorted by Cost Centers.
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• Employee Payroll Summary: This report displays the same as the Payroll Summary report but in more detail. It displays all the employees individual gross pay details as well as Government remittance contributions within the chosen date range. This report provides the option to view these details per employee position or as a whole in employees unique.

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3 - Why should you use reports? 

Reports are valuable pieces of information that allow you to look at your business collectively, without bias.
They help you avoid assumptions about your business, and make sure money and time is being allocated to the correct places within your business.

A recent Case Study with Tim Hortons found that by using KayaPush Reporting features, they were able to save 3% on labor costs over several locations.
Over the years, that can really add up.

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4 - How can reports help my business?

All in all, reports give you a better pulse on your business. Reports should be meaningful to you and your business. You should be able to make informed business decisions on the fly! Comparing sale and labor reports to real time gives you the opportunity to evaluate your business at face value.

Are you using your hours productively? Should you hire more staff? All these questions can be answered with an easily accessible report that'll show you your real time sales vs your worked labor.

Comparing sale and labor reports to real time gives you the opportunity to evaluate your business at face value.

Aside from the obvious answers of saving money, manage your labor costs effectively, and giving you peace of mind, reports give you the right tools to make the right decisions and fast.

Reports like labor cost vs sales reports are great labor forecasting tools to allow you to be proactive rather than reactive. You have the ability to adjust the following days of your schedule before you overspend on labor.

5 -How do reports integrate with my other systems?

Labor scheduling tools can help you streamline the process of managing labor. You can also sync up your POS system to gather sales data, and run it against hourly labor costs, or pull in and measure other metrics.

If you use an integrated system that was built to help you run reports, there's no manual transfers of data from your time attendance system to your scheduling system to calculate costs. Everything is done in one place!

Labor costs are one of the biggest costs of running a dispensary and with a labor forecasting tool at your fingertips, you'll be able to see  how much you're spending on labor, and where and how you can save costs in real time.

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