How do your Feb/March sales in 2022 compare with 2019? with 2018?
- Because of the pandemic surge in online shopping 2021 and 2020 should be regarded as outliers, but you could look at them too, just be aware of that surge.
DH used to have that problem when he didn't deal with many customers in our (now closed for retirement) shop. If he wasn't making sales he felt we were going under.
When I started working for him, I put daily sales into the daybook by category. At the end of the week, I calculated the weekly totals. At the end of each month I calculated the monthly totals.
This had two effects. The first was that DH could see that although he had not dealt with many of our high rollers in a given week, the rest of the staff had been selling lower value goods steadily. And we were in fact making money.
More important in the long run, we could compare month to month. (Anything shorter is too much subject to other variables- weather, how many tourist buses hit town that week, public service paydays, school holidays.)
We learned that our summer sales were heavy on hobby supplies and postcards and that December was a terrible month for sales but come Boxing Day we headed into our busiest and most profitable sales period.
So do your comps based on the long term and if it is slow, that's a good time to take a deep breath and do some listing of stuff you didn't get around too in the busy weeks.
