How To Run Trend Reports

Available in: All subscription levels

Trend reporting allows you to zero in on what's going on recently and identify shifts as they occur over time. This visualizes data, say the past 5 Fridays, side by side, and then provides context in the form of cover/check count, average check / PPA, and weather as well as a total and average for the parameters.

Jump to:

What is a trend report?
Which reports offer trend reporting as a date feature?
What kind of Trends are useful?
Run a Trend Report

What is a trend report?

A trend report is used to identify how something is changing over time. This can be very specific (what are people ordering between 4-6 pm on Fridays) or very broad (which of my 7 locations is increasing in labor spend), the point is to understand what is changing and evolving in your restaurant.

Avero's trend reporting can compare entire weeks or months to each other to see high-level changes over seasons, or it can compare specific days of the week or compare recent weekends to each other. How you want to use and configure a trend report depends on the question you are asking.

Which reports offer trend reporting as a date feature?

Trend reporting is available in almost every sales report, for Group Reporting and Individual Location/Outlet Reporting. Trend is an available feature whenever you see it listed in the Date box of the Report Generator, like this:

The most popular reports for using the trend feature are:

Some of Avero's more complex reports don't offer the Trend date format, typically because the rows and columns are already filled with report metrics. For example in a Sales by Meal Period, the rows indicate the Businesses, Revenue Centers, and Metrics, and the columns display the Meal Period values for each, this does not leave room to easily view trended data. We recommend using higher-level reports to review trends and more granular, detailed reports to find action to take based on the insights from higher-level reporting, this is why Avero reports can always drill into more detail via the blue hyperlinks, all the way down to the individual guest checks that make up each sale in your report!

What kind of Trends are useful?

Days

Setting your trend to 'Days' will show a trend of the most recent days for which there is data. This can be a rolling 10 days of sales or 14 days of labor to help keep a pulse on the recent activity of your restaurant.

Days of Week

Days of Week operates like 'Days' except you can limit it to a specific day of week to avoid comparing a Monday to a Saturday. A trend of the last 5 Fridays can help chefs correctly forecast demand to prep accurately, or managers schedule appropriate support staff based on recent business levels.

Note: If you place a DOW trend (such as last 5 Mondays) and pin it to your dashboard, it will always show yesterday's day of week. So when viewing the dashboard on Tuesday, you'll see the last 5 Mondays, on Friday, you'll see yesterday (Thursday) and the last 4 preceding like days.

Weekend Blocks

You can set your 'Weekends' is fiscal setup and run a trend on how weekends have been going as a group, this is especially popular for high-volume business or seasonal patios.

Weeks / Months

If you'd like to zoom out and see larger trends and shifts in customer behaviors or report on how your business changes throughout a season or year, setting a trend to 'Weeks' compares each week for the duration set to each other and provides an average. This is especially helpful for putting recent sales in context, and forecasting future sales.

Run a Trend Report

To run a trend report:

Navigate to the report you want, see above for popular choices.
Toggle to Trend in the Date filter.
Select the number and type of days to compare. You can select to compare as many as 52 like periods and for the period can choose between Days (individual days), Day of Week, Weekends or Weekdays, or entire Weeks or Fiscal Periods.

For a restaurant in most circumstances, a sales report comparing the last 10-12 Days can provide a good idea of rolling sales and small shifts in customer behavior.

This date filter option is available in nearly every sales report so it is a great way to zoom in on recent trends or zoom out on large shifts that may not be discernable in the day to day - such as: At what point last fall did the number of customers on Fridays begin to drop off? - when thinking about setting a data to change to winter hours.

A group adding a new restaurant might similarly want to see when the volume for the new location begins to pace with the existing portfolio - the visualization of the trend report is a great way to keep tabs at a glance and can be pinned right to your dashboard:

How can I pin a Trend Report to my Dashboard?

Trend reports are ideal for dashboards, whether a single location or a group of restaurants, seeing an at-a-glance visualization of your trending sales data keeps your finger on the pulse of your business performance.

Pin a 'Last 7 Mondays' report to the dashboard to see rolling Day of Week trends, the dashboard will automatically update this daily to yesterday's day of week. So on Tuesdays you'll see the 'Last 5 Mondays' and on Thursdays you'll see the same report showing 'Last 5 Wednesdays' - and you don't have to update a thing or run multiple reports. Let Avero do the work for you so you can stay out of the office and on the floor guiding your restaurant to success.

Want us to walk you through it?

If you're currently logged into Avero, click to launch our pop-up guide to see how: Create Dashboards