[RetailEdge Moderator]

RetailEdge currently has over 120 standard reports that we print. This does not include the numerous types of filters that can be used to give you the information you need out of RetailEdge. For instance, the best sellers/worst sellers report can be filtered to show your best sellers and worst sellers based on quantity sold or total price or profit. You can also do this for customers as well to determine who your best customers are. Your customers who buy the most may or may not really be your "best" customers because they are purchasing items with lower margins.

So if you include all of the different reports and how they can be filtered, you really are looking at thousands of different reports. Most of these reports have been designed/modified around customers requests and present information that is meaningful.

If you need additional information or need to modify the information presented in the reports, all reports can be exported to an Excel or Text file format to allow you to further modify them to your hearts content.

In addition most files in RetailEdge can be exported to an ASCII file so that you can open the files in a program like Word or Excel an manipulate the data any way you want. In addition some of these standard exports are not simply file dumps, but actually "mimic" some of the reports. For instance, the Customer - Sales Summary provides an export of customers with sales within a given date range. This export can also be filtered on quantity sold or total price or profit. This is used by customers when they want to send their good customers information (about sales or specials). Also you can export customer shipping information for a sales date range. This can be useful for when you want to export customer shipping information for import into another shipping program, like UPS.

If this does not work for you, you can actually talk directly to the RetailEdge data through a windows ODBC driver. This driver is available at http://www.elevatesoft.com/order?action ... uct=dbisam
This will allow anyone to access the RetailEdge database and create their own SQL statements and display (or not display) any information in the RetailEdge files. This can be used by other applications to transfer data into another application or you can use a program like crystal reports to create the custom reports. There is even a free open source application called OpenRPT to allow you to do this. More information about OpenRPT can be found at http://www.xtuple.com/openrpt. I am not endorsing this program, but using it as an example of a program that will allow you to do this inexpensively. I downloaded the ODBC driver and the OpenRPT and created a simple inventory report within about an hour. If you want to go this route you will need the user name and password for read only access. This information is provided in the help file included with the program.

In addition we have an API server that can allow you to read/write data to the RetailEdge data. This server although primarily used for web designers to get inventory items and quantities from and post sales into the RetailEdge data, could also be used to create custom reports. This can be accessed from anywhere and uses secure SSL for communication.

If you find that the existing reports, exports or the ODBC driver or API server is not for you, we can and have created custom reports for you. Obviously there is a charge for doing this. Just another option. And if your suggestion/report is something that we think that is going to be useful for many of our customers, then we might just put it into a future release. We have done this with numerous reports and label types.

So there are lots of ways to create custom reports from RetailEdge data.