Overview

When comparing sales this year against sales last year, often adjustments are made to support 'like for like' comparisons. These adjustments include excluding last years sales in stores that were not open this year, and removing this years sales for stores that were closed last year. Adjustments may also be made where there is a change in floor space, for example an expansion or reduction in the store size; and for abnormal conditions such a store closure for a re-fit. These adjustments allow a better indication of this years sales increase or decrease against last year.

This article describes the techniques Retail Arena uses to support like for like sales comparision. Different reports use different techniques depending on the requirements definition for the report. You should refer to the documentation for a specific report to determine the method it adopts, if any, to support like for like adjustments.

Opening Closing Date Method

A number of reports adopt the Opening Closing Date Method to adjust for like for like sales. Using this method the store opening and closing dates are uses to determine exclusions. Store opening and closing dates are maintained in Maintain Stores, or are imported from the underlying source system and displayed in Maintain Stores.

Consider an example where you are comparing July sales this year against July last year, and for a given store the store opening date was 15 July last year. In this case we would exclude this years sales from the beginning of July to 15 July to support a better comparison between the two years. If however the same store was open for the full month last year but closed on 15 July this year, we would exclude last years sales from 15 July to the end of July.

These same adjustments would be made for any comparision period. For example specific days in a week, month, quarter, half or year will be excluded based on the opening and closing dates of a store.

This is a fairly broad brush approach that does not support excluding specific dates or date ranges in like for like comparision. For example it does not support excluding two weeks in a month because the store was closed for a fit out.

Specified Date Method

The Specific Date Method overcomes the limitation in the Opening Closing Date Method, allowing you to adjust specific days and date ranges for like for like comparision. Using this method the Maintain Like for Like Settings application is used to tag specific days as excluded for like for like comparisions.

If a store is checked as Excluded for a given day or days in the current year, both this year's sales and last year’s sales for the equivalent days will be excluded when calculating the increase or decrease on last year. If a store was checked as Excluded for a given day or days in a prior year, both last years sales and this year’s sales for the equivalent days will also be excluded. Typically these exclusions will only occur in consolidated sales comparisons. When viewing individual store sales by day, like-for-like settings are typically ignored.

Again these same adjustments are made for any comparision period. For example specific days in a week, month, quarter, half or year will be excluded based on the like for like setting for those days.