Build a widget

A widget is one chart or figure: up to four numbers, laid out the way you choose, over the dates you choose. You build it once, save it, and put it on as many dashboards as you like. This is for venues whose sidebar shows Reporting — see Reporting — dashboards and widgets.

Start a widget

Open Reporting → Widgets and press New widget. You get three ways in:

• What are you counting?: Bills, Items sold, Table visits, Bookings or Staff shifts. Pick one to open the new builder (below) on it.
• Describe it — if you see this box, type what you want in a sentence ("Card takings by week this quarter") and press Build it. The builder opens with it filled in, so you can check it before you save.
• Or start from one of ours — ready-made widgets. See Starter widgets.

The new builder

A new widget opens in the new builder. Widgets you saved before keep opening in the classic builder, described further down.

What are you counting?

The box at the top left says what one row is: a bill, an item sold, a table visit, a booking or a staff shift. Change it and the shelves empty (their fields belonged to the old choice); your dates, comparison and VAT stay.

Under it are all the fields, grouped by thing. What you count comes first. Then each thing it links to has its own folder: from Items sold you can reach the bill, the table visit, the booking and the staff member, so "Items by the table's party size" just works.

The shelves

On the right are four shelves. Drag a field onto one, or press the + beside it:

• X: what runs along the bottom. A date or time picks how to bunch it (15 minutes, hour, hour of the day, part of the day, day, day of the week, week, month, quarter, year). A number is put into bands: let us pick them, or type where each one starts, like 2, 4, 6.
• Y: your numbers, up to four. Open a number to choose how it adds up (Sum, Average, Median, 90th percentile, Lowest, Highest, Count unique…) and how to Show it (per cover, per table, per bill, % of total, running total, rank). A bill's number seen from its items can be counted once per bill, so a tip is never counted twice.
• Split: break the chart into colours.
• Filters: yes or no, above, below or between, "is recorded", or for a grouping (a server, a site, a booking's state) Is one of and tick the ones you want from the list.

With a grouping along the bottom, Show picks All, the Top or the Bottom few (10 to start), with the rest added up as Other if you like: "the 10 dishes that sold least this month". Calculations work out a number from the others: with Discounts as y1 and Sales as y2, y1 / y2 * 100 is discount as a % of sales.

Totals and averages never share a scale: a day's takings would squash an average spend flat. Counts go on the left, the rest on the right, and a number that would need a third scale is listed in the table instead, and the chart says so.

Drag a chip from one shelf to another to move it, or back onto the fields to take it off. With a keyboard: press Space on a field, use the arrow keys to move between shelves, and press Space again to drop it.

If something can't work, the builder says why in plain words, right under the chip that caused it, and Save waits until it's fixed.

Two different things on one chart

Things that don't link (bookings and table visits, say) can still share a chart. Under Line up something else on the left, drag a field onto Y: it is lined up beside your numbers by day, or by something both have, like the site. The chip says what it counts. Example: count Bookings, put Booked for along the bottom, Party size on Y, then drag Covers from Table visits onto Y: covers booked against covers served, day by day.

How long things take

For table visits, How long things take shows each stage of a table (seated, first order, paid, closed) as the time spent in it, or as how many tables reached it. Put Covers on Split to compare party sizes. Stages we don't record yet say so.

The top bar

Pick the dates, a comparison (the period before, the same day last week or the same day last year), Same time of day for a day still going, and Inc VAT or Ex VAT. Refunds count on the day of the sale.

Click a bar or a point to see the bills or visits behind it. Until you name the widget, it is called what it shows ("Table visits per day"). Describe it is coming soon to the new builder.

The classic builder at a glance

The builder has three parts:

• On the left, your fields. Numbers (marked #) are what you count or add up: Net sales, Covers, Late tickets. Group by (marked Aa) is what you split them by: day, hour, category, staff, site. The Data box at the top narrows the list to one kind of data, or shows All data; the search box finds any field by name. Hover a number to see what it counts.
• In the middle, the chart. It redraws as you change things. Under it, The numbers behind it shows the same figures as a table, with Download CSV.
• On the right, the settings, in three tabs: Chart, Filters and Display.

To add a field, press it, press the + beside it, or drag it onto a box on the Chart tab. A number goes up the side; a grouping goes along the bottom, or into Break down by if the bottom is taken.

Undo and redo sit in the top bar beside Save.

The Chart tab

• Chart — what kind of chart this is. Press Change to pick another. The picker marks one as Suggested for what you have chosen, and greys out any that cannot draw your numbers, saying why.
• X-axis — what runs along the bottom. With Time there, pick how to bunch it: 15 minutes, hour, day, week, month or quarter.
• Y-axis — your numbers, up to four. Add a number adds the next one. Each number has a pencil (change how it is drawn) and a bin (take it off). The last number cannot be removed: a widget needs at least one.
• Break down by — split the chart into colours, one per value (one colour per category, say). A split draws as stacked bars or a table.

Dates and what to count live on the Filters tab. See Filters in a widget.

Each number's settings

Press a number (or its pencil) to open its settings:

• Name on the chart — call it what you like. The number itself does not change.
• Draw as — Bars, Line or Area. Mix them: Net sales as bars with Covers as a line.
• Scale — Left or Right. This is how two numbers of very different sizes share one chart: put £ sales on the left and a count of bills on the right, and each gets its own scale.
• Colour — one of four. With a split, the colours follow the split instead.
• How to add it up, Show as and Decimals are shown for reference; they are set by the number itself.

Draw as and Scale only apply to bars, lines and areas.

The twelve charts

| Chart | Use it for | |---|---| | Big number | One figure, with its change against the period before. | | Bars | Comparing groups — days, sites, categories. | | Sideways bars | Long names, or a top 10. | | Stacked bars | The parts that make up each total. | | Line | A trend over time. | | Area | A trend where the size of the total matters. | | Bars and a line | Two numbers on two scales — sales and bills by hour. | | Donut | Shares of a whole — payment types, tab types. | | Busy-hours grid | Day of the week against hour of the day; the darker, the busier. | | This vs last | This period's line against the last one's. | | Table | Every number, in rows. | | Bubbles | Two numbers for each item, to see which items stand out. |

The Display tab

• Scales — name the left and right scales, and set their Lowest and Highest values, or leave them on Automatic.
• Show on the chart — Legend, Values on each bar, Dots on lines, Total in the corner and Table under the chart.
• How numbers add up — Stack the colours, Running total (each point adds everything before it, so a month builds up day by day) and Show as % of the total (each bar as its share). Running total and % of the total only work for numbers that add up: an average, a percentage or a "right now" figure cannot, and the box says so.
• Target line — tick Draw a target, type the Value (£2,000 a day, say), give it a Label and pick which scale it sits on.

These settings change only how the chart looks, never the figures.

Save it and put it on a dashboard

1. 1

   Press Save

   Give the widget a name, like "Friday takings".

2. 2

   Put it on a dashboard (optional)

   Tick any dashboards it should appear on. You can do this later from Widgets with Add to a dashboard.

3. 3

   Find it again

   Every saved widget is listed under Reporting → Widgets. Choose Open in the builder from its menu to change it; saving again updates it everywhere it is shown.

If Save is greyed out, a line at the top of the builder says what to change first — for example a number that cannot be split by the grouping you chose. Closing with unsaved changes asks before throwing them away.

Good to know

• "Right now" numbers stand alone. Stock value now and Gift card balance to spend are a figure for this moment, not for a period. They show as a Big number or a Table, on their own, with no dates along the bottom and no comparison.
• Very long periods in small pieces (a year by 15 minutes, say) are too big to draw. The builder suggests something close that fits, with Use this.
• New numbers start when we started keeping them. If your dates reach back further, the chart says No data before that date instead of drawing zeros.
• Numbers your venue doesn't use — see What each kind of data counts.