Reporting gives you a live view of your itinerary and booking data, built to answer your questions rather than just display them. You can start from a ready-made report, change how it looks in a few clicks, or build your own from scratch. It can be found at the bottom of the left-hand navigation panel inside Tourwriter (Reporting).
Access and permissions
Reporting has two levels of access, so you can decide how much control each person on your team needs.
Agent/Manager - no access during BETA test phase
Admin - full ability to design, create, and modify personal and organisation reports.
What you can do with it
Reporting is built for exploring data, not just viewing it. Once a report is open, you can:
- Switch how the data is shown, moving between a table, a bar chart, a pie chart, and a pivot table, without rebuilding the report.
- Sort, filter, and drill into any part of the data.
- Add or remove the fields shown, and change the level of detail.
- Save your own version of a report for later.
Your data, in three parts
Every report is built from one of three data sources. Knowing what each one holds makes it far easier to find the report you want.
- Itineraries. Itinerary level data. Use this when you want totals or trends across whole trips, such as how many itineraries were confirmed last month, or which consultant sold the most.
- Itinerary item details. Contains information about every item with itineraries such as a hotel or tour. This is the source to use for anything supplier or product related.
- Traveller payments. Details about the payments due and made pay travellers.
You choose the data source when you start a new report, and it determines which fields are available to you from that point on.
Aggregate reports and detail reports
Every data source can be viewed at one of two levels.
An aggregate report groups your data and shows totals. For example, a report showing itineraries by status gives you one row per status, with a count for each. All of the following report types are aggregate reports:
- Bar charts (vertical or horizontal bars)
- Line charts
- Pie charts
- Pivot tables
A detail report shows one row per record, with no totals. Load one and you will see every itinerary, item, or payment individually. Detail reports automatically add a few key columns, such as the itinerary name and a link back to Tourwriter, since these are usually what you need at that level. The Detail Report is the only report type that forces the records to be shown at the raw detail level, however if you are classifying/grouping by a dimension with unique values (like Itinerary ID) then all of the other report types can also work at the detail level. But you should apply filters to reduce the volume of data.
Switch between the two using the report type options in the toolbar.
Dimensions and measures
A dimension is a category you can group or filter by, such as itinerary status or owner. A measure is a number that gets totalled or averaged, such as the number of itineraries or total sold.
Date fields work as dimensions too, and give you extra control. You can view a date by calendar year, financial year, or by month regardless of year, depending on what you need to compare.
How to build a report
- Open Reporting and select ‘Create New Report’.
- Choose a data source: Itineraries, Itinerary Item Details, or Traveller Payments.
- Choose a report type.
- You must:
- Select at least one dimension by dragging the fields you need from the Available Dimensions list (left) to the Selected Dimensions (right). Tip: You can double-click on items to move select and deselect them as well.
- Optionally you can:
- Fine tune the measure(s) that will be shown in a similar manner to the dimensions.
- Add Filters (second tab) to narrow the data that will be shown in the report.
- Edit the title and description under Details (first tab).
- Click ‘Apply’ to create the report.
- You can add filters, edit, change the format, export to CSV and split the report using the options above and save the report once you are happy with it (top right).
Filtering your data
Click add filter to narrow down what a report shows. There are two kinds of filters.
A dimension filter limits the report to specific values, such as only confirmed itineraries, or a particular itinerary owner. Date filters go further, letting you choose between different time-units and when a ‘Date’ time-unit is selected you can select a specific date range, or a relative range such as the last 30 days.
A top or bottom filter shows only the highest or lowest values for whatever you are measuring, for example the top 10 suppliers by bookings. By default this filter updates the measure and whether you are looking at the Top or Bottom values automatically as you change what you are sorting by or charting by, so your top (or bottom) 10 always reflects the current view.
Saving reports
Once you have a report set up the way you want it, you can save it. Depending on your permissions, you can save a report for yourself only, or make it available to everyone in your business. Changes are not kept unless you save them, so save your work before you navigate away.
Working with more than one report at a time
You can open extra workspaces to build or view several reports at the same time, and switch between them as you work.
You can also split a single report into two views on the same screen to make it into a simple dashboard, for example to compare two date ranges or two filters side by side. A dashboard currently supports a maximum of two views at once, both built from the same underlying data source. Tip: You can alter whether the two reports are side-by-side or above-below by right-mouse clicking on the report and selecting “Toggle Reports Horizontally/Vertically”.
Exporting data
Any report can be exported to CSV, giving you the raw data to use outside Tourwriter.
Getting help
If you are not sure where to start, begin with one of the ready-made reports and use it to explore your own data. If you would like a walkthrough of a specific report or a particular question answered with your data, contact our support team.
Questions
Is this self-service analytics?
Yes. Reporting is self-service analytics for tour operators, so the people running the business can build their own reports. There is no need for an analyst, a data team, or a separate BI tool.
Do I need to know how to code or build dashboards?
No. Reporting is no-code. You build and configure reports by pointing and clicking, adding columns, applying filters, and switching between charts and tables. If you can use a spreadsheet, you can use Reporting.
How fresh is the data?
The data for reports refreshes every day at midnight in your own timezone, so each morning the numbers are updated to reflect everything through to the end of the previous day. More frequent refreshes are on the roadmap for organisations that need them.
Can it handle more than one currency?
Yes. Reporting supports multi-currency businesses, so organisations working across more than one market can report on the whole picture.