A little while ago, I posted a question about website stats and their use (I was curious how everyone used and tracked their website activity).

Let me broaden this question into other business related statistics.

So, my questions (with my answers):

1. What statistics do you track and record?

Daily

I keep a daily log of enquiries, broken down into Weddings, Portraits and Other, further broken down by telephone and email.

I keep a record of where each enquiry comes from

For my website I’ve started to keep a daily of the number of unique visitors and the number of log-ins on my shopping kart.

Monthly

A summary of all of the above

Total no of weddings/portraits/other booked

No of names on my mailing list

2. How do you record your data?

Pen and paper – using a table drawn up in word or excel (a bit stone age, but it’s really easy to fill in)

What do you do?

Great question. I'm so glad you posted it. I'm just now trying to set up some excel spreadsheets and quicken for this sort of stuff. Top priority is the financials (via quicken). I have tracking with my website( and installed google analytics), but haven't yet immersed myself in it (just launched).

I think it's in Michale Gerber's (and no doubt every other business guru) that talks about knowing the numbers.

My questions aren't really about the financial aspects of the business, but all the other stuff.

Anyone else?....................

We track our inquiries, and I have an excel set up to track basic stuff like what date they're interested in, when they actually contacted us, what we quoted them, who the referral was, etc. It's nothing fancy, but it does the trick. We also have a "status" section that helps us keep track of where we're at in the process (ie if we are waiting on email back from them, or if we need to call and set up a meeting, etc.) As far as tracking all this on a monthly basis, we don't really do anything different, but when we book a new client, they get automatically linked into another worksheet of our actual clients and all of the information on there (some slightlly different stuff on that sheet). Linking information within different worksheets has been really helpful so that if I change something on one worksheet, it will automatically change in other places that I am keeping that information.

I don't think you were looking for too much info on financial tracking, but we have a pretty big workbook with a few different tabs in excel set up to track different types of income, etc. Scott, I think you said you are just getting set up on Quickbooks, etc. This is the case wiht us-we are switching to using Quickbooks, and so we're in the middle of doing that. It's a lot of work, but definitely is going to help us have better tracking and reports by going with Quickbooks. I am finding that using Excel and Quickbooks hand and hand has helped us get really clear information and be able to keep track of things really well.

Good question!! I'd love to hear what others track and how they're set up!

For the Mac, I use iCal and color code inquires and bookings differently. I enter notes into the "Notes" field (e.g. when I sent them pricing, when we last talked, etc.)

My son-in-law/business partner was a political science major, which means he tracks and analizes everything he can.
We track the "normal" stuff; calls, e-mails, meetings, lead sources, bookings, and financials associated with teh same.
We also track things such as the times of meetings, who attends, how they dress, how they respond, if they book, when they book, what they drive, education level, occupation, weather, and even if they arrive early, on time, or late. Whew!

Thing is, it is paying off. We know what our booking percentages are in reference to time of day and day of week. Because of this, we no longer make night or weekend appointments! We prefer to have bride and her mom at the meeting. We prefer to meet between 9 and 11 in the morning, on Tuesday through Thursday.

We know the approximate return per dollar spent on various advertisings.

It's ALL a numbers game. We know how many calls we need to get in order to get the weddings we need, and the gross sales.

We know that e-mails return a very low percentage as compared to phone calls when it comes to setting meetings.
We know that referrals book at a higher percentage than any other, but we know that certain advertisings make the phone ring more.

Mark