Every exhibition has a Report tab: Exhibitions, open the exhibition, Report. It answers one question, what was this stall worth?, and it answers it with money that has reached the bank, not with leads or with invoices raised.
The five figures at the top
| Figure | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Spent | What the exhibition cost: the actual costs on its What it cost tab plus staff days at their day rate. If nothing actual has been entered yet, the budget stands in and the tile says so. |
| Received | Money paid against the invoices that came from this exhibition, including GST; the line under it gives the same money without GST. An invoice raised and not paid is not counted here. |
| Return | Received divided by Spent, shown both ways: with GST, and under it without GST, since the GST in what you received is not yours to keep. With a verdict: Book again, Paid its way, Watch, Reconsider, Too early, Not costed or Not held yet. The verdict reads the return with GST. |
| Still owed | Invoiced and not yet paid, plus deals won and not yet invoiced. Real, and kept apart from Received. |
| Window | How many of the exhibition’s counting months have passed. A young exhibition looks weak because its business has not closed yet; the window says so every time. |
Too early is not a bad result. An exhibition in its first three months that has not yet paid back is marked Too early and left out of every average. Most exhibition business closes months later.
Every amount is exact. ₹12,40,200 is shown as ₹12,40,200 and ₹2,950.40 as ₹2,950.40, in the report, the Exhibitions dashboard and the catalogue reports alike. Nothing is shortened to lakhs or thousands. Only the scale beside a chart is abbreviated; point at a bar or a line and the tooltip gives the exact figure.
The money, exactly
Under the five figures, every rupee is set out with GST and without it:
| Line | What it is |
|---|---|
| Invoiced, with GST | The total of the exhibition’s invoices and bills of supply, and how many there are. |
| GST on those invoices | The tax on them: GST plus any cess. |
| Invoiced, without GST | Everything else on them. With the line above it adds back to the total exactly. |
| Received, with GST | What has been paid against them. |
| GST in what was received and Received, without GST | Each payment split in the share its own invoice carries tax. Pay half of an invoice and half of its GST is counted as received. |
| Invoiced and not yet paid, Won and not yet invoiced | The two parts of Still owed. |
| Received less spent | What the exhibition has made, or not yet made, so far. |
| Still in the pipeline | Open deals. Not money, and not counted above. |
The journey, end to end
Cards taken, read and checked, filed as a record, contacted, turned into a deal, quoted, won, invoiced and paid, each with the share kept from the step before. It shows whether the stall was weak or the follow-up was: 62 cards becoming 44 records and 10 deals is a different story from 62 cards becoming 12 records.
When the money arrived
A bar for each month of the window, a line for the money received so far, and a dashed line at what the exhibition cost. Where the line crosses the cost is the month it paid for itself. Two exhibitions can both return four times their cost; the one that did it by month two is the one you book again without discussion.
The rest of the report
- What each thing cost you: per card, per record filed, per new lead, per person contacted, per deal raised and won, and what each rupee received cost. These compare a small stall with a large one honestly.
- Where the money went: each cost line against its budget.
- Deals from this exhibition: every deal with its stage, amount, what has been invoiced and what has been received, and the win rate.
- Following up: people filed, how many have been spoken to, how many within the promise you set on the exhibition, the days to first contact, and the names of everyone never contacted, longest waiting first.
- Who did the work: one row for each person who met people at the stall: cards taken, records filed, deals, deals won and their value, invoiced, and received with and without GST. Press any of those figures to open the records behind it. See below.
- People who came back: everybody met at the stall who was already on file, by name. See below.
- When the stall was busy: cards by day and by hour, for planning who stands on the stall and when.
- Hot, warm or cold: how the people met were marked, and how many of each became a deal; and what they asked about.
- Who paid the most and what they bought, from this exhibition’s invoices.
- How long it took: from the card to a deal, from a deal to winning it, and from an invoice to being paid.
Every figure, the record it is read from and when, is listed in Where every figure comes from.
Download it as a PDF
Download PDF, above the figures on the Report tab, saves the whole report as a PDF file to send to a partner or print for a review: the verdict, the money with and without GST, month by month, the costs, the deals, who did the work, the follow-up with everyone never contacted, the cards, how long things took, the people you already knew, the top accounts and what they bought. It carries the same figures as the screen as they stand when it is made, and that time is printed at the top. Anyone who can open the report can download it.
Who did the work
Each row is a person, and the person is whoever met them: the name on the Scanning as line of the scan screen, or whoever was signed in when nobody else was named. Every deal and every invoice of the exhibition is credited to exactly one row, through the card that brought its lead or customer in, so the rows add up to the exhibition’s own totals:
- A deal is credited through its lead’s card, or else its customer’s card.
- An invoice is credited through its deal, or else its customer.
- A lead that became a customer keeps its card: the customer’s invoices count for whoever scanned the lead.
- Somebody met twice is credited once, to the first card.
- Money with no card behind it, such as a customer who walked up or a deal attached to the exhibition by hand, is shown on its own row, Not from a card, never given to a person.
Press Filed, Deals, Won, Invoiced or Received on a row and a panel opens with the actual records: the leads, customers and suppliers their cards became (with the customer a lead was converted into), the deals with their amounts, and the invoices with their total, GST and what has been paid, each opening its own page. The Exhibitions dashboard has the same table across every exhibition in the period.
People who came back
Everybody met at the stall who was already on file: recorded with Met at the stall, or a card that matched a lead, customer or supplier you already had. When there are any, the report says so at the very top, with their names.
Each one shows how long they have been on file, whether they walked up or their card matched, the earlier exhibitions of yours where you met them, and how long since anyone spoke to them before this exhibition. Six months or more is marked: those are the people worth a call this week.
Two figures sit above the list. Credited to this exhibition from them is the part of Received that came from these people (see From a card to a record for when they are credited). Everything they paid you in the window is all their payments since the exhibition, including business that would have come anyway, and is not added to Received.
Stall mode lives on the exhibition
Lock to the stall is in the exhibition’s header, beside Scan into this folder. It turns a phone into a camera and a count for a temp or a visitor scanning their own card; someone with a PIN unlocks it. It is decided once per exhibition, so it sits with the exhibition rather than in the report.
Something missing or wrong here? Tell us. A question that needed asking usually means a page that needed writing.