Xola’s in-app analytics provide you with a glance of your financial standing, but our exported reports contain all the information you need to analyze your business activities - Which add-ons are selling like hot cakes, which products are most popular, who your top-performing Partners are, how much sales tax you’ve processed, and more.
Xola produces two main reports within the Analytics Report: The Events Report and the Transactions Report.
The Events Report should be used to determine where your money is coming from - which trips, which add-ons, which Partners, etc.
The Transactions Report is for reconciling the money you've earned through Xola with the money that you see in your bank statements.
What's covered in this article:
- Cash Flow vs Recognized Earnings Filter
- Events Report
- Transaction Report
- Events vs. Transactions Reports
Cash Flow vs Realized Earnings Filter
Cash Flow is the total amount of money being transferred into and out of a business.
In Xola, when you view a Cash Flow report, it’s going to show you data based on the date of the transaction, or when the money came into your business. This is regardless of whether or not you’ve actualized this money by rendering service. It is simply showing you a report based on the date a transaction was made.
Realized Earnings are actualized earnings.
In the case of Xola, your earnings are considered 'realized' once the experience is complete. For transactions that occur on or before the tour is complete, the realized date will be the date of the tour. On the rare occasion that a transaction occurs after the tour, that transaction's realized date will be considered the date when the transaction occurred.
Example: Let’s say it’s April and you want to pull a report of all the revenue you collected during the month of March. You don’t care if some of that money is for tours that haven’t gone out yet. In this case, you’d want to pull a Cash Flow report for the month of March. Some of this money won’t be realized yet if the tour hasn’t gone out, but it has been collected and deposited in your bank account.
Example: On the other hand, let’s say you want to see how much money you earned for the tours that you serviced in March. In this case, you would pull a Realized Earnings report for March. Keep in mind that any refunds issued or payments collected for these tours after March will not be accounted for in this report.
Example: Many Xola providers want to know how much revenue they’ll be expecting to realize in the future. This is also known as deferred income and is still a liability on a balance sheet. For example, if it’s April and we want to know how many tours we expect to be realized in June, July, and August, we’ll toggle on Realized Earnings, use the date picker to select the future months of June - August, and export the report.
Note: The transaction report that you export from Xola will have different columns present depending on whether you select Realized Earnings or Cash Flow as your filter. The primary difference is that the Realized Earnings report will contain more columns than the Cash Flow report which tells you when a given transaction was collected vs realized. (A detailed explanation of what it means to realize a transaction can be found above).
Events Report
To export an Events Report, first, toggle on either Cash Flow or Realized Earnings. Then select the date range for which you want to pull data. Then click “Export Events”.
How to read the exported Events Report
When you open your exported Events report, you’ll see two tabs: Events and Reservations.
The Events tab breaks down your data by trip time slot - You’ll see all Guest Breakdown by Demographic, Transactional information including revenue, processing fees, taxes and fees, Coupon breakdowns, Partner breakdowns, and Guide breakdowns.
The Reservations tab essentially pulls all information from the Purchases tab and breaks down your data by customer purchase. You’ll see all Guest Breakdown by Demographic, Transactional information including revenue, processing fees, taxes and fees, Coupon breakdowns, Partner breakdowns, Add-on breakdowns, and Guide information.
There is a lot of information in your Events Report, and you can manipulate the data in a number of ways to find what you’re looking for.
Examples:
For instance, if you wanted to know how much revenue came in for the Bob Dylan Tour, you could filter the Experience column down to Bob Dylan Tour, and then sum the revenue for those trips.
If you wanted to know how much you need to report in Sales Tax for all tours sold, you'd want to clear the filter and sum the entire Sales Tax column.
If you want to know how many tours were booked by Partner Scarlett O’Hara, you’ll navigate to the Partner column, and filter to show just Scarlett. You could then sum the revenue column to see the total revenue she brought into your business.
There are lots of different filters and sorts you can pull to find many different data sets you are looking for. You can always contact Xola Support if there is something specific you want to know how to track.
Note: Canceled reservations are not reflected in the Events tab. The Guest Count and Revenue columns may show different values between the Events and Reservations tabs because canceled reservations within the selected date range for the report are excluded from the Events tab.
Transaction Report
The transaction report that you export from Xola will have different columns present depending on whether you select Realized Earnings or Cash Flow as your filter.
The primary difference is that the Realized Earnings report will contain more columns than the Cash Flow report which tells you when a given transaction was collected vs realized. (A detailed explanation of what it means to realize a transaction can be found above in this article).
We will start by defining what each column header found in both the Cash Flow and Realized transactions reports means. Knowing the definitions of these columns will help you better understand the values they contain, and what it means for your business.
Note: This Transactions report should be used for reconciling the money you've earned through Xola with the money that you see in your bank statements.
Cash Flow Transaction Report:
Item: The name of the product that the transaction pertains to. Examples include experience name, "Store Credit" and "Gift".
Transaction Date: The date on which the transaction described within the row occurred.
Customer Name: Name of the Customer whose purchase record the transaction applies to.
Arrival: The date upon which a booked experience will take place. Gifts and Store Credits will not have value here.
Currency: The currency that the transaction was processed in.
Gross: The total amount collected for the transaction, before processing and/or partner fees.
Processing Fee: The amount collected by your credit card processor for credit card transactions.
Net: The total amount for the transaction minus processing and/or partner fees.
Balance: The amount of money currently held by Stripe that has not yet been paid out to your bank account. This column is only applicable if you process payments via Xola's Stripe integration.
Source: The non-physical origin of the transaction. Examples include "Checkout", "office", and "refund".
Method: The method by which payment was collected or refunded. Examples include "Credit Cards", "Cash", and "Gift".
Tax: The amount of tax applied to the transaction. This amount is determined by your custom Taxes and Fees configuration (found in your account's Settings tab).
CC Brand: If a credit card is used, this will contain the brand of the credit card used to process the transaction.
Tags: A list of all tags that have been auto-generated or manually added to the reservation. Examples include "mobile", and "rescue", or can be user-generated from the purchases tab.
Reservation ID: Unique identifier for the purchase associated with the transaction.
Realized Earnings Transaction Report
Item: The name of the product that the transaction pertains to. Examples include experience name, "Store Credit" and "Gift".
Transaction Date: The date on which the activity described within the row occurred.
Customer Name: Name of the Customer whose purchase record the transaction applies to.
Arrival: The date upon which a booked experience will take place. Gifts and Store Credits will not have value here.
Currency: The currency that the transaction was processed in.
Realized in period: The amount of money associated with the transaction that can be attributed to an event that took place within your specified report date range.
Previously collected Gross: The total amount of money associated with the transaction that was collected before your report's date range, before processing, or partner fees.
Previously collected Processing Fee: The total processing fees associated with the transaction that was collected before your report's date range.
Previously collected Net: The total amount of money associated with the transaction that was collected before your report's date range, minus processing and/or partner fees.
Collected in period - Gross: The total amount of money associated with the transaction that was collected within your report's date range, before processing or partner fees.
Collected in period - Processing Fee: The total processing fees associated with the transaction that was collected within your report's date range.
Collected in period - Net: The total amount of money associated with the transaction that was collected within your report's date range, minus processing and/or partner fees.
Balance: The amount of money currently held by Stripe that has not yet been paid out to your bank account. This column is only applicable if you process payments via Xola's Stripe integration.
Source: The non-physical origin of the transaction. Examples include "Checkout", "office", and "refund".
Method: The method by which payment was collected or refunded. Examples include "Credit Cards", "Cash", and "Gift".
Tax: The amount of tax applied to the transaction. This amount is determined by your custom Taxes and Fees configuration (found in your account's Settings tab).
CC Brand: If a credit card is used, this will contain the brand of the credit card used to process the transaction.
Tags: A list of all tags that have been auto-generated or manually added to the reservation. Examples include "mobile", and "rescue", or can be user-generated from the purchases tab.
Reservation ID: Unique identifier for the purchase associated with the transaction.
Scenarios - Gifts and Store Credits in Transaction reports
Now that we've established the definition of Realized vs Cash Flow and defined what each column in each report means. Let's examine what your report will look like in some "tricky" scenarios, where the meaning behind the values present in the report may not be readily apparent.
In Xola reporting, handling of Gift Certificates and Store Credit tend to require the most explanation. In the below sections, we will provide an example of what your reports will look like throughout the lifecycle of both Gift Certificates and Store Credits. The numbered steps represent real-life activity, while the description columns specify what activity the values of the report correspond to.
Note: The description column you see in the images below will not be present in the reports you export from Xola, it is only present for the purposes of this help article. It is there to help make sense of what the corresponding reporting row represents.
Scenario 1: Gift Purchased and used
1. Gift purchased for $100 on 12/1/17
2. $200 reservation made on 12/5/17, paid $100 by Gift Certificate and $100 by Credit Card for an event that will take place on 1/1/18
Export Transactions (Report Date range 12/1/17 - 12/31/17)
Cash Flow:
Realized Earnings:
Export Transactions (Report Date range 1/1/18 - 1/2/18)
Cash Flow:
Realized Earnings:
Export Transactions (Report Date range 1/2/18 - 1/5/18)
Cash Flow:
Realized Earnings:
Note: Notice that the Cash Flow report will stay the same no matter what date range is pulled, while the values in the Realized Earnings report will vary depending on the date of transaction, report, and booked event.
Scenario 2: Store credit issued and used
1. $100 reservation made on 12/1/17, paid via credit card for an event that will take place on 1/1/18
2. Reservation was canceled on 12/2/17 and refunded to store credit. A $100 Store Credit was issued via refund for the purchase that was made with a credit card
3. $100 reservation made on 12/5/17, paid via store credit for an event on 1/1/18
Export Transactions (Report date range 12/1/17 - 12/31/17)
Cash Flow:
Realized Earnings:
Export Transactions (Report Date range 1/1/18 - 1/2/18)
Cash Flow:
Realized Earnings:
Export Transactions (Report Date range 1/2/18 - 1/5/18)
Cash Flow:
Realized Earnings:
Note: Notice that the Cash Flow report will stay the same no matter what date range is pulled, while the values in the Realized Earnings report will vary depending on the date of the transaction, report, and booked event.
Events vs. Transactions Reports
Wait! The revenue does not match up for range X between my Events and Transactions report!
- One event can have multiple transactions occur - For example, Alice pays a deposit in May, then she pays the rest when she arrives on site in July. The date that Alice paid her deposit may fit in range X, but the other transaction occurred outside of range X. This is why the Events Report may show a higher revenue figure than the Transactions Report for the same time period.
Wait! Some of the events on my Realized Earnings report are outside of the event departure date! How can this be?
- Realized Earnings transactions reports are coded is with the realized date calculated on the date of the event/arrival. If the money was collected after the date of the event, then that is the realized date. This may be the case if you are for some reason reconciling events a considerable time after an event had taken place.