Merchant Archive

Since opening my business in-game a month ago, I have tracked my sales in QuickBooks. After using the ability to check my inventory and sales history both online and offline quite frequently, I can't really see doing this any other way. I can see who the repeat customers are, what professions tend to buy certain resources more and for what, which prices work and which don't, and be able to see where my money actually goes (maintenance, equipment purchases, etc).

So, I'm curious to know, does anyone else do something similar? I know a few tailors who track sales, but mostly with spreadsheets and databases and such.

Yes I do. I do a /mailsave each day, and a script picks up all the mails, parses them and dumps them into a database, then I can run SQL and have graphs etc from the data.

I don't track every item. I just follow the trends and try to keep my vendors stocked up.. and about 1 time a week i'll check the vendors in detail to see where i need to improve my stockes and then go from there.

But mostly i just track my sales by whats left on the vendors. I currently run 6 vendors with anywhere from 50 to 500 items each on them at any given time

I use mailsave and then import the information into a database. From there I can print all sorts of reports. This was far more of an issue when I was dealing with a high volume supplier vs the volume I have at the moment.

One of the most lacking things about this profession is accurate sales reporting tools.

I track my sales all Mentally...get a feel for stats and certain Types of materials that people want and find a reasonable price for such. Special Orders i do via mail and for "delivery" i use travel packs with no more than 10 items per. Set the name of the pack to match the orderer and sell it on the vender.. they can pick it up at a convenient time

As for tracking regulars, still a mental concept, after a while you start to remember the people that come on a regualr basis. I personally read almost every vender sale mail so i know whats coming off the vender and by whom.

With over 700 listings atm it would be insane to try to keep a database or spreadsheet of sales. And more so because every 3-7 days my listed items jumps 1-200 because i'm getting better suppliers and more of them

Hope this is of some help. Be Safe

While it might be useful to track statistics outside of the game, in my position, I think it's going overboard. As was mentioned earlier, I do everything mentally as well. I know what sells and what doesn't, where and to whom, and the best price.

It's already quite a job keeping up with orders and vendors stocked and just playing the game, let alone, without adding a ton of more work. If it were a real business with real money, then of course!

However, to each his own.

If you are only dealing with yourself as a supplier that is fine. If I am selling a million credits a day for someone else on consignment I have to know what sold not "kinda" but exactly to the credit so I can pay for the merchandise and keep records about what has sold.

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DocSavag wrote:

I use mailsave and then import the information into a database. From there I can print all sorts of reports. This was far more of an issue when I was dealing with a high volume supplier vs the volume I have at the moment.

One of the most lacking things about this profession is accurate sales reporting tools.

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Jarob wrote:

We still need /vendorsave option so we can dump current inventory!

Doc have you heard anything from the devs on this idea?

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Nope. They have the suggestion though.

BTW Yes I do track sales, I have written a program that all my guild merchants use and they setup an alias /lg /sit;/pause 1;/mailsave;/logo and they just do /lg every day. Then they double click on the tool, it parses out just the Vendor/Guild/City messages and forwards them via a HTTP POST to our server. The server parses them and creates sales reports, guild roster and citizen roster from the data.

We break data down by merchant, top 10 customers, top items by qty/price etc. And we have a detailed drill-down tool for guildies sales. We usually like to re-imburse or at least help our fellow guildies that buy from us, so we have all of that in detail on our site.

This has worked well but we really need a /vendorsave command or even just an E-mail that says we have listed an item on the vendor, qty/descr/price/SerialNum etc. Then we could parse those pretty easily. That would make the inventory control aspect a lot better. Especially when you have a crafting guild like mine where we make everything and sell it all over the place by several merchants etc.

I agree with Doc we really need better reporting. I wonder if perhaps we should develop a RFC for Merchant reporting here and make a detailed proposal to the devs on this issue? Doc what do you think?

(RFC=Request for Comments)

I can see where tracking consignments could be a problem but to simplify this, I personally, just "consign" for 2-3 people and its not really a consignment in essense.. i literally buy their product and plop it on the vender so everyone is paid and taken care of... but i can see in some instances where some people don't have the credits for this practice

RFC for Sales report:

Inventory: current stock (grouped by Location and Vendor)

Daily Sales Summary: Total sales per location and vendor (in credits)

Daily Vendor Sales Detail: Each item sold, grouped by Vendor, Customer and Item name

Daily Customer Activity: Items sold to each customer, grouped by customer and item name (w/ totals)