Volume history form

This form can be opened from the Main group, the HOME form's To-do list, or by selecting FORM | VOLUME HISTORY from the menu. Whichever method you choose, the form will open showing the current week's volume.

Purpose of this form

The Volume history form allows you to record your current volume (sales and/or transactions) and access the historical volume stored by ESP.

Form fields

This form is divided into two sections:

1. Date and comments
2. Volume: sales or transactions

Date and comments

This section indicates the week of volume history you are viewing.

The date of the volume history will not be the date of your schedule because this is actual volume; it is not possible to view volume for the current week since it has not yet occurred. By default this will open to the last full week of volume on file. For example, if you are scheduling for the next week, the last full week of volume history will be for two weeks prior to the current schedule date.

In addition to entering your current week's volume, you can view historical volume entries. To view a past week's volume, select a date from the toolbar option Display week or use the Calendar note page on the toolbar to open a window that lists only weeks that have volume filled in. Simply select the week of volume you wish to view from the list.

The COMMENTS box should be used to record conditions such as weather, promotions, etc., that you consider may have affected the volume. These comments can help you decide the weeks to include when projecting volume for scheduling weeks in the future.

Volume: Sales or Transactions

When you open this form, the volume area will display a weekly view of your preferred volume: sales or transactions; as defined on the PREFERENCES form in the Settings group. You may change the view by selecting the Sales or Transaction button on the toolbar.

If you are entering your volume manually, you will most likely enter one or the other; not both. If you are transferring your volume information from a POS system, you may find that both sales and transactions are available.

If you have set up ESP to import your volume information from other software, this section will be automatically filled in with the information that was imported. In this case, at this step in the scheduling process you only need to check the information for accuracy. (See the Weekly procedures section for information on setting up automatic polling of volume from your POS.)

If you enter volume manually and have not yet entered last week’s values, the bottom section will be blank. At this step in the scheduling process you will need to enter your last week of volume.

This area is setup in a table format with the days of the week displayed along the top row and the weekly total at the bottom; these fields are static and remain visible as you scroll around the form. Each hour of the day is displayed in rows down a column on the left side and hourly totals for each day are displayed along the row. A blank field indicates that either no information is on file for that hour or your location was not open during that hour. Scroll down the form to view the daily totals, located at the bottom of the screen.

Adding or deleting volume

When you first receive ESP there will be a sample week of volume information on file. This sample reflects average volume trends for a restaurant location; it is not an actual volume history from your location; it is included only to help with the initial program setup.

To help in generating accurate projections, one of the first things you should do when you begin to use ESP is enter actual volume information for the previous few weeks.

To add a week of volume to your history select the toolbar option Display week and choose the week that you want to add volume for. If there is no volume stored in the history for the week you have chosen, a blank form will open ready for you to enter your actual information. If the form opens with volume filled in, review the information to ensure it is correct. Adding weekly volume is the second task on the Schedule task list; for more information on this step see Weekly procedures.

After you have entered some actual volume remove the sample week of volume from your history. To remove a week of volume, open the week that you want removed and then select the toolbar option Delete week. When you select this option a warning box will open to let you know that the week will be permanently removed. As deleting historical information is not a typical function, this warning helps ensure that you don’t accidentally delete historical information.

The toolbar option Go to current week provides a quick and easy way to return to the latest week of volume history on file.

Editing/modifying values

Although the default view for entering volume is whole hours, the values are actually stored in quarter-hour increments. To view an hour's quarter-hour totals, use the plus (+) sign in the hour column to expand it. Or, expand all of the hours for the week by selecting the toolbar option Expand/Contract all.

If you prefer to view your volume in half-hour increments select VOLUME | VIEW DETAIL BY on the menu and choose the half-hour option.

While reviewing information on this form you can change any quarterly, hourly or daily total by selecting the field and entering your change. To save the change, move off the field or press the [Enter] key. When you change an hourly total, each fifteen-minute amount is adjusted; if you change a daily total all of the amounts for that day are adjusted.

Switching views: sales or transactions

You can easily switch between displaying your volume by Sales or Transactions by selecting your choice on the toolbar. For this option to work, however, you must be capturing both of these values. If you import volume information from your POS and your POS has both sales and transactions, you can setup ESP to import and store both of these on file. Then, when you select the opposite viewing option the values section will display the information. If, however, ESP imports only sales or transactions from your POS or you manually enter only sales or transactions information, when you choose to view the other option the values section will display a blank form.

Selecting the opposite option is a temporary switch and when you leave this form and return, the values will return to your preferred setting. To make the switch permanent you must change the setting on the Preferences form in the Settings group.

Advanced features - menu bar options

If the entries in the volume section are not for the date displayed, rather than selecting a new date and re-entering the information on a new form, select VOLUME | CHANGE RECORDED DATE... on the menu to open a window that allows you to change the date for the displayed values. This is helpful if you had entered values in the bottom section before you realized that the date was wrong.

Maintaining volume history for multiple sites

If you schedule more than one department or location, a tab for each location will be displayed at the top of the form to allow easy movement between locations. No tabs are displayed if you schedule only one location.

Remember, if you do schedule for more than one location, you must review and enter volume information for all locations each week.