VM2 sale statistics

[sbrg]

Greetings.

I have recently started managing a small business website based on Joomla that uses VM2 for it's webshop. It is pretty nifty as such, but I am not very familiar with neither Joomla nor VM2, though most of it is rather intuitive. My client(the owner) asked if I could get her some sale statistics, and after looking through the various menus of VM, I can't find quite what she's looking for.

I can get revenue statistics for any period without any trouble, but what she wants is to get a list of the products sold during configurable time periods. We're talking looking at stuff like Christmas sales from last year to anticipate this year's sale. In this scenario, revenue is of little use. I have found a plugin that I *think* can do this (Reports for VirtueMart by InteraMind) but I would like to make sure I'm not just glancing over some tab or option before asking the owner to buy this plugin.

On this note, I would also like to ask if any functionality that does this would be confused by different products having identical SKUs? I ask because it looks like 1. There are products from before I took over the website that have identical SKUs 2. After I added some new products to the shop, doing so by cloning some products because they were essentially similar, the cloned products did not get new SKUs.

I would really appreciate anything resembling answers to my questions as well as any hints and tips -- thanks in advance!

Regards,
sbrg

[AH]

I would use sql to write your own reports


At some point you will want to do this if you are serious about your store.
Using a third party plugin will always have its benefits of simplicity, but also restrictions.  Plus using your own backup data and doing a bit of sql will really help you better understand your data (not just for reporting)

Create a copy of the dbase on a local machine

Use heidisql to write simple sql queries on the sales database (and whatever other queries you want)

You could even take them into a spreadsheet for further analytics using pivot tables and excels native data from an sql database linkage

You will need to use the relevant odbc driver for mysql on your machine

This is relatively straightforward if you understand some sql and how to get data into excel from an external source use

Here are some links that may help

Instead why not create local copies of the database for reporting and then work on them using heidisql  http://www.heidisql.com/

Using "offline" data and direct local connections via either Heidisql or Excel ODBC will save you having to write specific code, reduces live server load and is Extremely flexible!

Updating the local dbase with a live db dump, takes seconds in heidisql.

Using heidisql, in many cases" will save you having to write specific code to get data as you can save the SQL result directly to a CSV file from heidisql

You can also build "snippets" of sql for re-use

you could connect to the database using the mysql odbc connector then create a report using excel and mysql

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/connector-odbc-configuration-dsn-windows.html
excel data connections

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/overview-of-connecting-to-importing-data-HP010342748.aspx#BMunderstanding_data_connections
and

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/overview-of-connecting-to-importing-data-HP010342748.aspx


I hope this helps you and  anyone out there that wants to get to the data and really get to grips with their store.

Give it a go.

[sbrg]

Thank you for your reply. I did not even consider that it would be possible to download the database. I am familiar with Sql and I would definitely like to do it that way. However, after searching through Joomla, the VirtueMart settings and on Google I can't find a way to download the database. Is this possible without third party extensions?

[AH]

Absolutely

You can use PHPmyadmin to export the database tables into a zip file  and then download via ftp (Filezilla is great for doing this!)
https://filezilla-project.org/

You should really be doing this anyhow as you should always have a backup of the website (on an as needed basis)

and a backup of the database!!  (imagine the damage to your business if the dbase were lost!!)

You then just load the tables into your local copy of the dbase and work as you like without any impact to the live data.  Reporting on live data is very rarely required using this method.

You can use MS excel to link via odbc to the local copy any create new reports as you like

For quick reports using heidisql is easy and you can save these sql statements as "snippets" for re-use or later starting points for new reports.

[sbrg]

Thank you for your reply.

I do not have phpMyAdmin installed on the server and I would rather not wrangle with installing it, as it would be rather silly for a single task. Is there not a built-in way to get my databases?

[GJC Web Design]

akeeba backup and just backup/export the database

[GuidoS]

Thank you for your reply.

I do not have phpMyAdmin installed on the server and I would rather not wrangle with installing it, as it would be rather silly for a single task. Is there not a built-in way to get my databases?

You could make a mysqldump using ssh. Or try Akeeba Backup Professional.

[GJC Web Design]

You don't need Professional
std will do this fine
make a new profile
save
edit profile
choose "Main site Database Only" from backup type
save
run

takes 2 sec and you have the .sql file

[sbrg]

Thank you very much. I was able to do this with Akeeba backup.

Cheers!

[AH]

LMAO

Akeeba - that is how I automate my backups of the database.

You could also connect directly to the database and export the tables using heidisql