6 Reasons To Be Excited About Reporting Plus

By Greg Banecker, Sr. Marketing Manager at Gateway Ticketing Systems

I sat down with Tom McAree, the developer of our Reporting Plus solution and the primary report writer for our customers. I posed a single question to him: why should I be excited about Reporting Plus? Well, he spent the next half hour telling me why. For starters, did you know that Reporting Plus was initially developed as a financial reporting tool for the UK market designed to cater to how VAT and taxes are handled there? And now it’s a fully developed product with 90% percent of the data available in Galaxy with over 400 standard and custom reports currently available and counting.

History aside, the present for Reporting Plus apparently has a lot to offer:

It’s much easier to develop reports

With Reporting Plus, you’re not touching the Galaxy database itself to design or deliver reports, you’re just pulling data from the Galaxy database. So it’s much easier to develop reports. There are less concerns about how manipulating the data might impact the sales information and sales processes in Galaxy. What we’ve done essentially is take the reporting component of Galaxy and parked it in a separate lot, so if we need to develop special reports for our customers we can do it without impacting their Galaxy performance.

You can create your own reports too

Some of our Reporting Plus customers already do. We give you the data dictionary so you can create your own reports if you have the time and expertise. The product offers a more simplified database and database structure. And if you have familiarity with SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services), you can create your own reports. If you use other reporting services like Crystal, Business Objects or Power BI, you can plug them into Reporting Plus and have at the data. We’ve even seen some customers develop their own custom reporting dashboards using Reporting Plus and Power BI.

Much more robust reporting on event usage

Galaxy has basic reporting on event usage, but Reporting plus can dive much deeper into detail on resourced managed events including the event that was purchased, who purchased, what capacity  is left or how many of the product has been used – and you can see it all on one report.

Say ‘hello’ to better forecast reporting

One of the ways Galaxy registers a product/event in the future is with a ticket date, order date or event date. Reporting Plus offers a range of different reports not available in Galaxy that support forecasting based on these dates so you can see the purchases/bookings you have in the future and the percentage of what categories of purchases you have. These reports help you see the trends in future visits. Some of our customers use them for school and educational bookings, or group visits. They can look to see who is booked in the future, determine if they’ve received payment for that group, or track to see if future bookings are what hey expect versus past performance. They also make sure they are staffed appropriately based on the number of guests they expect to have. Some customers have used these reports recently to contact customers due to COVID closures.

Reporting Plus captures all attribute data

More and more we are seeing our customers using attributes to manage reports because Reporting Plus captures all of your attribute info. Attributes are a tool in Galaxy that allows you to customize Galaxy in your environment. Commonly they are used to track financial information – to map financial codes. They are also closely linked with rosters, so in education sales for example, attributes may be the grade of children that are coming or the teacher name, etc. Reporting Plus can pull the data and develop the reports with all attributes included. In fact, it can even filter the data based on requested attributes in ways that Galaxy cannot.

Reports are accessible to anyone you want

One primary premise of Reporting Plus when it was developed is that you wouldn’t need a Galaxy license to access the reports. And that’s a game changer for attractions that are trying to make data driven decisions across their organization. You can download your reports in multiple formats and easily manipulate the data in your files. You can also leverage the schedule function to email reports via an attachment or link. You can arrange for Group 1, Group 2 and Group 3 to all received different reports, or to receive the same reports, but at different times. You can give people access to the results of the report, but not the actual report themselves. The ability to share the information with users that don’t have a Galaxy license and then manipulate the information is a major strength of the product.

If you want to know more about Reporting Plus, don’t hesitate to reach out to your Business Solutions Manager, or contact us right here.