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Running a successful quilt shop means managing hundreds of bolts of fabric, tracking fat quarters, coordinating classes, and keeping essential notions in stock — all at once. The details add up quickly.
That’s where your point of sale (POS) reports earn their keep. They tell you which products are selling, which notions are sitting idle, when your peak traffic hours occur, and how your cash flow is trending — giving you a clear picture of the business instead of a feeling.
In this blog, you’ll find an introduction to the reports that matter most in a POS like Like Sew and how to use them to make smarter decisions for your quilt store.
Core Pillars of Quilt Store POS Reports
A clear picture of your store’s health comes from looking at distinct areas of data. Like Sew organizes its reporting tools around these operational categories:
- Inventory efficiency: Understand the true dollar value sitting on your shelves and how quickly your stock turns over.
- Sales performance: Monitor gross revenue, track profit margins by department, and evaluate the success of store events.
- Administrative oversight: Audit daily cash drawer accuracy, track employee labor, and manage outstanding customer balances.
- Marketing and services success: Measure the return on investment (ROI) of your promotions and manage class logistics.
Before working through the specific reports, a few habits can keep your data reliable. Restrict report permissions so sensitive financial data is only visible to appropriate staff. Run and export your inventory value report monthly — saving that static snapshot to a secure file gives you clean historical records for tax or insurance purposes.
1. Inventory Reports: Manage Your Bolts and Assets
Inventory is the single largest investment in your quilt shop. Managing it well keeps your cash from sitting in dead stock while shelves of popular background neutrals go empty.
Inventory and Low-Stock Reports
The inventory report gives you a real-time view of stock levels across all locations and your e-commerce store. You can see all your inventory or filter to a low-inventory view, with quantities split between on hand and reserved — items held for special orders or layaways.
Pair this with the low-inventory report, which surfaces items that have reached or dropped below their reorder points. Reviewing this weekly alongside Like Sew’s purchase order (PO) system lets you automate vendor ordering and keep popular staples consistently in stock.
Inventory Value and Inventory Age
The inventory value report calculates the current financial value of your stock based on your selected filters, displaying total cost value, retail value, and quantity on hand. Exported to a CSV, it shows detailed line items for every product so you can quickly spot anything missing a cost value.
To keep stock fresh, pair this with the inventory age report. A visual chart and line-item breakdown show exactly how many days your fabric lines and notions have been on the shelf — helping you pinpoint stagnant inventory, mark it down, and free up capital for upcoming seasonal collections.
Inventory Velocity Report
The inventory velocity report measures how quickly products move from receiving to the point of sale — going beyond a simple count of what you have.
You can customize the number of days that qualify for each velocity rating by department. A highly anticipated designer fabric collection might be expected to hit high velocity within 14 days, while a premium sewing machine department may have a longer window.
The report also surfaces the average item age at time of sale and the average discount on high-velocity sellers — giving you a clearer picture of what to reorder and at what margin.
Related Read: Serialized Inventory for Sewing Shops: The What, Why, and How
2. Sales Reports: Track Core Performance
Sales reports help you track daily revenue, analyze profit margins, and plan for your store’s operational needs.
The Dashboard
The dashboard translates sales data into visual graphics for quick analysis.
The daily sales chart tracks volume over a rolling month, making it easy to see the revenue impact of a Monday flash sale compared to a quiet weekend. The hourly sales chart breaks down transactions hour by hour for any specific day — a practical tool for scheduling staff around peak foot traffic.
End of Day and Sales Summary Reports
The end of day summary report is your primary tool for nightly reconciliations, broken into three sections:
- Net sales and receipts: Itemize revenue across product, class, service, rental, and miscellaneous sales. Expanding any category shows a detailed breakdown of taxable and nontaxable sales.
- Tender by till: Break down intake by payment method — cash, check, card — making it straightforward to audit your physical cash drawer against system data.
- Transactions: List every daily sale chronologically. Clicking a transaction ID opens a side panel where authorized users can process returns, void sales, or reprint receipts.
For deeper financial analysis, the sales summary report expands on this data by displaying your exact item costs, liabilities, dollar profits, and profit margin percentages for every transaction.
Profit Margins Report
The margins report focuses on the difference between what you paid for goods and what they sold for, generating an exact profit margin percentage for each department. This shows which areas of your store are actually driving profitability — not just revenue.
Sales Details and Sales Comparison Reports
The sales details report is the most flexible sales report in Like Sew. Filters, custom columns, and interactive charts let you group data by item, customer, department, or vendor. Once you configure a useful layout, save it as a custom view and access it with one click from your Favorites menu.
To measure growth over time, the sales comparison report compares key metrics between two timeframes — such as comparing the past 365 days to the previous year. It provides clear line charts and data tables tracking changes in revenue, margins, and units sold.
3. Administrative Reports: Oversee Daily Operations
Administrative reports keep your business on track by monitoring labor costs, register history, and outstanding customer balances.
Shift Summary and Time Clock Reports
The shift summary report gives you an audit trail for every register shift in your system. It displays opening and closing clerks, timestamps, starting cash, expected cash, and any variances. If a discrepancy appears at the end of the night, clicking the shift ID opens a detailed breakdown to help you locate the error.
For labor tracking, the time clock report shows total hours worked per employee during a payroll period in the summary view, with individual clock-in and clock-out stamps available in the detail view. Managers can click directly on any timestamp to correct a missed clock-out or entry error instantly.
Account Balances and Payouts
If your store offers in-house financing for longarms, layaway programs, or student accounts, the account balances report keeps your receivables organized. Outstanding balances are broken into 30-, 60-, and 90-day aging brackets, and you can select multiple customer profiles to print or email statements in bulk.
If you use integrated credit card processing, the payouts report simplifies bank reconciliations. It details your gross payments processed, deducted credit card fees, refunds, and net payouts for any date range.
Related Read: Quilt Store POS System: 10 Benefits & Top Providers
4. Marketing & Services Reports: Grow Your Community
Classes and promotions are central to how quilt stores build relationships with their customers. These reports help you manage class logistics and track the return on your marketing efforts.
Marketing Dashboard and Coupon Usage
The marketing dashboard tracks revenue generated by automated campaigns over the past three months. It monitors the click-through and redemption rates for birthday, come-back, and bounce-back coupons, as well as automated product emails.
For manual promotional campaigns, the coupon usage report lists your custom coupons in descending order by total quantity redeemed — a straightforward way to see which promotions are actually driving purchases.
Wait Lists and Reviews Reports
Classes are a significant foot-traffic driver for quilt shops.
The wait lists report collects contact details for customers who signed up for sold-out classes or out-of-stock products. Clicking a class title displays the student list, transaction details, and custom register notes. From there, you can email or text reminders and supply lists to the entire group at once.
To monitor your local reputation, the reviews report tracks the full funnel of review requests sent to customers — how many were clicked, how many yielded positive feedback, and how many led to a public Google review. Negative comments are flagged internally, giving you a private opportunity to address service issues before they become public.
Put Your Reports To Work With Like Sew
POS reports shouldn’t be viewed as an administrative chore saved only for tax season. Instead, think of them as a real-time toolkit that takes the guesswork out of retail management.
Checking low-inventory thresholds weekly, reviewing inventory velocity trends, and running daily shift summaries gives you the visibility to protect cash flow and keep your shelves stocked with what your quilting community actually wants.
Like Sew makes that routine straightforward, with custom saved views, automated reorder prompts, and reports built around how quilt shops operate.
Schedule a demo today to see how Like Sew can put your store’s data to work.
