title: “Reports Manager”

This guide covers the Reports Manager module. If your gallery has not switched it on (the Owner does that in Settings → Extensions), this page will not match what you see — skip it for now.

Reports Manager

For gallery staff. Turn what is already in CartonCrew into paper — a checklist for a show, wall labels ready to cut, a class sign-in sheet, a sales summary for an artist, a sheet per work for a valuation. The same reports also download as a spreadsheet: CSV or Excel (see Spreadsheets below).

The sidebar entry is Reports Manager. If it is not there, the extension is off: Settings → Extensions.

Every PDF comes out on your gallery’s own letterhead — your name, your colors and your logo, from Settings. Nothing about another gallery can appear in one, and another gallery cannot see, download or delete yours.

The Reports list

At the top of Reports Manager is Reports: every report your gallery can make, one row each, with four columns.

Last run moves only when a run succeeds and the file is in History. A run that fails or is refused does not count, and deleting a file from History does not change it. Press Use on a built-in report to pick it as the Source below.

Building your own report

Sidebar → Reports Manager → New report (above the Reports list). You need the Organization Insights tick box (owners and admins have it). No developer, no formulas: you choose from lists, and CartonCrew builds the report from your gallery’s own records.

1. Report name: what the list will call it.
2. Data: what the report is about. Works (the catalog), Sales, Exhibitions, Class bookings, Register sales, Register discounts, Register refunds, your patrons, Layaways and Shifts, each when its module is on.
3. Columns: tick what to show, in the order you want them.
4. Filters (+ Add filter): a column, a rule and a value. For example Sale date this year, Sale amount is at least 500, Artist is one of two names separated by a comma. Dates can be in the last N days, this month, last month, this year or last year, counted in your gallery’s time zone.
5. Group by: rows with the same value come together, each group with a subtotal of its amounts. Tick One row per group, with its totals to get one line per group instead (for example one line per patron), with each of your totals worked out for that group.
6. Show only the top (optional): a number from 1 to 500. Leave it empty for every row.
7. Sort (+ Add sort): up to three columns, each A to Z or Z to A. With One row per group, you can also sort by one of your totals, for example Total of Sale amount, Z to A for the biggest first.
8. Totals (+ Add total): count, total, average, lowest or highest of a column (for a date: earliest or latest). Totals always cover every matching row.
9. Layout: the Title on the page, Orientation (portrait or landscape) and an optional Footer note.
10. Press Preview to see the first 50 rows and the totals, then Save.

Patron reports: top patrons, sales per patron

The Sales and Register sales data carry the patron recorded on the sale: Patron (name), Patron email and Patron city/state. A sale with no patron, or whose patron has been erased, shows as No patron recorded. Refunded sales are in the Sales data like any other sale; add the filter Refunded is no to leave them out.

The quickest start: on New report, choose Start from a starter report → Top patrons. It fills in the form with the 25 patrons who spent the most this year (refunded sales left out), each with the number of purchases, the total, the average sale and the first and last purchase date, biggest total first. Change the Sale date filter for another period, or Show only the top for more or fewer, then Preview and Save.

To build it yourself: Data Sales, tick Patron, Group by Patron, tick One row per group, with its totals, add the totals you want (for example Sale amount Count and Total), add a sort on Total of Sale amount Z to A, and set Show only the top to 10.

Patron names, emails and towns are personal details, so they follow the same rule as Patrons: only people who can open Patrons see these columns. Anyone else sees them listed under Not available to your role, is not offered Top patrons, and gets Your role cannot see the column “Patron” if they open a saved report that uses them. Only your own gallery’s patrons and sales are ever in the report.

The report joins the Reports list with your name under Created and Last changed. To change it, press Edit on its row. To make a file, open it, choose the Format (PDF, CSV or Excel) and press Run. The PDF is US Letter in the orientation you chose, on your letterhead, with the title, the date it was run and page numbers. Past 2,000 rows it says how many it shows; the totals still cover every row. Delete removes the report (files already made stay in History).

Ask AI

When your gallery’s AI is switched on (Settings → Organization → AI), the New report page has an Ask AI panel beside the form. Type what you want under Your request, for example this year’s sales by artist with a total, and press Ask. The AI may ask a question or two first (which period, how to group it). When it has enough, it fills in the form and says The form is filled in. Check it, press Preview, then Save. Nothing is saved until you press Save, and you can change anything first.

• The AI never sees your records. It only knows the list of data and columns you are allowed to use, and what you type.
• If you ask for something that does not exist (patron birthdays, say), it tells you so and lists it under Not available; it does not make up a column.
• It can only build what the form can: your gallery’s data, and only what your role may see. Asking it for another gallery’s sales or everyone’s emails gets a plain refusal, and the server checks its answer exactly as it checks the form.
• It uses your gallery’s AI setting: ChAImp-funded within your allowance, or your own AI key. With AI off, the panel is not there and the form works as before.

Who can do what. Anyone with the Organization Insights tick box can build, change and delete the gallery’s reports. A Treasurer without the tick box can run them but not change them. A report never shows more than your own role may see: data from a module you cannot open (for example Patrons, or Layaways, which are for admins) is listed under Not available to you, and some columns (a patron’s name and contact details, artist payouts and the gallery’s commission) need that access too. If a report uses a column you may not see, running it says which column, rather than quietly leaving it out.

The one thing to know first

One record downloads straight away. Two or more do not.

• Pick one record and the button reads Generate PDF. The file is made while you wait, a green message says PDF generated, and it downloads to your computer like any other download. A bar at the top also says Your file is ready - click to download, in case your browser held the download back.
• Pick two or more and the button reads Generate pack (N). The message says Generating N records…, your ticks are cleared — and no file opens. The pack is now a job in History at the bottom of the screen, working through your records. Its Status starts at queued, becomes running, and becomes ready when the file is there. Only then is there a Download button.

Nothing has gone wrong when a pack does not open. Scroll down to History and watch the status — it refreshes itself every few seconds while anything is still working, so you do not have to reload the page.

A single-record PDF lands in History too, so if the download did not start you do not have to generate it again: use the Your file is ready link, or Download on its row.

The short version

1. Open Reports Manager.
2. Pick a Source.
3. Set the Layout, the Statement year or the From / To dates if that source offers them.
4. Tick the records you want in the list.
5. Choose the Format: PDF (the default), CSV or Excel.
6. For a PDF of two or more records, choose Output.
7. For a PDF, check Cover, Contents and Page numbers.
8. Edit the Report title if you do not like the one it wrote for you.
9. Press Generate PDF (or Generate CSV / Generate Excel), or Generate pack (N) for two or more records.

Spreadsheets: CSV and Excel

Sidebar → Reports Manager → pick the Source and records → Format → CSV or Excel → Generate CSV / Generate Excel (or Generate pack (N)). A spreadsheet holds exactly the rows the PDF would print for you — the same records, the same gallery, the same permissions — without the pictures.

• Excel is one workbook with one sheet per section of the report, named after it, with a bold header row. Amounts are real numbers shown as dollars, dates are real dates, so you can sort, filter and add them up. Artwork sheets are the exception: every work you picked is one row on a single sheet called Artwork sheets.
• CSV is one file when the report has one section (one class roster, one artist’s sales). With several sections you get a ZIP with one CSV file in it per section.
• A value that starts with =, +, - or @ is kept as text, so a spreadsheet program can never run it as a formula. In a CSV it starts with an apostrophe.

Not everything has a table to put in a spreadsheet:

In History a spreadsheet job shows (Excel) or (CSV) after its title, and Download gives you the file.

Choosing a source

Source offers only what your gallery can actually print. A source appears when two things are true: it belongs to a gallery (or to every kind of organization), and the extension that owns it is switched on.

A gallery is never offered the consultancy sources (Documents, Engagements) — they belong to a different kind of organization, not to you.

If the screen says No sources available, none of the above is switched on. It names the extensions you could enable, each linked to Settings → Extensions, with the sources each one would unlock. If it says None of the Reports Manager sources apply to this organization, there is nothing to enable.

Changing the Source empties the record list and clears your ticks. That is deliberate — a pack is one source at a time.

What each gallery source actually prints

Artwork sheets. One work per page. A field you never filled in is simply left out — an empty Dimensions row would read as “no dimensions”. Every source prints a size the one standard way, 24 × 30 in (see Dimensions), in the PDF, the CSV and the Excel file alike. Price prints the price for a work that is for sale, the word Sold for a sold one and Not for sale where that is the status. Location is the place on your floor plan if the work has one, otherwise the free-text location from intake. Label ID is the work’s SKU — see Artwork SKUs.

Exhibition checklists. A table in wall order: the number, a thumbnail, Title (with the label ID under it), Artist, Year, Medium, Dimensions, Price and Location. A show with nothing hung in it yet prints No artworks added yet rather than an empty table.

Its Layout picker has two entries:

• Checklist — the table above.

• Wall labels — one card per work instead, ready to cut along its border. Each card is exactly the wall label that Print wall labels prints (see Artwork SKUs), centered:

  1. the artist;
  2. the title, in bold;
  3. the wall-label subtitle, only if the piece has one (set it in Artwork Catalog, open the piece, Wall-label subtitle);
  4. the size and medium detail on one line, such as 16x12 Oil on linen;
  5. the price with no currency symbol, such as 790.00 or 1,250.00.

  No price line for a piece with no price or one that is Not for sale; a Sold piece still prints its price. No thumbnail, and no SKU unless you turn on Settings → Labels → Print SKU on wall labels: then each card also shows the piece’s SKU (for example SKU: AT00001) in small type in its bottom right corner, exactly as the label sheets do. Each card is the size of the label your gallery prints that show on (Settings → Labels: the Show wall label sheet for a Show, the Wall label sheet for any other exhibition), and long names and titles get smaller type instead of being cut off.

Class rosters. Everyone booked, with email, phone, when they booked, and a status: Paid $x, Free, Held — awaiting payment, Refunded $y or Cancelled. Above the table you get the instructor, the session dates and times, where it is (or Online), and how many of the places are taken. Refunded and cancelled students are listed separately under No longer attending — they are not mixed in with the people who are coming.

Its Layout picker:

• Roster — the table above, including the No longer attending section.
• Sign-in sheet — people who are actually attending only, with a blank Signature column and no No longer attending section. Nobody signs in for a chair they gave back.

Sales summaries. Pick one or more artists and a From and To date. Each artist gets a table of their sales in that period: Date, Work, Channel (Online, In gallery, or Recorded for a sale you entered as history), Sale, Artist share, Gallery share and Payout (Paid, Owed, or a dash), with a total row.

A sale that has a recorded payout prints that payout’s own split. A sale with no payout — history you typed in — has its split worked out from the artist’s current rate, marked with an asterisk, and a line at the foot of the table says so. Do not hand one of those to an artist as a statement of what they were actually paid.

The dates default to January 1st of this year up to today, and neither can be in the future. From must not be after To: it says The period must start before it ends rather than quietly swapping them and printing a confident heading over the wrong answer.

Things a gallery really does produce with this

• A price list for a show — Exhibition checklists, layout Checklist. Title, artist, year, medium, dimensions and price, in wall order.

• The labels for the wall — the same show, layout Wall labels.

• The sign-in sheet for Saturday’s class — Class rosters, layout Sign-in sheet.

• An artist’s year, for them or for your accountant — Sales summaries, with the dates set to their year.

• An inventory of one artist’s work, for a valuation or an insurer — Artwork sheets. The record list is ordered by artist, so that artist’s works sit together; tick them and generate a pack. Each sheet carries the picture, medium, dimensions, edition, location and label ID.

  One honest limit for the insurance case: a work whose status is sold prints Sold where the price would be, never a figure. That is the same rule the public show page follows. If you need values on every line, the sheet is not where they will come from.

There is no condition report. Nothing in a work’s record captures condition, so no layout can print one.

Choosing the records

The list under the options is every record of the chosen source — the whole catalog for Artwork sheets, the whole roster for Sales summaries. There is no search box in it, so it is a scroll on a big catalog. Artworks are listed as title · artist; shows, classes and artists are listed by their own name.

• N selected counts your ticks.
• Select all ticks everything currently listed.
• Clear unticks everything.

A run takes at most 100 records. Select all on a catalog larger than that is refused when you press generate, with the number you picked and how many to come down to. Nothing is generated and your ticks stay, so you can untick down and press again.

If the list says No records for this source, there is nothing of that kind yet — no exhibitions, no classes, no artists on the roster.

Choosing a layout, and the output

Layout appears only for Exhibition checklists and Class rosters, described above. Every other source has one layout and no picker.

Output appears only once two or more records are ticked, because it is a question about a pack:

A ZIP’s individual PDFs keep your branding and their page numbers, but not the cover or the contents page — those belong to a pack, and there is no pack inside a single-record file. A ZIP job’s row in History has (ZIP) after its title so you can tell the two apart later.

Cover, Contents and Page numbers

Three checkboxes, all on to start with.

On a single record, Contents produces a contents page listing one thing. Turn it off for a one-work sheet or a single roster; leave it on for a pack.

The report title

Report title writes itself from what you have picked, and keeps updating as you change the source or the ticks — until you type in it yourself, after which it is yours and stops changing. It is limited to 200 characters.

The title is what prints on the cover page, what the Contents entries are built from, and what names the downloaded file. Leave it blank and the default is used anyway.

Generating

Press Generate PDF (one record) or Generate pack (N) (two or more). The button is disabled until you have ticked at least one record, and reads Generating… while it works.

• One record. The file is built while you wait, then downloads. A row appears in History, already ready, and Your file is ready - click to download appears at the top.
• Two or more. A row appears in History at queued, moves to running, and ends at ready or failed. The action column reads working… while it runs. The screen refreshes itself every few seconds while any job is still going.

The Records column shows a running job as 0/12 until it finishes and then 12. It does not tick up one by one — the count is written when the whole pack is done. A job sitting at 0/12 is normal, not stuck.

History

Below the generator, newest first, up to your 50 most recent. Every generation lands here, single or pack.

An empty history says No PDFs generated yet.

Downloading

Download appears on a ready row only. It downloads the file, under its own name (for example Sales.xlsx), every time you press it, with a fresh link each time; download links go stale, so use the button rather than keeping an old address. Your file is ready - click to download appears at the top as well, as a second way to the same file.

Save (to your drive)

Save, with your provider’s icon on it, appears next to Download — but only when the Cloud Drive extension is on and a drive is actually connected. It uploads that same file to the CartonCrew folder at the top level of your connected drive (OneDrive or Google Drive). The message names the drive and the folder, and an Open in OneDrive (or Google Drive) link appears at the top to open it there.

It saves to your gallery’s connected drive and nowhere else. It does not email anything, does not file the PDF against the artwork, the show or the class, and does not put the file anywhere else in CartonCrew — the copy in History is the only one here.

Deleting

Delete is for owners and admins only; other staff do not see the button. It asks you to confirm, saying plainly that the file will be removed — and it is removed: the row goes and so does the generated file, so anyone holding an old download link has nothing to fetch. Nothing about the artwork, the show, the class or the sale is touched. You can always generate it again.

Who can do what

When it goes wrong

I pressed generate and nothing opened. You had more than one record ticked, so it is a pack, not an instant download. Scroll to History: the row is there, queued or running. Wait for ready, then press Download.

One record, and no file arrived. Press Your file is ready - click to download at the top, or Download on the row in History (it is ready). If your browser asks whether to allow several downloads from this site, allow it.

The status has said running for a long time and never changes. A pack that was interrupted while it was rendering can be left at running and will not move again on its own — there is nothing that sweeps them up. Give it a few minutes, then treat it as lost: tick the same records and generate again. An admin can Delete the stranded row so the history is not misleading.

The status says failed. The reason is printed in small red text under the badge; hover it to read the whole thing if it is cut off. Read it — it names what stopped. If every record you picked had been deleted in the meantime, it says the record was not found; if the extension that owns the source was switched off while the pack was running, it names that extension. If it says PDF generation failed, the renderer was not available, which is not something you can fix from this screen — tell support.

A pack does not fail when only some of the records have gone. The missing ones are left out and the rest are printed. The Records column counts what you asked for, not what came out, so open a pack and read its Contents page before you hand it to anybody.

“Select at least one record.” Nothing is ticked. The button is disabled until something is, so this shows up if your ticks were cleared under you — which happens when you change the Source.

“Too many records” when I press generate. A run takes 100 at most. The message says how many you picked. Untick down to 100 or fewer and split the job into a few runs.

Download does nothing, or says the file could not be found. The row has to be ready. If it is, and the download still fails, an admin has deleted the file from History — the row and the file go together. Generate it again.

“No drive is connected.” Save needs a connected drive, not just the extension. Connect one under Settings → Cloud Drive, then come back — the button appears once the connection is live.

The Source I want is not in the list. Its extension is off. Settings → Extensions. If the source is not named anywhere on the empty state either, it is not one your gallery is offered at all.

The record list is empty. No records for this source means there are none yet — add the exhibition, the class or the artist first.

A price is missing on a sheet or a checklist. A sold work prints Sold and a work marked not for sale prints Not for sale. Neither ever prints a figure. A work that is for sale with no price typed in prints nothing at all in that row.

The artist’s share on a sales summary has an asterisk. That sale has no recorded payout — it is history you entered — so the split was estimated from the artist’s current rate. The note at the foot of the table says so. It is not what was paid.

Which day is a sale on? Your gallery’s own day. A sales summary’s dates and period, and the Sale date (and an artwork’s Sold date) in a report you build, use your gallery’s time zone (in the sidebar, open Studio Site, then the Featured tab and choose Your gallery’s timezone). A sale at 8 pm is on that day, not the next. If no time zone is set, UTC is used. A past sale you recorded by hand keeps the date you entered. The Commission report and payout runs still go by the date the payout was recorded.

The class roster is missing someone who paid. Look under No longer attending: a refunded or cancelled student is listed there, not in the main table. On a Sign-in sheet they are not printed at all. Someone whose payment never confirmed shows as Held — awaiting payment.

The cover has no logo, or the wrong colors. Both come from Settings. Upload a logo and set your colors there, then generate again — an already-generated PDF keeps the branding it was made with.

Related

• Exhibitions & Shows — the shows a checklist is built from
• Classes — the classes a roster is built from
• Artwork SKUs — the Label ID on a sheet and a checklist
• Artist Payouts — the payouts behind a sales summary