Spreadsheets - Keeping Track of Sales

Okay, so there was a request to discuss my use of spreadsheets in this self-publishing endeavor.  For some of you, this might be a total snooze-fest.  Sorry about that.  Check back on Friday and I'll try to be more interesting.  ;o)

First, so we're all on the same page, this is Excel (2010, I think. Might be 2007.)  The files themselves are called workbooks and each individual tab within the workbook is a spreadsheet.

I have been using a separate workbook for each book.  They kinda look like this:

But opening a separate workbook for each book is kind of a pain in the ass, and it clutters the bottom of my screen. (Way worse than what you can see up there.)  Plus, toggling between all those files.  And then think about when I have 8 books out there.  Or twelve.  Ugh.

So, I made a new workbook to encompass all the books in one place.  It's my 2015 Book Sales workbook.  (The one called Sales Totals is what I refer to as the Master Plan. It's very pretty and has multiple charts & graphs.)

The 2015 Book Sales workbook keeps everything in one place. Now, instead of opening 4 separate files (one for each book and the Sales Totals), I will be able to open two files:

Isn't it pretty?

And the 2015 Book Sales will feed the Sales Totals, so I only have one place to plug in data to create pretty graphs like this:

My 'Pages Read' graph

Why bother? (Or as Hubs asked, 'why not just keep track of total book sales instead of individual books?')

Well, I'm hoping to track what works and what doesn't.  Find sales patterns and then find a way to recreate the spikes.  Look for trends and maximize them.  And I do the individual book thing because each book is different - different pricing at different times, different page counts, different genres, different marketing efforts.  :shrug:  Or, it could be that I like playing with data. 

Sales Totals, Daily Sales, color-coded for mktg efforts

As I've said before, some stuff works, other stuff doesn't - but how would I have an inkling of what worked if I didn't track it?  So I track it.  Does it help?  A little.  Down the road - perhaps more.  At least I'll have some idea of what to expect with each new release and with every subsequent year. 

I hope this helps.  I suspect at this point, it probably didn't answer the questions people might've had on exactly 'how' to do it.  That would take hours and I suspect I might not be the awesome software instructor I used to be.  Excel nowadays, though, does a lot of the work for you.  Autosum was a godsend, let me tell ya.  And being able to type the equal sign then click a cell in a whole other spreadsheet?  I could kiss someone for that.  Try typing out '[2015 Book Sales.xlsx]Monthly Totals'!$B$13 in one cell and then in the next cell that but now the B should be a C, or the 13 has to be a 14.  Ugh.  What a pain.

Now, it's not exactly what I would call easy-peasy, but it is a lot easier than it used to be.  Don't be afraid of it.  Play around.  Try some things.  But do what I didn't do and plan ahead.  Don't just think about your needs now, but what your needs might be a couple books or a year down the road.  Or you'll wind up like me - building a new workbook and then going back and populating it from the old workbooks.  It's a lot of work I could've saved myself if I'd planned ahead.  In the end, though, the work I put in now will save me time in the long run.

Any questions?  Do you keep spreadsheets?  What do use yours for?  (I also have one for expenses. I used to have a spreadsheet that listed all the books I owned - titles, authors, pub dates, etc. I still have one I use for quotes.)