How to write the monthly report for January?

It is the end of January again. January is a special time. It is the beginning of a new year and the Chinese New Year is approaching. So how should we write the monthly report for January? The author has made an analysis and summary, hoping to help you.

January is almost over, and all data analysts should start preparing to write the monthly report for January. Here is an article from last year to see how to write a good monthly report for January.

Although every monthly report is painful, January is a special month. Data analysts have a love-hate relationship with January.

1. Why do you like January?

The biggest difference between January's monthly report and other months' monthly reports is the impact of the Spring Festival.

The Spring Festival is sometimes in January and sometimes in February, so when writing the January monthly report, the data compared with last year will be more affected.

But it is precisely because of this that we have the opportunity to fish in troubled waters - the Spring Festival blame-shifting method.

There was no Spring Festival in January last year, but there is one this year;

If there was no Spring Festival last January, there is one this year;

This is great. If the data drops, there is no need to find the reason. Just say:

Affected by the Spring Festival holiday, sales in January fell 20% year-on-year.

It's more than 20%. As long as we are confident enough, we can use the Spring Festival to blame for any drop.

(If your business is driven by the Spring Festival holiday, then the above decline can be changed to growth and the same applies.)

On February 3, Honda China released its car sales in January, which increased by 43.8% year-on-year, or in other words, fell by 56.2% year-on-year.

Why is there such a big drop? The official website clearly states: "Affected by the Spring Festival holiday."

Although the Spring Festival holiday only accounts for 22% of the total days in January, the blame for the 56% year-on-year decline can also be put on the Spring Festival. After all, the Spring Festival is so convenient to use as an excuse.

As for the impact of new energy, if you don't write it, it doesn't exist.

There was a Spring Festival in January last year, but not this year;

If there was the Spring Festival last year but not this year, then this year has a 20% advantage over last year, and it would be difficult not to see year-on-year growth, so we can say:

Affected by last year's Spring Festival holiday, sales in January this year increased by 20% year-on-year.

If you want to be even more shameless, you can even not mention the impact of last year's Spring Festival, and directly say that it increased by 20% year-on-year;

2. What should we do next month?

That's easy. There's no Spring Festival in January, but there is in February. Just write that there was a decline in February due to the Spring Festival. That's it.

There is one exception. What if there is no Spring Festival this year and things go worse than last year with the Spring Festival?

Well, at least the year-on-year trend is positive, right?

In December, it fell by 30% year-on-year, and in January, it fell by 10% year-on-year, and the year-on-year decline narrowed.

Still a perfect solution.

What if the year-on-year growth rate has not narrowed at all?

If the business is so bleak, there must be some major influencing factors. If you can write about them, write them down. If there are no major factors, then the business is no longer doing well. In this case, just write something casually to deal with it.

Why?

Because data analysts are not suitable for dealing with headwinds, they are the first to be affected when business shrinks and layoffs occur.

Your energy should not be on how to write the January monthly report, but on how to write your resume.

3. Why do I hate January?

Not all companies can use the Spring Festival blame-shifting method.

Some companies have more advanced data management. When faced with the impact of such a large holiday, they do not simply look at the year-on-year growth in the Gregorian calendar, but instead come up with a lot of fancy tasks that require data analysts to work hard.

1. Lunar calendar year-on-year

The first method is to compare with the lunar calendar.

It is easy to understand. Since the Gregorian calendar does not match, then let's use the lunar calendar.

However, lunar calendar alignment is very troublesome, because general reports are aggregated according to the Gregorian calendar when they are produced, and monthly data are all natural months. To compare with the lunar calendar year-on-year, you can only write SQL manually.

This is not a very convenient job.

A monthly report contains dozens of indicators, plus the breakdown from various dimensions, and it takes at least a day to get all the data ready.

2. Multi-period year-on-year comparison

It is reasonable to compare according to the lunar calendar one or two weeks before and after the Spring Festival, but what about two weeks before?

So here comes the upgraded package, with multiple time periods for comparison.

The period before the Spring Festival that is less affected is called "before the Spring Festival", and the period during the Spring Festival holiday is called "Spring Festival holiday", and then the year-on-year growth of each is analyzed. The former is based on the Gregorian calendar year-on-year growth, and the latter is based on the lunar calendar year-on-year growth.

This is really annoying, as the workload of running numbers has increased. And when summarizing the conclusion, if the two conclusions are inconsistent, I have to think carefully about how to write it.

3. Comparable year-on-year

A slightly simplified version is to only look at comparable year-over-year;

For example, if we only look at the average daily sales before the Spring Festival this year and compare it with the average daily sales before the Spring Festival last year, the two cycles are not completely aligned, but relatively speaking, the two are still comparable.

The more troublesome part about comparable year-on-year figures is that we have to make all parties accept this caliber: what is the comparable time period and how much is it compared to last year's period.

The business naturally hopes that last year's results would be as low as possible and this year's results would be as high as possible; but because there are some unexpected situations every year, it is impossible to align them completely. It all depends on your humbleness and personality charm~

IV. Summary

Last year, I wrote this article:

Looking forward to your performance next January.

Now that the one-year agreement is over, you should know what to do, haha.

Hahaha, the above is just a complaint. Everyone should still write code and run the numbers honestly.

Author: Jason WeChat public account: Ternary Variance