Many businesses use the moving date range available in step two of the RJMetrics chart wizard. This allows users to always view their most recent data without having to edit the properties of a chart.

Displayed below is a 1-month moving line-chart entitled “Sales Generated by Day.” In this case, the profiled company is an affiliate marketing business whose sales data is reported with a 7-day delay.

Notice that there are 6 to 7 data points (circled) displaying insignificant or incomplete sales figures at the end of the chart.

This is a normal characteristic of a business that experiences delayed sales reporting in their database. Companies may have delayed reporting for several reasons, including:

• Sales data coming from 3rd party sources

• Manually-entered data from internal sales teams

• Volatility in “order status” or other qualifying characteristics

• Payment processing issues or changes

These kinds of short-term post-sale issues can make the most recent several days of data unreliable.

To prevent displaying incomplete data, we allow users to conveniently set a moving end date in the RJMetrics Chart Wizard. This can be found in step 2 under “End of Range” when choosing to “Show a Moving Date Range”.

Once a moving end of range date is selected, the user can build a chart with only the complete data points as seen below. We have edited the chart above to make use of the moving end date feature. We chose to view the past 30 days but exclude the past 7 days, so the chart now contains only data from 30 days prior to the date it is viewed through 7 days prior to that date. (In the image below, the chart was accessed on May 21st.)

As with all moving date range charts, this range automatically adjusts over time so that you are always viewing the most recent data available.

If you’re interested in learning more about RJMetrics, check out our website where you can learn more and try out a free demo.