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Use the activity filter

Owned by Helen Gosper
Last updated: Aug 15, 2024 by Denise McGettigan
3 min read

A simple way to identify customers who are not buying or products that are not selling is to use the activity filter. You can also change this filter to combine activity with no activity to identify opportunities.

You can use the activity filter both when you are in Summary view and when you select a dimension (filtered view).

Click the Activity Filter menu, then select one of the options*.

*Depending on the database you are analyzing, the options might be different, as your administrator can customize the option labels in Designer to meet your business' requirements. The labels are usually in the context of Activity, No Activity or All but, for example, in a Sales database, you might have Sales Only, No Sales, Opportunities. Similarly, in a Purchasing database, you might have Purchases Only, No purchases and Opportunities.

Filter

Description

Activity

Displays items for which there have been transactions in a period and where the result is not zero.

Usually the default view in a Sales database.

You can exclude items where positive and negative sales transactions have the net effect of summing to zero, such as refunds or giveaways, by selecting the Show net zero option in the Options menu.

No Activity

Displays only items where there were no transactions in a period. All items with no sales are highlighted in green. Results depend on how up-to-date your source data is. For example, you might see customers that have long since ceased trading or products that have been discontinued.

All

Combines the other two options; displays all items, regardless of whether a transaction has occurred.

Selecting Show net zero in the Options menu will affect the results so that 'All' may not necessarily return the same number of rows as if you simply combined those two options.

Example 1 - Find customers who are not buying products

Use the activity filter in the Sales database to identify customers who have not purchased from Harry this calendar year-to-date (YTD). 

  1. Click Periods > Financial YTD.

  2. Click the Sales Rep dimension.

  3. Search for, then select and focus on Harry.

  4. Click the Customer dimension to display customers who have bought from Harry this calendar YTD.

  5. Click Activity Filter > No Activity. The grid updates to display the 123 customers (highlighted in green) who have previously bought from Harry but have not bought from him this year so far.

Example 2 - Identify products that aren't selling

Use the activity filter in the Sales database to identify which product categories your number one customer is not buying. 

  1. Click the Customer dimension.

  2. Sort the Total column in descending order.

  3. Select and focus on the customer at the top of the list (the number one customer).

  4. Select the Product Category dimension. The grid updates to display the product categories that the customer has been buying.

  5. Click Activity Filter > No Activity. The grid now displays the product categories that the customer is not buying, highlighted in green.