Hi!
I am having problems with creating pivot charts used to track historical data from forms that don't have a date in them. I spoke twice to Support but they couldn't help me, so I am posting it here.
Let me provide you with two easy examples so you can see what I mean.
Lets say I have an online store (which is true!). I have a form (Products) where I describe each product including the price and the total number of units I have in stock. I update manually the field with the price each time a vendor changes them, and the number of units in inventory changes automatically each time a customer makes a purchase.
Example 1
Lets say that I want to create a Pivot chart to track how the average price of my products change along the time. For example:
In December I had 2 products which costed 10 € each, so my average price was 10 €.
In January I added two more products, which cost 20 € each. My average price in January should be -> (10 + 10 + 20 + 20)/ 4 = 15 €.
What I want is to create a chart where my X axis is each month and my Y axis is the average price.
So the chart should reflect the following information:
December -> 10€
January -> 15 €
If I use added time as my X axis,
changes are reflected in the month where the product was created (not in the month when the changes were made). If I use modified time, the chart only reflects the last changes, but I can't see any historical trends.
Example 2
Similar to the example 1, I would like to track how many units I have in stock along the time to see if my average stock increases, decreases or stays the same.
Lets say that in December I had an average of 20 units in stock, and in January I had an average of 40. As explained before, if I use added time as my X axis, changes are reflected in the month where the product was created (not in the month when the changes were made). If I use modified time, the chart only reflects the last changes, but I can't see any historical trends.
I was wondering even if this is tecnically possible. Does the Professional edition register automatically all the changes made in a field or only the last one? Can you figure out any workaround for this?
Also, I have seen that the Enterprise version has Record Audit features. Would it be possible to track historical data with that version?
Also, I was wondering if a change in the prices would affect the purchases already done before (I hope not!). I use the sales product subform to register the datails of the purchase. If tomorrow a product price increases or decreases,
will the price of already closed orders update automatically ? Because this can be a really huge limitation for me as it will distort completely my sales tracking.
Thank you for your help!!
Quick update: I spoke with someone from Zoho Pivot Charts support team who confirmed me that Zoho Creator doesn't keep automatically track of all the changes, so I will have to find a way to build a new form where all the changes and the date will register automatically, maybe using a function.
Awaiting from an answer from Creator Support about how could this be done. I am also waiting an answer from Sales Team to know more about Enterprise Edition audit track features.
Also, I did some testing and noticed that changes in product prices don't affect already closed orders :-)
Thank you for such a quick support!