Financial Overview for Site Income

  • Hi,
    I have a self hosted WordPress site for my architecture practice. I write a blog which gets goo traffic, and brings in clients for design work. Over the years, I have used WordPress plugins for many functions relating to my business. For example, project and workflow management, scheduling, CRM, and gathering project data from clients using detailed forms.

    Most of the data relating to the business side of running my business comes out of WordPress in the form of automated emails or exported spreadsheets.

    Some of these plugins have become very important to my work. I use a plugin called “Amelia” to book consultations and call- outs to site to look at new design projects, and I also use a plugin called “Sliced Invoices” to create and track invoices for ongoing design work. I don’t exactly have an “online store” in a conventional sense, I don’t currently have a subscription blog, or paid downloads (I am thinking about implementing these), but most of my income comes through the website.

    I recently installed a plugin to help track business expenses.

    I would like to have an overview of the income being generated by the different plugins. They all have a report page which tells you how much money is coming from the activities related to that plugin, but to get an overview you need to export reports and merge them in Excel.

    I wonder if future developments of WordPress could have a “financial dashboard” which would identify any financial income from different plugins, such as online stores, subscription services, invoicing software, etc, and collate it according to basic accounting rules to let you understand overall monetization activity in the same way dashboards show you where traffic is coming from.

    This would really be an excellent improvement for small business/owners/ WordPress enthusiasts like me!

    Does anyone know of a plugin that already does this?

    Would be grateful for any guidance or advice.

    Diarmuid

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    >> I wonder if future developments of WordPress could have a “financial dashboard” <<

    That’s not likely to be a core feature; it’s plugin territory. There are a number of CRM plugins that might have such features.

    Thread Starter diarmuidkelly

    (@diarmuidkelly)

    Thanks Steven @sterndata,
    I have been trawling through the feature lists of CRM and a few accounting plugins.

    Many have their own payment features, with a PayPal or Stripe integration, but I have found that such plugins are chosen on the way their features gel with the clients’ preferences, and their decision making process as they move through the website. After years trying to get site visitors to make purchases, I wouldn’t interfere with plugins users were happy engaging with.

    I see and hear about lots of sites with similar ranges of functions and activities, each making small sales. For example, a cultural institution with an online gift shop, ticket sales for physical visits, booking and payment for online conferences, and sale of premium content/ downloads. Each set up by their team over a long period of time, no doubt with a separate plugin that took a long time to set up and configure with landing pages, social media, etc.

    Perhaps it’s a sign of Covid times, but lots of people are doing lots of activities, each with small volume, all online, and their websites are suddenly hubs for all of their different types of revenue.

    I think this would be a great opportunity for a plugin developer to make a hot product, or to improve the core functionality of WordPress.

    I hope someone agrees with me and builds this!

    DK

    Thread Starter diarmuidkelly

    (@diarmuidkelly)

    Also, I’m not sure if this is appropriate for this forum, but I did look into the cost of having this developed as a bespoke feature of an accounting plugin.

    The cost was just too much for a business of my size: equivalent to about 2-3 years subscription for an online accounting system.

    If there were a few other users with similar needs, I would happily get together to share the costs. I don’t know how this would be set up/ organised.

    Perhaps there’s another forum for that sort of thing?

    DK

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    You might want to ask in one of the Facebook groups. Not here.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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