Exporting report data
What this covers
The two CSV exports, exactly what comes out of each, and how to open them without your spreadsheet
mangling the contents. Requires the view-reports permission and the Advanced
analytics & reports feature.
What can be exported
| Export | Where | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Reservations | Reservation report | One row per booking in your date range |
| Guest segments | Guest analytics report | One row per guest matching your filters |
The revenue, utilisation and booking-page reports have no export. For money questions, export reservations — the bill and tip columns are there.
Exports follow what is on screen
An export always uses the filters currently applied. Change the date range, press Apply, then export — and you get exactly what you were looking at.
For the guest export this is more powerful than it sounds, because your guest filters come too: guest status, tag, and both segment thresholds. So the way to produce a specific list is to narrow the screen first.
Reservations export
Twelve columns, one row per booking, ordered oldest first:
- Reservation ID — the booking's reference
- Date and Time
- Guest — full name
- Table — the table name, merged tables joined with
+, or Unassigned - Section
- Pax and Duration (min)
- Status
- Bill Amount and Tip Amount — blank where not recorded
- Created At — when the booking was made
Note the last one: having both the booking date and the created date lets you answer a question no report on screen does — how far ahead people book. Subtract one from the other and you have your booking lead time, which tells you how far out to worry about a quiet week.
The file is named reservation_report_{start}_to_{end}.csv.
Guest segments export
Thirteen columns, one row per guest:
- Guest ID, Guest Name, Email, Phone
- VIP and Blacklisted — Yes or No
- Tags — comma separated
- Visits (Selected Period) and Spend (Selected Period)
- Lifetime Bill Total — all time, completed bookings only
- Last Visit Date
- Frequent Segment and At Risk Segment — Yes or No, against the thresholds you set
The important thing here: it exports every guest matching your filters, with the segment membership as Yes/No columns — not just one segment. So to get a call list, export and then filter or sort on the At Risk Segment column in your spreadsheet.
The file is named guest_segments_{start}_to_{end}.csv.
Opening the file without mangling it
CSV is a plain text format, and spreadsheets guess at what the text means. Two columns get guessed wrong, every time, and both matter.
Phone numbers
A number like +35799123456 is text, but Excel sees a number. Depending on version it
will strip the +, drop a leading zero, or convert it to something like
3.57991E+10 — and once saved, the original is gone.
Accented names
Double-clicking a CSV in Excel can turn Müller into Müller, because Excel does not assume the file is Unicode.
Do this instead
In Excel — do not double-click the file. Open Excel first, then Data → From Text/CSV, pick the file, set File Origin to UTF-8, and in the preview set the Phone column to Text before loading.
In Google Sheets — File → Import, and switch off Convert text to numbers, dates, and formulas. This is the easiest reliable route, and Sheets handles the accents correctly on its own.
In Numbers on a Mac — generally correct without help, but check a phone number before trusting it.
If you only need to read it
Upload to Google Sheets. If you are going to send the phone numbers anywhere, verify a few against a guest profile in Tabledoo first — a mangled export sent to a mailing tool is a batch of texts that never arrive.
Working with the data
Useful things the exports make easy:
- Booking lead time — Date minus Created At, averaged.
- Party size mix — a pivot on Pax. Tells you what table sizes you actually need.
- No-shows by weekday — filter Status to no_show and pivot on the day.
- Revenue by section — a pivot of Bill Amount by Section, which no on-screen report gives you.
- A call list — the guest export sorted on At Risk Segment.
When to use the API instead
Exports are a manual job: choose a range, press a button, open a file. That is fine occasionally and tiresome weekly.
If you want the same data on a schedule — into your own dashboard, accounts package or data warehouse — use the API, which serves the same records without anyone pressing anything. It needs someone technical once, and then it runs (link API overview).
Good to know
Exports can be large. A year of bookings is a big file, produced in a steady stream rather than all at once — so a moment's delay before the download starts is normal.
Exports are a snapshot. The file does not update. Re-export when you need current numbers.
They contain guest personal data — names, emails and phone numbers. Once a file is on a laptop or in an email it is outside Tabledoo's control, so treat it accordingly: keep it where it needs to be, and delete it when you are done.
Export needs the same permission as the reports. Anyone who can see the report can export it.