Ranking Explained

Main Menu > Contacts

The Ranking value, shown at the bottom of the Customer Information section (below the Address section) can be used to find your top paying customers.

There are two ways to use the Ranking feature:

The first way is to simply click the Update Ranking button in any Contact record.

Depending on the volume of contact records, this may take time for FrameReady to calculate.

A ranking, based on all Invoices ever created, appears in List View.
The second way is to create a ranking based upon a date range. For example, the past month or the previous year. This option may prove far more useful.

How to Create a Ranking Based on a Date Range

We're going to use FrameReady to first generate a sales report because, after it has done so, it will ask if we'd like to use this data to update the Ranking.

Important: the Ranking field is a Global field. If you are using FileMaker Server, exit FrameReady on all computers, stop the FileMaker Server service, open FrameReady locally, update the ranking, exit FrameReady, restart the server and restart the computers.

See also: Change Default Settings

On the Main Menu, in the Invoices section, click the Sales Reports button.

A selection screen appears.
Under Summary Sales Sorted By choose: Customer.

A second selection screen appears.
Enter a range of dates separated by ... (three dots).

The format is MM/DD/YYYY...MM/DD/YYYY

If you are using FrameReady Multi Site, then you can specify for which store you wish to create the report.

Tip: If you wish to rank all your customer sales for a specific year, simply enter the year, e.g. 2018

Click Proceed.

A print preview of the Report of Customer Sales document appears.
Click Continue to Print or Cancel.

The Update Customer Ranking dialog box appears asking whether or not you wish to apply the ranking.
Choose No to return to the Main Menu, or
Choose Yes to apply the ranking to the records in the Contacts file.
Click Yes.

The ranking, as calculated by the Report of Customer Sales, is applied to all Contacts.

How to Use Ranking to your Advantage

Now that your Contacts have been freshly ranked, you can now use that ranking data to perform searches in your Contacts. Here are two examples:

Example #1:

You want to find only 250 of your all-time top customers in order to do an email campaign.

On the Main Menu, in the Contacts section, click the Find Contact button.
In the Find form, click in the Ranking field.
Enter: 1..250
In the Email field, enter * an asterisk.

An asterisk means the field has been filled out. This finds only those people who actually have an email address.
Click Perform Find.

A list view displays the results. Now you may sort and create labels for mailing, etc.See also: How to Export Contacts to Third Party

Example #2:

You want to find every one of your customers who has spent over $500 based on your ranking.

In the Contacts, click the Find button.
In the Find form, click in the Total based on Ranking field. This field is a dollar value but does not require the dollar sign.
Enter: >500
Click Perform Find.

The results appear. Now you may print the list or sort and create labels for mailing, etc.
To sort from the highest to lowest, click the underlined Rank column header (while in List View).

Example #3:

Find all customers with an email address and who has spent over $1000 last year.

Create a Sales Report by Customer for the previous calendar year, e.g. 2014

Choose Contacts > Find button.
In the Find form, click in the Total based on Ranking field. This field is a dollar value but does not require the dollar sign.
Enter: >1000
In the Email field, enter *
Click Perform Find.

The results appear. Now you may export the list to email.
To sort from the highest to lowest, click the underlined Rank column header (while in List View).