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Customer Acquisition

What the Customer Acquisition Report Shows

Reports → Customers → Acquisition

The Customer Acquisition report counts how many new customers (first-time buyers) you gained in a date range, compared side-by-side against a second date range of your choice. A customer counts as "acquired" on the date of their very first purchase on record — so the report answers questions like "are we bringing in more new customers this spring than last spring?"

Only sales rung up with a customer attached are counted. Anonymous cash sales with no customer on the receipt can't be tied to anyone, so they never show up here — if your cashiers rarely attach customers at the register, this report will undercount your real foot traffic. The report's underlying data is refreshed overnight, so a customer acquired today may not be counted until tomorrow.

If you don't see the Customers section (with the Acquisition link) in the Reports sidebar, your login may not have access to customer reports — report access is configured for your business by VMX; contact help@vmxllc.com.

Setting the Date Ranges and Filters on the Acquisition Report

The Customer Acquisition report compares two periods:

  1. Enter the Primary period start and end dates (YYYY-MM-DD format; clicking a field opens a calendar picker). This is the period you're measuring.
  2. Enter the Comparison period start and end dates. This is the benchmark period.
  3. Click Compare.

By default the report loads with year-to-date this year as the Primary period and the same year-to-date span last year as the Comparison period.

Below the date fields, Quick presets links fill in common comparisons with one click:

  • YTD vs Last YTD
  • This Month vs Last Year Same Month
  • Last 30 Days vs Prior 30
  • Last 90 Days vs Prior 90
  • This Year vs Last Year (full)

Optional filters (shown only when they apply to your business):

  • Only current store — if you have more than one store, check this to count only customers whose first purchase happened at the store you're logged into. Note that with this filter on, "first purchase" means first purchase at this store — a longtime customer of one location who shops at another location for the first time counts as newly acquired for that location.
  • Division — if you use divisions (sales channels such as Retail and Wholesale), choose one to count only customers acquired within that division. The default is All divisions. As with the store filter, "first purchase" is measured within the selected division.

Reading the Acquisition Comparison Table

The headline table on the Customer Acquisition report has columns Metric, Primary, Comparison, and Change, with three rows:

  • New customers acquired — the count of first-time buyers in each period. The Change column shows the difference and the percent change (green when up, red when down).
  • Acquired per day (avg) — new customers divided by the number of days in the period. Use this row when your two periods are different lengths (for example, a partial month against a full month) — the raw counts wouldn't be a fair comparison, but the per-day rate is.
  • Returned at least once after this period — of the customers acquired in the period, how many came back and made at least one more purchase after the period ended, shown as a count and a percentage. This is an early retention signal.

Important caveat, shown on the report itself: "Returned at least once after this period" is measured against ALL purchases after the period's end date — so older periods naturally show higher return numbers, simply because more time has passed. The most recent period will always look weak on this row; that's expected, not a problem.

Monthly Breakdown of New Customers

Below the comparison table, the Monthly breakdown section of the Customer Acquisition report shows two side-by-side tables — Primary and Comparison — listing the number of new customers acquired in each month of each period, with a Total row at the bottom. Use this to spot which months drive your new-customer growth (for example, whether a spring ad campaign moved the needle in April specifically).

Exporting the New-Customer List to CSV

The Customer Acquisition report can export the actual list of customers behind either count — useful for a welcome mailing or a marketing follow-up to your newest customers.

  1. Set your date ranges and any filters as usual.
  2. Click Export Primary CSV to download the customers acquired in the Primary period, or Export Comparison CSV for the Comparison period.

The CSV contains one row per newly acquired customer with these columns: number, firstName, lastName, email, phone, cellPhone, address1, city, state, zip, custClass, firstPurchaseDate, wantsEMail, wantsTexts, wantsPMail.

The last three columns are the customer's marketing preferences (whether they've opted in to email, text, and paper mail) — check them before adding anyone to a campaign. The rows in the export always match the on-screen count for the same period and filters.