How to Automate Your Gallery's Monthly Sales and Inventory Report

A gallery runs on two questions that repeat every month: what is selling, and what is sitting. The answers live in your sales log and inventory list, but pulling them into a report usually falls to the end of a busy week — so the report arrives late, or not at all, and the pattern it would have shown goes unnoticed.

The work becomes repeatable when the report has a fixed shape and a fixed set of sources. Once those hold steady, an assistant can prepare the first pass each month and your team can spend its time on the decisions the numbers point to.

What belongs in a monthly gallery report

Keep it short enough to read before the month's first planning conversation:

1. Sales summary: total sales, number of works sold, and average sale price for the month.
2. Sales by artist: what each represented artist sold, against the prior month and the same month last year where you have it.
3. Inventory aging: works on hand grouped by how long they have been in stock, with the slow-moving pieces named.
4. Collector activity: notable purchases, repeat buyers, and holds or reservations in progress.
5. Upcoming commitments: consignment periods ending, works promised to fairs or shows, and payments due to artists.

Build a source map first

Every reported number needs a named home. This small table is what separates a useful report from a polished but stale one.

Report item	Source	Owner	Freshness rule
Sales and prices	Gallery sales log	Registrar	Closed through month end
Works on hand and age	Inventory list	Registrar	Reconciled at month end
Collector notes	CRM or contact notes	Director	Updated within the month
Payments to artists	Bookkeeping file	Bookkeeper	Cleared payments only

This table also prevents double-counting, where a reserved work appears as both "sold" and "on hand" because two lists disagree.

Set a cutoff and keep the comparisons steady

Fix the period and cutoff in the instructions — for example, "Cover April, using sales recorded by May 2." Then choose the comparisons once and hold them: month-over-month for fast-moving sales, and the same month last year for a business with seasonal fairs. Comparisons that change every month make trends impossible to read.

Separate fact from interpretation

A good report distinguishes three layers so a slow month prompts a question rather than an argument:

• Fact: sales fell from twelve works to seven.
• Documented explanation: the notes show two large placements slipped into next month.
• Open question: whether foot traffic softened is not established by the available sources.

Ask your assistant to label these. Your team can then challenge the interpretation without re-litigating which number was used.

A prompt for the monthly gallery report

Use this as a starting brief:

Prepare the monthly gallery report for [month] using the sales log, inventory list, and collector notes I select. Show total sales, works sold, and average price; sales by artist against last month and the same month last year where supplied; inventory grouped by age with slow-moving works named; and notable collector activity. Flag consignment periods ending and payments due to artists. Never invent a sale, price, or cause. Deliver a one-page summary and a supporting spreadsheet to me for review.

Automate the preparation, keep the approval

The report should arrive first with the person accountable for it. Check the sale totals, inventory counts, and any claim about why a number moved. Then use it in your planning the way you always have.

Deck's scheduled tasks send one consolidated email to you. Supported context can come from selected Deck Projects and read-only connections such as Notion, and Deck can attach the report and workbook as PowerPoint, Excel, Word, PDF, or CSV. Because it emails only you, the report stays internal until you decide to share it.

The same assistant works from its own email address the rest of the month. Forward it a collector inquiry or a supplier thread and a summary or a drafted reply in your voice comes back to you. By default it reads only what you send it, and it replies only to you. Larger galleries can link several email addresses to one assistant and run it on their own domain, studio@yourgallery.com instead of the default @agent.hellodeck.ai.

See client reporting for the product workflow. The artist consignment statement template turns the same sales data into the statement each artist receives, and the KPI scorecard template helps you pick the small set of measures worth tracking.

Get your Deck assistant and send last month's numbers with the outline above. Your previous report is the fastest way to lock the shape in place.