Building Reports from Scratch

Every report in Luminate must have limits for at least 1 dimension, 1 metric, and a time range. When building a report from scratch, these limitations are fundamental to getting anything going at all.

To build a report from scratch, you will still need to select one of the Datasets or Scorecards listed on the Reports page.

Vendor Scorecard

Both Basic and Charter include the capacity to pull the essential Supplier Scorecard, also known as the Vendor Scorecard or just the Scorecard.

The Scorecard is used to pull constant, reliable, and holistic vendor performance data across the fiscal year. The report is often viewed by category or brand as that information is desired, giving both merchants and suppliers a sense of supplier performance.

Backing Into the 9-Digit Supplier Number Data in Luminate

In Luminate, reports cannot be filtered by 9-digit supplier number. Instead, they have to back into the same process by filtering by the 6-digit supplier number and also filtering later by department.

In other words, suppliers can find the same data that the 9-digit supplier number provided in DSS in Luminate by filtering by 6-digit supplier number and then adding a department filter. In DSS, the 9-digit supplier number was the primary way to find this information.

Attributes and Metrics

The Scorecard is a “canned” report. It contains prepopulated metrics curated based on set KPIs. These filters help isolate findings, breaking down performance into more granular detail.

The elements that suppliers can filter by are referred to as Attributes in Walmart’s language. Even filters as broad as the 6-digit vendor number are considered attributes. The 6-digit number is generally considered the first filter requirement. You cannot pull a supplier scorecard without providing at least that information.

Metrics refers to the kinds of data points that are being pulled in any given scorecard. Unlike Attributes, Metrics can’t be added or taken away from a given Scorecard. Rather, these are pre-set data points that the Scorecard was designed to measure.

What is the Vendor Scorecard Used For?

The Vendor Scorecard is important for measuring supplier performance and for guiding supplier/buyer communication on that subject. More specifically, the Scorecard can help to:

Identify trends
Identify areas of opportunity for additional inquiry (research and analysis)
Identify areas of strength/performance

How to Generate the Vendor Scorecard Report

To generate any new report in Luminate, you will need to go to Report Builder, select My Reports, then click + New Report. If no reports have been built yet in Luminate, this button should exist as the central feature of the My Reports screen.

The screen will then prompt you to “Choose a dataset to start.”

Click on the Reports tab from there, and a Vendor Scorecard option should populate beneath.

The description within the Vendor Scorecard option will read: “Holistic View of vendor performance across last 104 weeks. View by category/brand as per need.”

After clicking on the Vendor Scorecard, a preview panel on the right side of the screen will show the list of Metrics included in the Scorecard. Some of the most important Metrics in the Scorecard are:

Ships at Cost
Warehouse Weeks On Hand
Cost On Hand
Const On Order
Sales
Retail Dollar Inventory
Cost Dollar Inventory
Repl. Instock %
Store Weeks On Hand
Ships At Retail
Ships At Cost
Initial Margin %
GMROII
Dollars
Percent To Sales
Repl. Order Fill Rate %
MABD Compliance %

(For a more in-depth look at these metrics, check out this article on the Vendor Scorecard.)

Click the Run button to open the Filter panel. At least 1 filter needs to be applied.

Reminder: although you can’t filter by a 9-digit supplier number in Luminate (like you could in DSS), the same results can be found by filtering by the 6-digit supplier number and the category.

In the dropdown menu labeled + Add, select the filters desired. Once all of these are selected, click the same Run button. This will navigate you to the Create Report screen.

A Note About Luminate Aliases

Not all of the filters in Luminate are the same as their DSS equivalents. A DSS name referred to in Luminate is called its alias. Although some of the names are different in Luminate, the old DSS aliases are still searchable in the filters panel.

These aliases can be found in the Knowledge Base under Attributes & Business Glossary.

Home > Knowledge Base > Attributes & Business Glossary

See also the last section of this eBook, “DSS Aliases in Luminate,” for a list focused more on the resources whose aliases have changed between DSS and Luminate.

Reading the Vendor Scorecard in Luminate

Once all of the filters have been applied and the report has run, the Scorecard is fairly similar to the DSS report, but it will be different in appearance from other reports that are built in Report Builder Basic.

The key metrics are on display on the left-hand side of the report, and the time attributes live in the columns running along the top. These columns consist of the following time ranges:

Last Week
Current Month
Last Month
Year
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4

Each of these ranges is further broken down into three categories: This Year (TY), Last Year (LY), and Year Over Year Difference (Diff). This breakdown is to get a granular year-over-year view for any given period.

Fuzzy Dates In Luminate

A source of general confusion for suppliers starting out is Walmart’s calendar. Each retailer uses particular dates for different programs (i.e. SQEP and OTIF) that can be tricky to follow (see this resource for more help with it).

When reading the Vendor Scorecard, it is important to remember that for each pull, the fuzzy dates (“last week,” “current month,” “last month,” etc.) are relative only to the time of pulling and do not update automatically.

Furthermore, these fuzzy dates are also descriptive of periods within Walmart’s calendar (i.e. “last week” = last Saturday to Friday). For example, WM Week 1 of the FYE 2025 will start on Thursday, February 1st. You can keep up with Walmart’s Calendar here.

Updating the report on a weekly basis will help to avoid too much confusion.

Benchmarking data is only available for as long as a supplier has been in Walmart, so fuzzy dates are technically limited by that as well.

Datasets

The primary core of Luminate Basic’s value is the Report Builder feature, which is designed to replace DSS in terms of data pulling and reporting on brick-and-mortar and .com performance. Within the Report Builder feature are two main subsets: Datasets and Reports.

It may be helpful to think of the datasets as shortcuts or particular filters applied to the whole range of data available to suppliers through Luminate Basic.

The below list explores some of the components involved in making one of these reports from scratch. We have included these details because they tend to be the best way to understand the greater logic of the datasets themselves.

Quick Reports

Once you click on any of the below listed datasets, there is the option to run one or more Quick Reports. These will populate on the right hand side of the screen with their descriptions. At the bottom of this panel is the link to “Build a report from scratch.”

Store Sales & Inventory

This report is the rough equivalent of some of the Sales and Margin templates in DSS. It is designed to give access to store-level data down to the smallest levels of granularity/detail.

It may also be more helpful to think about it in terms of a Company Summary report in DSS but with more specific, store- and inventory-centric data.

If you want to build one of these reports from scratch, select from the below columns, each of which contain many subsets a few of which have been listed after, with different business elements separated by a comma:

Time Period: Walmart Calendar Date, Walmart Calendar Week
DC Alignment: Distribution Center Number, etc.
Item Info and Item Hierarchy: Base Unit Retail Amount, Brand ID, etc.
Item Velocity: Dollar/Store/Week(POS Count)-Last Year, etc.
Markup/Markdown: Net Initial Margin Last Year, Home Office Markdown Amount-This Year, etc.
Pack Size and Dimensions: Vendor Minimum Order Quantity, Warehouse Pack Cubic Quantity, etc.
Receipt: Gross Receipt Quantity-This Year, Gross Receipt Cost Amount YOY Change %, etc.
Store Customer Returns: Amount-Defective-Last Year (Customer Returns), Total Store Customer Returns Amount Last Year, etc.
Store Fulfillment (OPD): Customer Order Quantity, Delay Pick Rate, etc.
Store Info: Address Country Code, Banner Code, etc.
Store Inventory: Instock %-Last Year, Inventory Adjustment Amount - Last Year, etc.
Store Returns: Total Store Returns Quantity - Last Year, Cost Amount - Recall - Last Year (Returns), etc.
Store Sales: AUR BIS YoY Change%, POS Quantity BIS YoY Change%, etc.
Vendor Information: Vendor Number, Vendor Stock ID, etc.
Custom Attribute (max 5): see Luminate Charter >
Channel Performance > Report Builder in this eBook for more information

These subsets listed above after the columns are ONLY two or so examples taken almost at random from a much larger list. They are also occasionally referred to as business elements. To see their definition/function, just hover your mouse over the item until the information bubble appears next to it with its full name, its definition, and its DSS alias (if applicable).

See the DSS Aliases in Luminate section towards the end of this eBook for a comprehensive list of the business element names in Luminate that have changed from their DSS originals. Most of these changes are very minor, and the DSS terms are still searchable in the search bar, but it may be good to be aware of and keep on hand, just in case.

Omni Sales

This report is unique to Luminate, and it can be thought of as a kind of tying together of a number of sales related templates from DSS. One of Luminate’s strengths is that it, at least, will be giving Walmart and its suppliers a single source for omni sales data.