A weekly QR code scan report is 3 steps: a schedule that fires every Monday, a lookup that pulls 1 code's scan totals for the last 7 days, and an email that sends them. It runs on every plan, because it asks for numbers rather than waiting to be told.
Most people do not need a live scan alert. They need to know, once a week, whether the thing they printed is working, without logging in to find out.
That is a different build from the alert, and a cheaper one. Nothing has to reach out to you. A schedule wakes up, asks a question, and emails the answer.
How do I build the weekly report?#
3 steps:
- Schedule by Zapier: Every Week. Pick the day and the hour. Monday morning is the obvious one.
- QRFLOW.codes: Find Scan Stats. Required: which QR Code. Optional: how many Days to cover, and what to Group By.
- Gmail: Send Email. Drop the numbers into the body.
The ready-made version is Send weekly emails with scan stats.
Set Days to 7 so the report matches its name. Leave the default and the email says "weekly" while covering some other stretch of time, which is the kind of small lie that makes people stop trusting a report.
Which Group By should I pick?#
Pick the grouping that answers the question you actually have. Find Scan Stats returns totals grouped 1 of 7 ways: by day, country, city, device, browser, operating system or referrer, and 1 grouping per step.
They answer completely different questions:
- Day gives the shape of the week. A spike on Thursday, or a flat trickle?
- City says where the printed thing really is. This is the grouping that catches a banner sitting in a storeroom rather than a lobby.
- Device says what to design for. At 98% phones, stop checking the destination on a desktop.
- Referrer says when the code is not being scanned at all but shared as a link, which happens more than people expect.
For 2 of them, add a second Find Scan Stats step with a different Group By and put both in the same email. Asking twice costs nothing.
Can one report cover several codes?#
One report can cover several codes, but each needs its own lookup step. Find Scan Stats takes a single QR Code, not a folder and not the whole account, so 5 codes means 5 steps in 1 automation.
That sounds like a limitation and mostly is not, because a report covering everything ever made is a report nobody reads. The useful version names the campaign: the spring mailer, the lobby sign, the pallet labels. 1 number people recognize beats 20 they do not.
When you genuinely want everything at once, the dashboard already does that, and exporting scans to a CSV file hands over the raw rows for a spreadsheet. The weekly email is for the handful of codes somebody is accountable for.
What does the number actually mean?#
The number means forwarded scans by people, not unique visitors. A scan counts when a phone asks for the short link and gets forwarded, and link-preview crawlers, bots and monitors are filtered out first.
Unique people are not counted. 1 person scanning a restaurant table code 3 times across a meal is 3 scans. There is no cookie and nothing following anybody between scans, which is also why the report cannot show repeat visitors. What a scan records lists every field that exists.
So read it as traffic, not as audience. A week going from 40 to 400 means the thing got in front of people. It does not mean 400 separate people, and a report implying otherwise will embarrass whoever forwards it.
Make it readable by somebody who was not there#
3 habits turn a data dump into something people open:
Say what it is in the subject line. "Spring mailer, week of 2 March" beats "QR report".
Put last week's number beside this week's. Zapier can hold the previous value in Storage, or pull 14 days in a second step and let the reader compare. A number with nothing next to it is not information.
Say what you would do about it. 1 sentence. "Down again, the sign may have moved." A report with no opinion in it gets filed unread.
Questions people ask about a weekly QR code scan report#
Does this need the Business plan?#
A weekly report does not need the Business plan. Find Scan Stats runs on plans below it.
Only the live trigger, which starts a flow the instant somebody scans, needs Business at $29 a month. Asking for the numbers on a schedule costs nothing extra.
Can it send to Slack or a spreadsheet instead of Gmail?#
A weekly report can send to Slack or a spreadsheet instead of Gmail. Swap the last step and leave the schedule and the lookup exactly as they are.
Writing a row to a sheet every Monday builds a history you can chart later.
How far back can it look?#
The report can look back as far as the Days field says. Ask for 7 for a week or 30 for a month.
Your own analytics page shows the same data with the charts already drawn.
Why is the total different from the dashboard?#
A total different from the dashboard usually means the Days value covers a different window. The 2 read the same scan records, so a genuine disagreement is worth reporting.
Does the report include scans from bots?#
The report does not include scans from bots. Crawlers, link previews and monitors are filtered out before anything is counted, in the report and the dashboard alike.
The wider set of recipes is in QR codes in Zapier, Make and n8n, the app sits in Zapier's directory, and a code to point the report at takes about 10 seconds in the free QR code generator.