📊 Automating Email Reports with Python

Whether you're managing a project, analyzing sales, tracking prices, or scraping data — one thing’s for sure:

Emailing reports manually is a chore.
Let Python handle it for you!

In this post, you'll learn how to automate email reports that:

✅ Generate data or charts
✅ Save to PDF or Excel
✅ Send via email automatically
✅ Run daily, weekly, or on demand

---

🧰 Tools We’ll Use

• pandas — for creating the report

• matplotlib or plotly — for visualizations

• smtplib — to send the email

• schedule or cron — to automate it

• email.message — to handle formatting and attachments

Install required packages:

pip install pandas matplotlib schedule

---

🧪 Step 1: Create a Sample Report

import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Dummy sales data
data = {
    'Date': pd.date_range(start='2025-04-01', periods=5),
    'Sales': [200, 340, 560, 430, 620]
}
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

# Save to Excel
excel_path = "daily_report.xlsx"
df.to_excel(excel_path, index=False)

# Create a simple plot
plt.plot(df['Date'], df['Sales'], marker='o')
plt.title("Daily Sales Report")
plt.xlabel("Date")
plt.ylabel("Sales")
plt.tight_layout()
plt.savefig("sales_chart.png")

---

📬 Step 2: Send the Report via Email

import smtplib
from email.message import EmailMessage
from pathlib import Path

EMAIL = "youremail@gmail.com"
APP_PASSWORD = "your_app_password"

msg = EmailMessage()
msg["Subject"] = "📊 Daily Sales Report"
msg["From"] = EMAIL
msg["To"] = "recipient@example.com"
msg.set_content("Attached is today's sales report and chart.")

# Attach Excel file
with open(excel_path, "rb") as f:
    msg.add_attachment(f.read(), maintype="application", subtype="vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet", filename=Path(excel_path).name)

# Attach chart image
with open("sales_chart.png", "rb") as f:
    msg.add_attachment(f.read(), maintype="image", subtype="png", filename="sales_chart.png")

# Send email
with smtplib.SMTP_SSL("smtp.gmail.com", 465) as smtp:
    smtp.login(EMAIL, APP_PASSWORD)
    smtp.send_message(msg)

print("✅ Report emailed successfully.")

---

🔁 Step 3: Automate with schedule

import schedule
import time

def job():
    print("📅 Generating and sending report...")
    # Call your report generation + email code here

schedule.every().day.at("08:00").do(job)

while True:
    schedule.run_pending()
    time.sleep(60)

You can also run it via cron if you're on Linux/macOS for more reliability.

---

📈 Bonus: Add Dynamic Charts with Plotly

Want interactive HTML charts?

pip install plotly

import plotly.express as px

fig = px.line(df, x='Date', y='Sales', title='Sales Over Time')
fig.write_html("interactive_report.html")

Then attach or embed the HTML in your email.

---

✅ Use Cases

Scenario	Description
🏢 Team Updates	Send daily/weekly KPIs
📈 Financial Reports	Email stock price summaries
📦 Inventory Tracking	Alert on low stock or trends
📉 Error Logs	Email system logs and stats

---

🔐 Security Tips

• Use App Passwords for Gmail

• Never hardcode credentials — use .env files or keyring

• Set rate limits and logging to avoid spamming

---

🧠 Final Thoughts

Automating reports is a superpower. You can:

• Save hours each week

• Never forget to send a report

• Keep clients/stakeholders up to date

• Combine with scraping or analytics for full automation