Customer Flow Analysis is an AI-powered analytics suite built into your Reolink Professional NVR. It gives you real-time and historical insight into how people move through and occupy your monitored spaces — whether you are running a retail store, a venue, or a multi-zone facility.

Applies to: RP-PCV8MZ, RP-PCB8MZ, RP-WCB8MZ with RP-PN8 or RP-PN16 (Firmware v3.6.4 or above)

You’ll learn: 

1. How does Customer Flow Analysis work
2. What is People Counting and How to Set it up
3. What is Zone Crowd Monitoring and How to Set it up
4. How to Generate a Data Report
5. Recommended Camera Installation Angle for Accurate Analysis

How does Customer Flow Analysis work

The system applies AI-based human body detection to identify individuals in the video frame. A tripwire (virtual boundary line) method is then used to count people moving in either direction across the line — providing separate in and out counts for each crossing event. Count data is uploaded on a scheduled basis, enabling both real-time monitoring and historical trend analysis.

Typical deployment locations include:

1. Retail mall and store entrances/exits
2. Exhibition halls and museum gateways
3. Park entrances and outdoor pathways
4. Building lobbies, corridors, and passages

Customer Flow Analysis includes two features:

1. People Counting — Draw a zone within the camera’s view, then add a virtual line inside the zone to count how many people cross it.
2. Zone Crowd Monitoring — Draw a zone within the camera’s view to track entry, exit, occupancy and dwell time for people inside it. Useful for identifying crowded areas.

People Counting

Zone Crowd Monitoring

• What is Zone Crowd Monitoring

  Zone Crowd Monitoring lets you draw a zone within the camera’s view to track entry, exit, occupancy and dwell time for people inside it. It is designed to help you identify crowded areas and trigger alerts when occupancy exceeds safe thresholds.

  Common use cases:

  1. Detecting dangerous crowd build-up at an event or public space
  2. Monitoring queue lengths at a service counter
  3. Tracking how long customers spend in a specific display area

• How to Set up Zone Crowd Monitoring

  Background: Only applicable to the VMS Client and Reolink NVR Monitor; the following content provides guidance for the Reolink NVR Monitor only.

  Step 1. Go to NVR settings > Customer Flow Analysis > Zone Crowd Monitoring Settings. Select the camera you want to configure, then click Add.Step 2. In the camera preview area, drag the purple line to outline the zone you want to monitor.Step 3. Complete the settings panel on the right:

  1. Name — give the zone a name.
  2. OSD Data Display — choose which information to display on the live stream. 
  3. Data Collection Time — set the active monitoring window.
  4. Short Stay Filter — set a minimum dwell time (e.g., 10 seconds) to exclude brief, incidental presences from counts.
  5. Crowd Density Level — define the occupancy threshold at which a congestion alarm is triggered. You can set a specific number of people as Level 1, and once that threshold is reached, an alarm will be triggered.

  

  Step 4. Click Apply to save the configuration. The system will begin monitoring zone occupancy immediately.

  Note: To further set up the alarm when trigger a Crowd Density Level , you will need to go to Settings > Camera > Surveillance Rules, then select the "Perform the following action(s)" as you need.

  

  

  If the Crowd Density Level alarm is not enabled under Zone Crowd Monitoring, you will not be able to select Zone Crowd Density under Surveillance Rules.

How to Generate a Data Report

Reports let you review historical People Counting or Zone Crowd Monitoring data and spot trends over time. You can generate the following dimensions for analysis: 

Step 1. Click the Playback button at the top of the NVR interface.Step 2. Go to the report portal to select the type of data you want to analyze: People Counting or Zone Crowd Monitoring.Step 3. Set your filters. Choose the camera channel, report format (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Annually), time, time period, and analysis dimension.

You can select from the following Analysis Dimension.

People Counting: Customer Flow Statistics and Insights; Customer Flow Peaks; Store Traffic Conversion Analysis

Zone Crowd Monitoring: Customer Flow Statistics and Insights; Customer Flow Peaks; Crowd Alert Count; Zone Crowd Count

Step 4. Click Generate to build the report, and then you will see it on the same page. 

• People Counting:

  Customer Flow Statistics and Insights, count the number of people enter, exit, or pass by within a specified time period, grouped by hour.Customer Flow Peaks, quickly identify peak and low customer traffic periods for entries, exits, and pass-by traffic within the selected time range.Store Traffic Conversion Analysis, In-store Conversion Rate: (Number of entries / (Number of entries + Number of passersby)) × 100% (Purpose: to evaluate the store’s attractiveness)

  Store Drop-off Rate: (Number of passersby / (Number of entries + Number of passersby)) × 100% (Purpose: to assess potential customer loss)

• Zone Crowd Monitoring: 

  Customer Flow Statistics and Insights, count the number of people enter and exit within a specified time period.Customer Flow Peaks, quickly identify peak and low customer traffic periods within the selected time range.Crowd Alert Count, count the number of Crowd Density Level alarms triggered per hour.Zone Crowd Count, displays the number of average dwell count and time per hour.

If you have People Counting or Zone Crowd Monitoring configured on more than one camera, you can benchmark them side by side.

Step: Click Compare to select additional cameras and view their data alongside the current one. This is useful for identifying which areas of your space attract the most traffic.

Recommended Camera Installation Angle for Accurate Analysis

Both People Counting and Zone Crowd Monitoring determine a person’s position using the center point of their detected bounding box. The accuracy of this detection is directly affected by how the camera is mounted. 

Important: Mount the camera high, pointing nearly straight down. Avoid low, horizontal mounting.

See below for correct vs. incorrect installation and detection zone examples.

	Correct Example	Incorrect Example
Installation Angle
Detection Zone

Customer Flow Analysis brings two complementary tools together in one place. People Counting — measure exactly how many people cross a defined line over any period. Zone Crowd Monitoring — track real-time occupancy and get alerted when crowds build up.

For accurate results, mount cameras at a high position with a near-vertical viewing angle. 

If you have any questions, click “Submit a request” below to contact the Reolink Support Team.