I used hostgator a few times - they have a somewhat user friendly chron job setup program in the account control panel.
I've never had a need to use it, but it's there...you might find more help in hostgator support forums using the keywords "chron" or "chronjob".
Personally, for any website I create for a single user, I have use an "admin back office" that shows stats and totals as soon as someone is logged in. Everything is stored in mysql and they can generate all the reports they want (using a page that lets them select structured queries) and drill down if they want, etc...but if they want to get an email, I put a button up there that runs a simple email script - you could also trigger it with the page loading or something if you wanted...
Good luck!
