Report Structure
Before you make changes to the reports provided with your system, you should have a good understanding of report structure.
Sorting and limiting determine the order and grouping of details and the range of information included in a report. Sorts and limits are stored in selectors. This topic describes the different elements in report selectors and how they define a report.
Sorts
By entering sort parameters for a report, you establish the order and grouping of any information included in the report. This allows you to display the information in a report in a way that is useful to you. You can enter up to five sorts for a report. When you use multiple sorts, you must maintain a logical order. If your sorts are not logical, your report. Always use the most general sorts first and gradually narrow them to the most specific. For example, to print a report with customers sorted according to state, city, and zip codes, you would assign the sorts as follows:
Sort 1 = State
Sort 2 = City
Sort 3 = Zip Code
Ascending and Descending Order
When you change sorts, you can determine whether to use ascending or descending order. Ascending order is the normal alphanumeric sort order—A to Z. Descending is the opposite—Z to A.
In the alphanumeric sort order, numbers come before letters. For a complete description of the sort order, see the ASCII Sort Order Chart.
Page Breaks
When you use multiple sorts in a report, you can print each sort group at the top of a new page.
Limits
Limits allow you to define what information is included in a report. Limits are entered in ranges, and you can usually use several ranges. When several limits are used, the information must fall within every range to be included in a report. For example, to create a report that shows all customers in Keller, Texas who are assigned to salesperson 204, set the following limits in the Custom Customer Reports screen:
Limits From: City:Keller
Limits To: City:Keller
Limits From: State:TX
Limits To: State:TX
Limits From: Slsm #:204
Limits To: Slsm #:204
Detail Fields
When you change an existing report, you can add a new column of information. This is called adding detail fields. When you add detail fields, you can enter the information for the column heading. This new column prints on the right side of the report. To make the most of the Preview Reports application, you need to familiarize yourself with a few new terms and some general information about reports. Basic reports have two parts: a heading and a detail section. The heading appears at the top of every page and includes general information such as report title, date, and page number. The detail section includes the actual data in the report.
In more complex reports, you might break the detail information into groups. For example, on a sales report, you might divide the sales data into groups for each salesperson. You could go a step further and divide each salesperson’s sales by customer account number. In reports that are divided into groups, it is common to have a separate group header. The group header is a description or field of data that prints above a group and describes the group of report data that follows.
A report that breaks the data into groups might also have footer sections. A footer prints after each group of data.
Once you understand how the data is organized on a report, you can use the Preview Reports function to make changes to the way the data on some reports is grouped. If a report already has defined groups, you can select new grouping fields from a pre-defined list and change the way that the data is grouped on the final report. As part of that change, you can also change the data in the group header or footer sections to reflect the new grouping. However, keep in mind that you can only change grouping of data on reports that already have some grouping defined in the format.
Note: You cannot permanently save detail fields when saving the changes to a report. However, you can permanently add detail fields through the (+Z) Setup Formats for Reports screen.
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