The interface for creating standard reports allows various run-time parameters to be set before a report is output to either a PDF. These parameters usually allow filtering of data based on a date range, or cut-off date, filtering of data based on other filters (such as filtering by client, or by handler), and any other report-specific options. The date controls, and any report-specific options are displayed immediately after you choose a report to run. The other filters are presented as a concertina - click on the down arrow next to each section heading to expand it, or click the collapse all / expand all buttons to collapse / expand all additional filter sections.
Date filters:
The date controls will often allow you to choose which date the report uses for its main data selection, but may also be restricted to a single choice, if that is the only appropriate date for the report chosen. For example, the Job / phase report defaults to job / phase due date, but allows you to choose from a selection of other dates to use:
Whereas the Period profit report defaults to invoice date, and this cannot be changed. This means that for the same date range ie 01/01/2025 to 31/01/2025, the Costs & quotes report can return different selections of data depending on whether the date range implies all jobs with a due date in January 2025, or all jobs with a completed date in January 2025. The Period profit report will always select all invoices dated January 2025, its behaviour in this use of dates cannot be modified.
The actual start and end dates for a report can either be entered manually, set by choosing from the financial periods set up in your database, or by using a pre-set date range. Leaving the dates blank (00/00/00) means that you do not want to use dates to reduce the selection of data - all live jobs for example. You can still reduce the selection via the other filters if you wish. Note that certain reports only use a single cut-off date. In this case the report from date will be set to 00/00/00 and cannot be changed.
Options:
The second set of parameters displayed shows report-specific parameters, which will be covered in more detail in the description of each specific report. However some common parameters used on several reports are covered here.
Job version / phase version.
Many reports have job and phase versions. These controls switch these reports between being a list of jobs and a list of phases. In addition certain other controls in the job phase filters change their behaviour depending on the job / phase version setting. Status, for example, can be an attribute of both jobs and phases, so the job version of a report might be filtered to only include live status jobs. The phase version of the report can also be set to include live status only, but now it will only include live status phases. The same is also true of invoicing status, completion status, quotation status, and the existence of estimates, actuals and billing plans.
Sort order.
Most reports have more than one option for sort order, which will also determine the nature of any subtotals the report includes.
Page break on sort key.
Self-explanatory, if this option is selected the report will start a new page after each change in your selected sort key.
More filters:
The more filters parameters allow advanced filtering of the selection of data for the report. They allow you to restrict the data based on a selection clients, or, in the case of a purchase-based report, on a selection of suppliers or supply types. If a report has a timesheet / time estimate component you may also be able to select data based on time parameters such as staff resource, charge code or team.
You can expand individual sections of the more filters concertina, or you can expand / collapse all via the + and - buttons. The options presented in each section are appropriate to the report in question.
Output option:
Once the report run time parameters have been set you can select to download a PDF or CSV file of the report contents from your database via the buttons in the tab title bar:
Note that a few reports may be export-only due to their complex nature, or the number of columns of data they need to include. These export-only reports are separated to their own page in the key reports interface: