The third part of this series covered summarizing, grouping, and charting your report. This week we will finish up by looking at different run time changes you can edit for your report.
The “Run Report” step has settings you can change regarding the reporting period and dates for your report. You have the ability to use a financial reporting period such as current month or current year along with an As Of date, as well entering a specific start and end date to capture a specific range. If your report is of the “Summary” type, you can select to show or hide the details on the report. Hiding the details means that you will only see subtotal and total calculation, but not the detail lines. The “Report Title 1” and “Report Title 2” let you enter text for the first and second lines of your custom report’s title, and the “Footer Text” lets you put in information to show along the bottom of your report’s pages.
Next up are Runtime Parameter fields. These are similar to the filters that were set earlier, but instead allow the user who is running the report to choose the criteria when running the report. For example, you might select “Customer ID” as a runtime parameter, which will let the person using the report specify a specific customer to filter the data by. You can specify up to six of these parameters to use.
If you decided to use runtime parameters, the next options will be for Runtime Parameter Sequence. This lets you change the order and grouping of runtime parameters, and whether the user will be prompted for the filter when running the custom report. Fields that have the same Field Group name will be placed together; by organizing related fields into a group, you can save time for the user running your report. As before, you can change the order of the fields by selecting the radio button on the relevant line and using the up/down and top/bottom arrows to move the field.
In our very last step, we will give our new custom report a name and description, decide where the report should be accessible from, and whether it should be used by other users in your Intacct system. The name and description of the report go into their respective fields – make sure to be descriptive in case someone else will need to use the report later. If you want the report to appear in the module you selected, check the box for “Deploy”. If this box is not selected, the report will only be available through Custom Reporting. By default, reports are marked as being active. If you want to disable a report without deleting it, then uncheck the “Active” box.
Now save your new custom report and you’re done! You can now run your new report and see what it looks like. Remember, you can always go back through and change settings to tailor the design to suit your needs. If you need to make a similar report to one you’ve already made, you can duplicate any of the custom reports in the system to avoid redoing the basic parts. There is also the ability to export the custom report definition to a file.