Reporting Overview Business Goals Demystify the report menu Understand what reports are for and when to use them Technical Objectives Understand how reports are structured Understand what reports can do through various examples Jobs by Salesperson, Sq Ft Installed by Month, Activities by Day of Week, Total Allocated Product, Overdue Activities, Completed Installs, Installs by Phase Learn how to create the simplest reports [Show of hands – how many people have built a report before?] In this training, I’d like to demystify reports – by the end, you’ll know what they’re for and how to use them. I’ll explain how reports are structured and then I’ll show several examples. You’ll learn how to create the simplest reports, but I’ll follow up with another training video to go further into the weeds with more complex examples

Making a Good Report is Hard I won’t bite … Making a Good Report is Hard Reports are hard to master … they’re very flexible and powerful, but that makes them more complex to understand and learn Don’t hesitate to call us for help – but remember that it sometimes takes us a while to figure out difficult reports, too! Reports are hard! They’re probably the hardest part of Moraware to master. Be patient with yourself as you work through this material … and be patient with us when you ask for help, too

What are you reporting on? The hardest part is knowing what you want to report on! If you can’t describe what you’re trying to get out of the system, you won’t be able to make a report for it Even then, you can only get out what you put in – to get the report you really want, you might have to change things like forms, activities, and phases to track more or different data. When you call us for help with a report, the best thing you can do to prepare is think of the business problem you’re trying to solve. If you can describe that clearly, we can help tell you what you can or can’t do with JobTracker

Account Job Phase Activities Forms Files Reports are just another way to get information out of JobTracker, just like Job views and calendar views – but they can do some things that other types of views can’t Account views are about accounts. Job views are about jobs. Calendars are about activities …

Account Job Phase Activities Forms Files Reports can work with all of these things: accounts, jobs, phases, forms, & activities

Every report either Counts or Adds Even if you’re just trying to get a list, the report still has to count something – but it’s normal to have a report where each row has a count of 1. While working on a report, always ask yourself, “What am I counting or adding?” It’s important to remember that every report is always counting or adding something. If your goal is just to get a list of jobs, each row will still have a count of 1 – this might look “weird” at first, but it’s just how reports work. So when you’re creating a report, always ask yourself: “What am I counting or adding?”

Basic Examples Now for some examples

Jobs by Salesperson Let’s start with a very simple report. Here’s one counting the number of jobs created this year, for each salesperson

Jobs by Salesperson Just as with Job Views and Calendars, when you click Options on a report, it shows you how it was made If you change the options, you change the report

Jobs by Salesperson (bar chart) Here’s the same report, displayed as a barchart …

Jobs by Salesperson (bar chart) All I had to do to get this was click Options and change the Display Type from Table to Bar Chart I’ll talk a lot about the Options window in the next reporting video, but for now, I’m going to gloss over most details. Just know that to change a report, you click Options and “do something” You can select any report and play around with the options. You won’t mess anyone up, because it won’t save until you click the Save Report button.

Jobs by Month Here’s another report that counts jobs, but this time it’s grouping by month instead of salesperson

Jobs by Month All I had to do to get this from my original report was change the Display Fields

Possibilities Let’s look at some more examples of what you can do, but for now, I won’t dig into how they’re made at all – I just want to show the possibilities

Square Feet Installed Projected Completed This report shows how you can total a numeric value from a form. Most frequently, people want a report like this to show how many Square Feet they’ve installed or are going to install Getting this report right is fairly complex – and it depends a lot on your forms and activities being set up correctly, too (and phases if you use them) Completed

Overdue Activities As I mentioned earlier, you can report directly on activities themselves – here’s a report showing overdue activities. As a manager, you’d probably want to view something like this every day … everyone should probably have this report and a couple of related reports NOTE – you can create a Job View that tells you which Jobs have activities that are overdue … but this is easier to digest if you have a lot of activity types or if you use phases or processes

Installs by Phase Phases are powerful, but they make everything more complicated. You may have noticed that job views always show exactly one row per job, whether the jobs have phases or not. If you want to show one row per phase, you can do that with a report like this

Total Allocated Product If you use JobTracker Inventory Edition, you can create some useful reports for that, too – I covered a couple of those reports briefly in the Inventory Training

Any report is Only as Good as Your Data It’s important to do a sanity check on your data Any report is only as good as your data, so now I’m going to show you how to do a sanity check on your data [There was an 80’s movie – Real Genius – where the laser is reprogrammed with bad data to cause a massive jiffy pop popcorn to pop at the antagonist’s house … the military thinks the laser doesn’t work – it does, it just has BAD DATA]

Jobs by Salesperson Returning to the first example that I showed … How do you know that this data is correct?

Sanity Check: Add More Detail Jobs by Salesperson +Jobs The answer is to show more detail … Add columns so that you show more rows … In this case, I’ve added the Job Name to my report which shows a lot more rows and makes it clear which ones don’t have the Salesperson set. It also lets me scan the other jobs and make sure that the Salesperson is correct. Very often, you’ll want to save two versions of a report – the one you really want and the one you want + Job Name to show a lot more rows and let you do a sanity check

Getting Started Time to dive in and start creating simple reports

Can create simplest reports with “New” … You can create a simple report with Report > New Go ahead and try it – you can pause the video, go to the Report menu, click New, and then choose the Display field that you want to count by

… but usually need to click Options For more complex reports, you’ll then need to click Options. Again, here’s what it looks like if I hit options after creating a report counting Jobs by Job Salesperson

Quick Walkthrough Now I’ll show how to do it “live” [Create Jobs by Salesperson in real time Click Options and change to/from barchart Click Options and change fields]

Exercise: Jobs by Account Here’s a quick exercise to challenge you – see if you can create a report counting Jobs by Account. Pause the video to try it, and then I’ll show you the answer. (pause) Did you get it? OK, here’s how you do it. Account Name isn’t one of the options for Display Field when I choose Report > New. Not to fear, just hit OK and then click Options. Now remove this field and add Account Name. Simple as that! Try to create a report that counts the number of jobs created this year by each of your Accounts

Moraware makes CounterGo estimating software and JobTracker scheduling software for countertop fabricators. Since 2002 Moraware has helped fabricators quote and schedule more than 2 million countertop installations. Moraware is a member of the MIS+BSI: The Natural Stone Institute, the International Surface Fabricators Association (ISFA), and the Stone Fabricators Alliance (SFA).   www.moraware.com Thanks for watching - If you want to learn more, be sure to follow up with the Advanced Report Training