1. Advanced Reporting Business Goals
Learn how to use reports to get key data out of your system
Build some of the most common reports
Technical Objectives
Understand each part of the Options window for Reports
Learn how to avoid some of the common pitfalls when making reports
Understand when it’s time to copy to Excel
In this training, I’ll dive deeper into reports to help you get useful information out of your system.
By the time you’re done watching, you’ll understand each part of the Options window
I’ll also show you how to make some specific reports that many fabricators find useful

2. Time Let’s jump right into the Options window and talk about Time.
We can’t talk about Time without also mentioning the Measure – I’ll get more into the Measure in a bit, but it essentially determines the THING you’re counting or adding – in this example, I’m counting Jobs
Time plays a big role here. In this example, I don’t want to count ALL Jobs, I just want to count the number of jobs that were created this year.
Think of it this way: A report will count or add THIS THING (number of Jobs, in blue) based on THIS FIELD (Job Creation Date, in purple) falling within THIS RANGE (The Time Selection and Reporting Date, in Red)
In this case, if a job’s Job Creation Date falls within the Year that February 8, 2017 falls in, then count or add the job. Otherwise, don’t.

3. Time Selections are mostly intuitive …
You can choose from several different Time Selections, and they’re actually quite intuitive,
Day, Week, Month, Quarter, etc.

4. … but saved reports always return to Today
There’s a big caveat here! Saved reports always return to Today
If I click options and choose a date in the past – this example says: show me how many jobs were created in Feb of 2016 …
… if I save this report – and then select it again – it will return to the current date when I select the report!
All of the Time Selections (except for Custom) return to Today’s date when you select a saved report

5. If you want exact dates, choose Custom
If you really want to save a report with dates in the past, then choose (Custom) as the Time Selection
(It’s at the bottom of the Time Selection dropdown)
With Custom, you can select exactly the dates you mean, and it will save exactly that way
Dates are inclusive (so January 1 to January 31st INCLUDES January 1 and January 31)

6. Trick for (All) Here’s a little trick you’ll use from time to time.
There’s not a way to say (All) dates
If you want to include all dates in the system, then set a date far in the past and a date far in the future
This report will effectively count ALL Jobs, regardless of when they were created.

7. Display Fields: Jobs by …
Let’s review how Display Fields work
The fields you choose determine how your count gets “grouped”
In this case, I’m counting Jobs “grouped by” Salesperson, because I selected Salesperson as the only Display Field

8. Changing Display Fields
If you change the display fields, it
WILL change the columns, obviously
And it CAN also change the number of rows
Notice how changing from Salesperson to year and month changes the number of rows returned from my sample data

9. Adding one more field …
In fact, adding one more field can DRASTICALLY change the # of rows that you see.
You can use this to your advantage by making a “sanity check” report as I discussed in the Reporting Overview training.
… but this can sometimes bite you, too.

10. More Detail = More Rows
For example, even though this is a Job report, if you add anything from a Phase, it will expand the number of rows
The same thing will likely happen if you add a field from a Job Form to this report, because a Job Form adds more detail. More Detail means More Rows.
This can be surprising if you’re trying to get a bunch of information at once … the lesson is to start with as FEW fields as necessary to get the shape of your report. Then slowly add additional fields, but notice when it changes the # of rows

11. A Job by any other name
Here’s a Gotcha: In a Report, a Job might be more than just a Job.
Job actually kinda really means any Process … in this case, Job actually means both Job and Sales Lead
Clear?

12. Account Job Phase Activities Forms Files Process = Job
Process = Sales Lead
Under the covers, there’s no unique “thing” called a Sales Lead or even a Process
A Sales Lead – or whatever you call them – is really a Job with a Process of type Sales Lead, and a Job is a Job with a Process of type Job
We hide that reality in the way Processes are defined and displayed, but you have to know about it when you’re creating a report.
What if I really only want to see Jobs or Sales Leads?
Solution: Filters

13. Filters
Filters mostly work the way they do on Job Views and Calendar Views
However, on Reports there are even more options
Specifically, I can choose Process and specify whether I want all Jobs or just Job Jobs
When making reports, remember that every Job has a Process, and the value of that Process might be Job or something else. You can filter on that value

14. Filtered Results
In this case, I only want to show Job Jobs, not Sales Leads, so I filtered the Report to include only Jobs where the Process is Job
A bit confusing, I know – but if you use Processes at all, you’ll often need to create a filter like this on your Reports

15. Filters Are Powerful and Complex
You can do a lot with filters …
There are many different “Filter Types” that have lots of different options
Not all options are meaningful in all situations!
We’ll look at some more detailed filters while working on specific reports

16. Measure The last thing to discuss on the Options window is Measure
When you click Select, it pops up a window that lets you choose THE THING that you’re counting or totaling.
Depending on what version of JobTracker you have, you’ll see 3, 4, or 5 Subject Areas. Each Subject Area has one or more Measure within it
And you can choose a variety of Time Fields, which have a great impact on the report as well
We’ll cover Measure in more detail when we go through specific examples, because Measure is really what determines what the report is about.

17. Report Examples (Pause to check in before going through examples)
Now that we’ve seen how the Report Options window works in depth, let’s dig into some specific examples

18. Job Report: Totaling Throughput
So far, we’ve only counted jobs, but we can also total any numeric Job Custom Field. In this example, I’m totaling throughput, which is a custom field I’ve made for my jobs.
(As an aside, the abstract concept of Throughput is just $Sales - $TVE (truly variable expenses) – most importantly, it removes the cost of slabs from your job numbers, since they skew the real value of a Job to your business so significantly. You might choose to track a number like Sales or Revenue instead)
Tracking something like “Throughput” on each job makes it easy to see what each Job is really worth to your business.
Note that you might want to restrict a Report just to Jobs or to Leads or maybe to both (notice the filter) – those different reports would mean different things, wouldn’t they?

19. Choose Your Measure
When you click Select on the Measure line (from the Options Window) and then choose the Job Subject Area, you can either count jobs or total a numeric field – there are no built-in numeric fields, so you’ll only see one if you added it
You can total by the job creation date or by the date of any activity type on the job or by a few other dates. Here I’ve chosen the Install Date, a very popular date to report by.
Notice that you have to choose between First in Job or Last in Job. That’s because you can have more than one Install on a job. If you have a 2-day install that happens on the last day of February and the first day of March, when do you want it to be counted? If February, then choose First in Job. If March, choose Last in Job.

20. Only want completed Installs?
What if you only want completed Installs?
The easiest way is to choose Year-to-Date as the time selection, instead of just Year (or month-to-date, etc.). If you want to include today’s installs, keep the reporting date as today. Otherwise, change it to yesterday.
Obviously, this only works if you keep your activities updated! It only works if your data is true.
If an activity scheduled for today isn’t completed in real life … then you should reschedule it!

21. Job Form Reports
(keep going)
Example: Square Feet Installed

22. Totaling a Form Field Let’s look at another report …
Just as you can total numeric values on a Job, you can total any numeric values on a Job Form as well
On the Measure window, change the Subject Area to Job Form, choose the Form Template, and then choose total for the specific numeric field you want to report on as the Measure. First in Job and Last in Job mean the same as for Job. We’ll get to the Phase options shortly

23. Example: Square Feet Installed
This example is a Square Feet Installed report, and it’s very similar to the Job Throughput report I just showed. The only real difference is that I’m totaling a numeric value from a form instead of from the job.
I’m using Year-to-date as the time selection, because I only want completed installs here, but if you want to include projections, then say Year instead.
Is this a report you care about and use?

24. +Jobs for a sanity check
TODO – animation showing job/form objects
Again, a report is only as good as the data that goes into it, so let’s add Jobs to this one for a sanity check
There’s one big difference between reporting on a Job Custom Field and reporting on a Job Form numeric field. Have you noticed that a Job Custom Field can have only one value per job. But you can add multiple forms of the same type to the same job, so then you’d have multiple values, right? When you report on those values, it’s summing them all together, based on the display fields you choose.
So on this report, it’s potentially summing together the Sq Ft from multiple forms for each of these jobs.

25. +Jobs +Room for an even better sanity check!
If we add a field from the form, we can see multiple rows per job and can get an even better sanity check!
This report makes it clear that some jobs have forms that are missing data – it’s worth looking into these.
I recommend saving a report like this – a “debug” report for every report you use regularly. Show the level of detail that makes your “real” report make sense

26. WARNING: Form missing? Job not included!
TODO: Add Job Templates picture
There’s a subtlety that’s important to know for a Job Form report.
If a job doesn’t have the form you’re reporting on? It’s simply excluded from the report. It’s just not counted.
Notice here the job for Mike Bibby on the left (a job report) – it doesn’t have the Countertop Details form at all – so it doesn’t show up at all on the right (a job form report)
So if you report on forms and you want your data to be accurate, make sure that you include appropriate forms in Job Templates so they’re added to every job.
If you don’t want to add them to every job, then you should maintain a Job View showing the key form values for each job. That way you can review those daily to make sure you’re not missing anything
AS A FURTHER CAUTION: Don’t try to add fields from one more than one form on the same report. Nothing good happens from doing this. Thanks to Roderick from Fabricator’s Choice for reminding me of that one – he has bad memories of attempting that.
Job Report - Throughput
Job Form Report – Sq Ft

27. Last Install in Phase TODO: Show old report value, too
Now let’s to back to the measure and look at the Install Date options again.
If I change Last in Job to Last in Phase, I get different results.
To see why, let’s add a couple of fields to this report …

28. A Phase can be complete before the Job is
Here I’ve added Job Name and Phase Name to the report
In this example, The Willy Hayes Job isn’t complete, but one Phase of it is. If I choose Last in Job as the measure, this 40 sq ft won’t show up. If I choose Last in Phase, it will.

29. Activities and Forms with same Phase …
When an Activity and a Form share the same Phase, then they’re linked in useful ways. Here are activities and forms from that Willy Hayes Job … Notice how the first Install is in Phase 1 – Deck, as is the first form. The 2nd install is in Phase 2 – Kitchen and Laundry, as is the 2nd form shown here. The forms and activities are conceptually linked by phase.
If you report on an activity date by Phase, then these forms will treated separately from each other – they’ll be counted or not based on the activities that share the same phase
If you report on an activity date by Job, then these forms will be lumped together, since they’re all still part of the same job.
Clear? 

30. Activity Report
Now let’s look at some activity reports
Examples: Overdue activities, activities without dates, etc.

31. Activity Reports
If you go back to the Measure, you’ll see that you can report directly on Job Activities.
For a simplistic example, here’s a report showing how many of each type of activity fall within your report’s date range
There are a variety of Measure options and a variety of interesting Time Field options for Activity Reports. For this report, I’m simply counting the number of job activities by the date of the activity itself

32. Add a filter to show only certain activity types
If you only want to count the number of template and install activities, you can add a filter for that

33. Add another filter to show only completed
With an activity report, you can filter directly on the Activity Status. Now I’m showing only completed activities.
You’ve probably used filters on job views for Job Activity Status – those are more complicated to figure out. One nice thing about activity reports is that you can filter on aspects of the activity itself (which is usually easier).

34. Example: Overdue Activities
Here’s a useful example: a report of overdue activities – you can do much the same thing with a Job View, but if you have a lot of different activity types in your system (or if you use multiple Processes), this is easier to digest.

35. Overdue activities (Options)
To make an overdue activity report, just show appropriate fields, like this, and then filter for activity dates that occur at least a day ago.
Notice the custom time selection with a start date way in the past and an end date way in the future.

36. Related: Activities without Dates
Here’s how to make a report of Activities without Dates –
When you want to report on activities WITH dates, you can use the activity date in the measure. If you want to find activities WITHOUT dates, you have to use Job Creation Date in the measure and then filter for an empty activity date
why is this useful?

37. Yellow flag
Activities without dates are a bit of a yellow flag – they’re not wrong, but they’re kind of dangerous.
If you think about it, one of the most important benefits of using JobTracker is that it helps you know when something slips through the cracks. But if you have a bunch of unscheduled activities, you can’t tell what’s overdue!
Unscheduled activities can be useful if you use them to show, for example, jobs where the template hasn’t been schedule yet.
But if you have a lot of unscheduled activities, you should consider rethinking your workflow to get things scheduled – at least to Estimate – as early as possible
If you’re interested in that, I can show you a trick offline that will help you get everything scheduled earlier in your workflow. Otherwise, you should keep an eye on your unscheduled activities, so they don’t get out of control
(trick – complete first activity in job template by default and then auto-schedule based off of it)

38. Related: Activities with Material

39. Job Report with Phases
Here’s another interesting report showing when each phase is scheduled to be completed for jobs in this account.
If you use phases a lot, you probably need some reports like this. You’ve probably noticed that job Views (under Job > View Jobs) always show exactly one job per row. If a job has multiple phases, it will still be crammed into one row, and there’s no way to separate them out. It makes sorting on key dates pretty annoying.
With a report, you can simply add the Job Name and the Phase Name to break them into separate rows

40. Job Report with Phases (Options)
I won’t go into great detail on this report, but here are the options
Somewhat counter-intuitively, this is actually an activity report.

41. Show only incomplete phases
Let’s say I only want to show phases that aren’t complete …

42. Straightforward with Activity filter
Since I’m reporting on Activities, I can filter directly on Activity. If I’m reporting on Jobs, I’ll typically report on Job Activity Status – I won’t go into detail on the differences here, but recognize that those are two different things

43. Jobs to Clean Up (as of 2/13/2017)

44. Jobs to Clean Up (Options)

45. Job Activity Status Filter

46. EE Quotes – “Conversion” Reports

47. Only one answer at a time …
Before we wrap, let me remind you of an important limitation of reports. A report can only display one answer at a time.
Here are two separate reports, one showing total square feet, one showing total throughput. There’s no way to show both of those answers in the same report in JobTracker.
If you want to get more than one “answer” on the same view – like total square feet AND total throughput – that’s a sign that you need to use Excel.
We can’t support Excel itself, but we can help you create the right views to copy and paste.
One approach is to copy and paste the finished reports like the ones shown here – just copy and paste the data to a sheet and delete what you don’t need.

48. Export more data
Another approach is to export more rows, more “raw data” – so that you can use more of the sum and pivot table functions in Excel
It’s usually better to export a report instead of a job view, because reports never have subtables.
This report above is our sq ft report, but I’ve added key information from the job, including Job Name, Job #, Job Salesperson, and Throughput (I can use Throughput on this report, because I’m not summing it across jobs). When I copy and paste this data to Excel, I can use pivot tables to slice and dice the data
Again, we can’t support Excel itself, but we can help you create the right views to copy and paste (if you send me what you’re trying to accomplish, I might record a video showing how to do it in Excel)

49. Security Let’s end with a caution about security.
A user can see reports if they have this box checked on a role (see Admin > Roles).
If you can see one report, you can see every report! So even if a user doesn’t have the ability to see job forms, if they have the Report right checked, they’ll be able to see every report about job forms – and they can modify reports the same way an Admin can (but saving shared reports is a separate right).
I hope that was useful – questions???

50. 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).
Thanks for watching - If you want to learn more, be sure to follow up with the Advanced Report Training