Reporting setup workflow

There are different types of reports, each with its own value to the company. If your company was created with a QuickStart setup template, financial and other standard reports are included. Additionally, the QuickStart template provides some predefined:

  • financial periods
  • dimensions
  • account categories (specific to the QuickStart template used)
  • account groups

Before you begin

Before you begin setting up reports, consider:

  • what the report needs to accomplish
  • the type of report needed to accomplish the task
  • if there's a standard report that does what you want or do you need to create or customize an existing report
  • who needs this report
  • does everyone who should work with the report have all the needed permissions for the areas contained in the report

Workflow

As you get ready to create reports, you’ll need to have some areas already created to use in the reports. Not all reports need all areas, but you’ll find most do. To get set up for creating and managing reports, use the following workflow to ensure that your report creation goes smoothly. These do not need to be in a specific order except where it’s noted.

Create or edit:

Account groups: Every account you have must be part of an account group if you want to use its data in reports, balance sheets, and income statements.

Report audiences and types (optional): These let you filter reports to find just the relevant reports for users with certain roles or permissions.

Reporting periods:

Reporting periods are used when you create reports, budgets, and when you open and close books. They let you limit the information on the report to specific time ranges.

Dimensions: Use dimensions to organize, sort, and report on your company information in meaningful ways. Every transaction you enter has the option to be tagged with multiple dimension values to uniquely identify and report on it.

Dimension structures (Dimensions must exist): Organize the dimension data that you want to see on the rows or columns of a financial report.

Dimension groups (Dimensions must exist): A dimension group is a name for a particular set of members in a dimension, or a set of members that meet certain criteria.

Dimension count (optional, but Dimensions must exist): automating the dimension count to a statistical account

Taking the next step

After you’ve created or adjusted the necessary parts for your report, you can create the report, based on the type of report to create. Use the Financial Report Writer to create a report, walking through a series of tabs that guide you. Custom reports are created using the Custom report wizard.