BY Victoria Yudin, Founder, Flexible Solutions Inc.
Often when developing reports for Microsoft Dynamics GP users, we face what I like to call the need-to-know challenge. No information is volunteered, you have to ask very leading questions to really understand the report’s purpose, and at every step someone else needs to be consulted.
This dynamic frequently results from the fact that the person requesting the report is two or three degrees removed from the actual users of the report and often does not know the detailed requirements. It can also sometimes happen when users think that by giving the report designer too much information they will be wasting time, and since they’re paying by the hour, time is money.
The reality is that the need-to-know approach to report specification will typically lead to a much longer lead time for your reports and most likely require more iterations before it actually accomplishes the desired results. If you are using internal resources for report writing, this situation can cause to a lot of frustration and wasted time. If you are using external resources, this can translate into far more expensive reports.
Next time you are the one requesting a report, be able to answer the following five questions:
1. What is the business need behind the report? This is an important place to start, especially when you’re talking to a consultant that has already developed numerous reports for others – they may have already created a report for a similar need and might have re-usable code or an approach you may not have thought of for creating the report.
2. What does the report need to look like and who will be using it? The answer may be critical in determining the tool or method used for creating the report. For example, a report that needs to be presented to the board or to persons outside the company for review might need to look a lot more presentable than an internal report, so maybe it would be created in Crystal or SSRS. Something that will be used internally only and possibly need to be manipulated or edited may be better accomplished in SmartList or Excel.
3. What columns of data should be on the report? Some of this may need to get pretty detailed. Putting together a sample output in Excel, or even on paper, can be very helpful to the report designer. If you’re using dates, be very clear about which dates; for example, each subledger transaction in Dynamics GP has at least two dates: document date and GL posting date. If you’re looking for data like address, comments, or Salesperson ID on sales transactions, specify whether these should be from the line item level or the overall invoice level. If any of the columns should be totaled, or if you want them grouped or sorted in a particular way, show that on your sample.
4. Where/how do you enter the data that is needed for the report? What often seems like a very straightforward request can have myriad meanings. A common request we get is for “a sales report”. This could mean almost anything when you’re talking about Dynamics GP. To start, there are four typical modules where this data may be entered or found: General Ledger, Receivables Management, Sales Order Processing (SOP), or Invoicing. In addition, ‘sales’ could have different meanings: it could be the sum of all the extended costs on all sales lines, it could be the totals of invoices and returns, it could be invoice totals less tax, or it could be everything that’s in the GL accounts in the Sales category, regardless of where it originated. The business need for the report should help determine the answer to this.
5. What parameters and/or other logic are needed? If you need to use a number of parameters when running the report that may rule out certain tools, like SmartList. Also, consider additional logic – should your report only return posted data or all data with a status column? Should voids be excluded, or shown, but with a void status? Are any calculations or other data manipulation required?
If you are not sure about the answers to some of these questions, an experienced report designer will be able to help you put your report specification together. What is important to understand is that without this information it will be difficult for anyone, internal or external, to create the report you are looking for.