Formatting Reports

The reporting feature allows you to format reports in a lot of useful ways. Correctly formatting a report can often be a huge time saver. I will briefly run through the formatting options available within Accelerate and then produce a real life example formatted report. (Note: reports are updated at 10am, 12pm, 2pm, 5pm and 7pm)

To access the formatting options, click the 'Actions' button and highlight the 'Format' Option.

Sort

Sorting is an easy way to display the information you want first. Click the 'Sort' button and you'll find yourself on this screen:

The numerical order defines which 'Sort' has priority. For example, if you sort by 'Order Status' first and have 'Order Date' second, Accelerate will display all 'New' Order statuses first and will sort those by the 'Order Date'. To help differentiate between each derivative of the sorting, you can add Control Breaks.

Control Breaks

A Control Break splits the page into sections dependant on the value in a chosen column. For example, as mentioned above adding a Control Break to the 'Order status' column would create an easier report to read.

To add a Control Break head to the 'Format' section and click 'Control Break'. Once here you'll find yourself on a screen similar to the one below:

Here you simply choose the column(s) you wish to break up. The ordinal values apply the same logic as choosing the 'Sort' options.

You can Download your report at any time so that you can create charts or send your reports to people of interest.

Click the 'Actions' button and then the 'Download' button,you will then be given a choice of which format you wish to receive the document in.

Highlight

As well as sorting your reports to show important information towards the top, you can also highlight certain features that you want. Similar to filtering you can set which rules you want the highlighting function to follow and rather than only showing those results Accelerate will highlight them for you.

You can change the colour of both the cell background and text within the 'highlight' settings box:

You can either set the colour by selecting it within the multicoloured box or by selecting the preset basic colours on the right.

Aggregate

You can define an aggregation against a column by selecting Aggregate from the Actions, Format menu. Aggregates are displayed after each control break and at the end of the report within the column for which they are defined.

In the example below I want to see how many of each order ID reside within each order status. I select 'Count' as the function and 'Order ID' as the column. I have separated the different order statuses using Control Breaks.

The aggregate can be seen at each Control Break making it quick and easy to see the totals for each defined group.

To delete an Aggregation click 'Actions' > 'Format' > 'Aggregate'. From the dropdown where it will automatically say 'New Aggregation' select the one you wish to delete:

Once you have chosen the correct Aggregate click the 'Delete' button.

Group By

Using the Group Function can be a huge time saver if you are after a summary of results. You can choose which results you wish to view numerical values for. In the example below I want see how many of each manufacturer's vehicles we have ordered and ultimately delivered. To start, head to the 'Format' section and then select Group By:

The first row of dropdowns define which columns you wish to group for results. In the example mentioned earlier I'm interested in finding out how many vehicles of each manufacturer have been delivered or ordered:

Because I want to know how many of each manufacturer are at each stage of the ordering process I have selected 'Count' as my function and 'Manufacturer' as my column. If you want to know a total of vehicles, tick the sum box at the end.

If you have any further questions or issues with reporting, please do not hesitate to contact us at support@qv.systems.