Report Designer: Customizing reports

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The Workpapers CS software provides a variety of standard (predefined) reports to meet your reporting needs, and you can use the Report Designer to customize any standard report or statement as well to create new reports.

The following design features are available in the Report Designer to assist you with customizing reports to suit your business needs.

  • Repeating levels
  • Variables
  • Formulas
  • Conditional expressions
  • Filter and sorting options

Using the Report Designer

  1. Choose File > Report Designer to open the Report Designer in a separate window from the main application.
  2. Expand one of the Report folders from the Reports list and double-click a report to open it in the design grid.
  3. Modify the predefined report in the designer grid to create a report that best suits your needs.

Notes

  • To resize frames within a screen, position the mouse pointer over the vertical border of a frame in the current screen. When the mouse pointer changes its appearance to a Resize vertical, click and drag the border to adjust the frame size larger or smaller as appropriate.
  • Click the Push pin button button in the Design Tools frame to toggle the auto-hide feature on or off. When auto hide is toggled on, you can slide your mouse pointer over or away from the Design Tools tab to display or collapse the Design Tools frame in the Report Designer. When auto hide is toggled off, the Design Tools frame remains open at the left side of the Reports screen.
  • Click the Report Designer chevron2 button or Report Designer chevron button button to expand or collapse the Report List frame in the Report Designer.
  • When you open multiple reports in the Report Designer, each report is displayed in a separate tab.

Custom reports and folders

Based on the service for which you are licensed, you can use the File > New dialog in the Report Designer to add Firm, Accounting, or Workpapers reports, as well as financial statements, or letters. In addition, you can create custom folders in the Report Designer

Regions

For most reports (but not letters), you can include optional regions or sections. You can define each section using in the Region, Row, or Column Properties section of the Design Tools frame in the Report Designer.

Formulas

As in commonly used spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel, you can create and customize formulas that consist of single values or more complex calculations that can include multiple variables. Using variables enables you to create a "global" definition that can be used in multiple reports and for multiple clients. (The easy-to-use Variables tree view provides a comprehensive list of categories that are available for you to insert into your report.) Formulas can also contain functions to specify dates, range of date counts, row counts, running totals, and so forth.

Repeating levels

Use repeating levels in a report design to tie related data together in a selected area of a report. You can also nest levels within a primary repeating level to include additional detail within that primary group.

Conditional expressions

Use conditional expressions to display data based on specific criteria that you set up for the report from the Conditional Expression dialog.

Report options

Prior to previewing or printing a report, you can use the Options dialog (accessed by choosing File > Print) to select the client or range of clients, dates, and regions, as well as to filter and sort client data according to your needs.

Columns

You can adjust the order of columns by using cut and paste. Right-click the heading of the column you want to move and choose Cut, right-click the column heading to the right of the position where you want to move the column, and choose Paste. Show me

moving columns

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