Understanding the reporting framework
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| Applies to : Office Accounting Express, Professional |
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One of the most important features in a modern accounting application is the ability to report accurately on the transactions that have been entered into the accounting application. It is equally important to get data out of an accounting application as it is to be able to enter data in the first place.
Microsoft Office Accounting provides a solid reporting framework with a large number of reports and features such as sorting, filtering, customisation, saving and export to Excel. |
The Reports Area |
The reports area differs from the other areas in Office Accounting in the sense that there isn’t any flow. Instead of a flow, the main area shows a sample preview of the selected report, to make it easier for you to select the report you are looking for.
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| Reports home page |
| The reports area is divided into 9 sub-areas (5 in Office Accounting Express) to give you a better overview of the reports: Analysis Tools, Company and Financial, Customers and Debtors, Sales, Suppliers and Creditors, Purchases (Office Accounting Professional and Professional Plus), Stock (Office Accounting Professional and Professional Plus), Jobs and Time (Office Accounting Professional and Professional Plus), Banking and Employees and Payroll. |
Running a report |
To run a report from the reports area, select the appropriate sub-area and report, pick a date range and click the Display button.
You can also run reports from the Reports menu, however this won’t allow you to pick a date range until after the report has been displayed.
Finally you can run reports from the customers, suppliers, employees and banking home pages.
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| Sample Profit and Loss Report |
Selecting a Date Range |
You can change the date range for a report either by picking another range in the Date Range drop-down box on the report toolbar or by specifying specific From and To dates. When you change the date range the report recalculated based on the new date range. Depending on the amount of data in the database, the recalculation may take a few seconds.
Some reports such as the balance sheet report are based on a single date, rather than a range. You can change the reporting date either by picking another date in the As of drop-down or by specifying a specific date in the Date field.
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Drill-Down |
Office Accounting allows you to drill down on a line in all reports to see what the line is composed of. To drill down on a line, simply double-click the line, and a report with the detail appears in a new window.
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Profit and loss report
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Drill-down from the profit and loss report
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You can typically drill down twice: First to see the details as a list of documents, and secondly to see a specific document.
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| Drill-down from the Transaction detail by account report |
Export to Excel |
Office Accounting allows users to take full advantage of Excel’s extensive functionality by making it easy to export reports directly to Excel. Click the Excel button  on the report toolbar to export the report to Excel.
Office Accounting exports reports with formulas and formatting to Excel.
As an example we can look at the Sales by customer detail report:
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Sales by customer detail report
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| Report exported to Excel 2003, including formulas and formatting |
| Office Accounting can export reports to the three latest versions of Excel (Office XP, Office 2003 and Office 2007). |