Datafile Home \| KB Home \| Advanced Search

Reports

Article Number: 1972 | Rating: Unrated | Last Updated: Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 5:12 PM

Datafile Software

Reports

Selecting the reports menu offers a comprehensive selection of reporting options.

When selecting to run the majority of these reports, if the payroll has not been run for all employees you will be warned accordingly. If you continue to print then the reports will only show details for the specific employees who you have ran the payroll for, other employees are printed but any ‘current’ values are shown as zero.

Reporting Options

Throughout the payroll reports there are a common set of parameters – though they may be supplemented by others for specific reports. The screen below shows the typical options available.

Date of Report

Defaulting to the payroll run date this is printed as the date of the report.

Report Sequence

You have the option to print reports either in employee number sequence, or sorted into employee number order within each department. Reply 1 for the first option, or 2 for the second. Diamond and Premier users have the option to nominate a data item on the employee file to use as a report sequence – if configured this is offered as a third option to print in this sequence, and a further fourth option to sort into this data item order within each department. Finally you have the option to print in the Inland Revenue ‘End-of-Year’ sequence which processes directors first followed by employees in surname order.

Specify Any Selection

This option allows you to set criteria to print the report for specific employees – for example, those for a particular department.

The OPTIONS Button

When you select to print an application report an OPTIONS button is available alongside the PRINT/CANCEL buttons. Selecting the OPTIONS button allows access to the print configuration.

The layout of this screen differs slightly based on whether you have set the page size (as above) or not.Before discussing the parameters you should note the buttons available at the footer of this parameter screen.

Default - This option updates the individual parameters from your user default when they are set, overwriting presets where applicable.If no user defaults are set then this option is ‘greyed’ out. To set user defaults see the appropriate section below.

Accept - This option accepts your entered parameters for this print only, reverting to defaults next time the report is run.

Save- Depending on whether the user is configured as an ‘Install’ user then the next option will be SAVE. This saves your set parameters so they are offered as default next time this report is run (Note: this is system wide not per user).Setting the user as an ‘Install’ user is achieved through the user configuration available under the MASTER sign-on.

Exit - This option abandons any changes made and returns you to the report screen.

The report parameters available are:

Paper Size – select the paper size the report is to be printed to (i.e. A4).You can elect to leave this blank in which case the report is printed as per the last/default page size of the printer, however, if you do this you can only choose fixed pitch fonts – selecting a page size is mandatory to use proportional fonts. If you set a page size then the options screen re-displays with the appropriate parameters. If you leave blank then the options screen remains as above.

Default Printer Font – a font dialog is display allowing you to select as required, the default font to be used for this report. If you’ve sent the page size then all fonts are available, if you haven’t set this then only fixed pitch fonts can be assigned. You can also set bold/italic attributes and font size – note that if you haven’t set a page size then the font size option is not applicable (font is sized as per previous rules).

Selecting the Font Size

Generally you can’t go far wrong with 10point.However, if you have a lot of data items on your report, and are printing in portrait, 10point may be too big to fit all the required information without overlapping fields.

The positioning of fields across the page is determined by the item size – if you imagine the Payroll Control Summary report this shows, by default, the employee record number (8 characters), the NI Number (9), 7 payroll value fields (14 characters each) and the employee surname (17), together with spaces between the items this gives a total of 112 characters, or columns required, across the page (think graph paper – you have 112 ‘cells’ across the page).

Those 112 columns are split equally across the available page (page size and margins taken into account) as starting positions for data items – so the employee record number starts at column 1, the NI Number at column 10 (employee record number plus 1), etc. If you select a font size too big then the employee record number may not finish printing before the NI Number starts causing the NI Number to overlap the end of the product code. If this occurs then you may need to either reduce the font size or consider swapping the report to landscape orientation if the font size would go too small.

Print in Landscape – set to default the printed report to landscape, leave blank for usual portrait orientation. You may want to set reports such as the Sales Ledger Aged Debtors Report or the Cashbook Receipts Analysis Listing to landscape as these reports require a large amount of detail to be printed and otherwise the font size could be too small.

Omit Full Page Headings – When printing a multi-page report the system repeats the headings for each page. Setting this option reduces the heading details for the second and subsequent pages allowing more record detail to be printed per page.

Show Time in Report Headings – set to include the printed time in the report headings in addition to the printed date.

Default Output to Spooler – Usually, when printing a report, the default printer is the last print device used. Select this option to set the default printer as the spooler for this report. This acts only as a default and doesn’t prevent you electing to print the report instead.

Include Selection Criteria – set to print any selection criteria that were applied to the report.

Allow Change of Printer Alias – when these options are configured then it is assumed you are printing as ‘direct windows print’ and this is the alias set by default. Setting this option allows you to change the default alias at run-time to one of the list of Datafile configured printers. If you change the alias to a ‘DOS’ style alias then the page size (length/width) and font are again picked up from the Print Style Profile, although other settings such as ‘include time’ etc. remain from the OPTIONS display.

Email as Text Attachment – if send this report via email this option allows you to send as a text file attachment as opposed to, if left blank, PDF.

Print Negatives in Red – on selected reports, assuming you have a colour printer; it may be useful to print negative values in red. This option allows this.

Allow Excel Pivot Table – selected reports are suitable for output as an Excel Pivot Table. Set if output to be allowed.

Default Output to Pivot Table – set if default print device to be an Excel Pivot Table.

Characters Per Line – the system displays the width of the report items on the right. If you leave this value at 0 (recommended) then the report width used in determining the start column positions of data items (as discussed above with regards to font size) is the larger of either the report print items or 80 columns.You can manually set a report width – from 64 to 255 columns. You may want to increase the number of columns on (say) a landscape report with few print items to bring the fields closer together to aid in reading.

Lines Per Page – if left at 0 (recommended) then the number of lines per page is determined by the font and page size. Alternatively you can set a number of lines per page, perhaps to give a greater gap between rows of data items.

Left Margin (mm) – set the size of the left hand margin (relative to page orientation in millimetres.

Right Margin (mm) – set the size of the right hand margin.

Top Margin (mm) – set the size of the top margin.

Bottom Margin (mm) – set the size of the bottom margin.

Default Printer – if using a stand-alone Datafile system then you can set a default printer to output to. This option only applies when sending to a print device; if last printer was spooler or fax then this remains the default. If using a networked Datafile system then you can still set this where you are printing to a networked printer – provided all terminals have a consistent device path. If the print device isn’t valid then the normal printer is offered instead.

Send to Email – if the report is sent to email then here you can enter an email address that is to be used by default for this report – though it can be amended at run-time.

Excel Template – if sending to an Excel Pivot Table use this file as a template.

Once you’ve set the desired parameters select the ACCEPT option to apply the settings for this print or, if available, the SAVE option to apply for this and future prints.