Reports - Print View

You can print reports whenever you need them. The reports are similar for both ledgers; the only differences being a profitability report for the sales ledger, is replaced by a payments due report on the purchase ledger, and some differences on the unallocated transaction reports.

Prompts Used Throughout Reporting Procedures

Throughout the sales and purchase ledger reporting features, there is a common set of pre-run parameters whenever a report is printed. These are supplemented by others for specific reports which will be discussed on the individual reports where appropriate.

If the pre-run parameters are set as required then you can select the PRINT option directly and proceed to print the report.

Date of Report

It is usual to print the system date on the report. This is displayed and maybe accepted or amended as required.

Report "As At” Date

Whilst the ‘Date of Report’ represents the date the report was printed, this date represents the date up to which transactions have been entered. For example, on the 3^rdMarch 20xx you may want to produce reports up to the 28^th February 20xx. Other than the Aged Analysis reports, where this date controls the aged analysis, the ‘As At’ date has no effect on the accounts or transactions reported.

Range of Accounts From / To

Available for ‘Account’ reports you can specify a range of accounts to print. You can use the <F4–Select> key to find the start and end of your range and the range includes both the accounts chosen as the range. The chosen accounts do not have to exist, however — you could choose accounts in the range (say) of AAA000 to AAA999, even though neither of these accounts may yet be defined

Include Forward Transactions

The forward transaction facility allows you to enter transactions into the new period before the current period has ended. It would be normal to print reports – particularly at period-end for audit trail purposes – to exclude forward transactions (in which case this input should be left blank). If you wish to include forward transactions then set this option.

Specify Any Selection Criteria

Leaving this input blank processes all accounts in the file, if the report is based on the transaction file then it process all current (and forward) period transactions. If you wish to apply criteria select this option.

Transaction reports only process the current period by default.To include earlier periods you need to enable selection criteria, overtype the starting record to be 1 (this defaults to the first transaction this period) and enter the appropriate date range to report.

Report Which Currencies

Any values printed are reported based on the contents of the data item (no conversion takes place based on the response to this item). If you leave this option blank then all accounts are processed, alternatively you can enter a specific currency to report just those accounts / transactions or enter ALL to process all records but grouped by currency.

The OPTIONS Button

The Options button allows configuration facilities for the printing of the report – selecting margins and fonts. When you select the OPTIONS button a pop-up form is displayed.

Before discussing the parameters you should note the buttons available at the footer of this parameter screen.

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 and cannot be selected.

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

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.

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 (and the screen is a slightly different layout) – selecting a page size is mandatory to use proportional fonts.

Default Printer Font – a font dialog is displayed 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 view the Customer Account Listing report this shows, by default, the account code (10 characters), the account name (30), the telephone number (20), the fax number (20), together with spaces between the items this gives a total of 73 characters, or columns required, across the page (think graph paper – you have 73 ‘cells’ across the page).
Those 73 columns are split equally across the available page (page size and margins taken into account) as starting positions for data items – so the account code starts at column 1, the account name at column 12 (account code plus 1 space is 11), etc. If you select a font size too big then the account code may not finish printing before the account name starts causing the name to overlap the end of the account code. If this occurs then you can either reduce the font size, or consider swapping the report to landscape orientation if the font size would go too small.

Default to 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 to increase the size of print as these reports require a large amount of detail to be printed.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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) is again picked up from the Print Style Profile and fonts depend on ASCII codes configured, although other settings such as ‘include time’ etc. remain from the OPTIONS display.

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 is not applicable if the page size is left blank.

The next set of parameters allows you to specify formatting and margin settings for both portrait and landscape when the page size has been set. The appropriate setting being used based on the orientation of the output selected at run-time.

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.

This set of parameters allows you to specify formatting and margin settings for both portrait and landscape when the page size has notbeen set. Two columns are definable, one to use if printing in portrait, the other if printing in landscape - the appropriate setting being used based on the orientation of the output selected at run-time.

Minimum Characters Per Line – the system displays the width of the report items to the right. If you leave this value as 0 then the report width is the larger of either the report print items or 80 characters. You can manually set a report width – from 64 to 255 characters wide – but if you set a width less than the items actually printed then this is overridden by the report width at run-time.

Maximum Lines Per Page – if left at 0 then when printing a report the system will determine the number of lines per page based on the report width and the printable area of the page up to a maximum of 72 lines per page in portrait mode or 50 lines per page in landscape mode. Alternatively you can set the number of lines per page, from 16 to 255, and this is then taken into account when deciding font size to ensure that number of lines is printed. If left at 0 then when sending to the spooler the lines per page is assumed to be 72 in portrait mode and 50 in landscape. If you require an identical print from the printer and the spooler then a maximum number of lines should be set.

Left Margin – set the number of characters to be used as a margin from 1 to 64.If you require a margin then when entering the value you need to take into account the report print width – a margin of 4 characters on an 80-character report will be bigger than a margin of 4 characters on a 132-character report. If left at 0 no left margin is applied.

Right Margin – if you require a margin to be applied on the right of the report set the number of characters accordingly (again 1-64), if leave as 0 then no right margin is applied.

Top Margin – set the number of lines to leave as a margin at the top of the page (1-32 lines). If left at 0 then no top margin is applied.

Bottom Margin – set the number of lines to leave as a margin at the bottom of the page (1-32 lines). If left at 0 then no bottom margin is applied.

Finally, you can set default options that are used when you send the report to print or e-mail.

Print Device – 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.

E-mail Address – 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.

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.

Printing Procedure

Once you have accepted the printing parameters you can then select the desired output.

Depending on the report and system configuration the report can be output in a number of different methods.To ‘print’ you select the desired output device and then click the OK button. Available options are:

Screen – selecting this option displays the report on the screen. If you are happy with the output, selecting <F7-Option> on the report allows you to print the report or save it for subsequent print/enquiry.

Print Device – selecting this option allows you to print the report to any printer configured on your pc. The printer is selected from the NAME drop down list.

Disk Spooler – selecting this option saves the report for subsequent enquiry / print.

Microsoft Word – if Microsoft Word is installed then the report can be output as a document to Word. Note that font settings defined in the Options settings are ignored and a fixed item font is used instead for alignment purposes.

Microsoft Excel – if Microsoft Excel is installed then this option allows the creation of an Excel spreadsheet based on the report.

Fax-File Server – this option is enabled if you have fax software such as Tobit David or Zetafax that uses a ‘file scan’ folder to pickup faxes. If you use fax software such as WinFax then the fax output is selected from the ‘print device’ list. Note that font settings as defined by the Options button are ignored as this type of fax device cannot interpret these settings.

E-Mail– selecting this option creates an email message (Tobit David, Outlook and Outlook Express only) with the report as, by default, a PDF attachment.

PDF – selecting this option creates the report as an Adobe PDF file. If Adobe Acrobat Reader not installed then this option will offer to download this freeware software (internet connection required).

Article ID: 1297
Created On: Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 10:56 AM
Last Updated On: Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 3:59 PM