This function provides the user with a tool to define the content and the general appearance of his financial reports. Each report is assigned a report code, which is the key to printing the report in the financial reporting program. If you have a series of financial reports which are always generated at the same time (e.g. current period, year-to-date, budget) they can be defined as one report. This will assure that all reports are generated and eliminate the task of selecting each report individually.
Types of Lines:
- C - Caption
- This line usually represents a page heading. Valid entries:
- Description. The description will be centered on the line (e.g. Profit and Loss Statement). A special case of the description is the period ending description which contains only ?PD. What is printed in this case is the literal description of the period and date, e.g. AS AT May 31, 1998. If the description contains ?CO, the application company name is used instead.
- Extra blank lines (number of lines to print after the caption is printed)
- H - Heading
- This line represents a group heading or a total heading. Total headings are entries with a value greater than 0 in the field "Which Total Level". All other entries are group headings. The total headings are saved for later printing of this total level. Valid entries:
- Description. The description is printed starting in position 1 of the page and are underlined. The period ending description can be used like in the Caption line.
- Extra blank lines (number of lines to print after the heading is printed)
- Which level of totals (if entered retains the description for later total print at that level).
- Print every Account - Y causes column headers to be printed as well; N suppresses column headers.
- D - Detail
- This line generates one or more print lines of data on the Financial Report. Each line printed includes financial data. The description will start printing in position 6. If you chose to print only a summary line, the description entered will be the one printed. When each account is to be printed the description from the G/L account will be printed. Valid entries:
- Description - printed only on the report when print every Account N. For other options it can direct the report to use descriptions from a code table by entering ?n, where n is the table id to use. It is a number from 1 to 8.
- Extra blank lines - number of lines to skip after the account range is printed
- Print every account - enter Y if you want every account in the range of G/L accounts entered to be printed; enter A if you want every active account in the range to be printed; enter N if you want only one line to be printed for the range of accounts entered. When one report line is to include amounts from two or more discontinuous ranges, the last line in the series contains an N in this entry while the others contain a C. The description from the last line in the series is printed.
- Enter a range of account numbers which are to be printed one at a time or as a lump sum.
- Reverse sign - All amounts are stored according to generalized signing conventions. i.e. assets and expenses are usually debits, and liabilities and incomes are usually credits. Some reports read more clearly if amounts are shown unsigned. Also when expenses are reported as a percent of income a negative sign is confusing. These situations can be handled by designating that the sign be reversed on all incoming amounts. To do this, enter Y.
- Every account existing between the upper and lower limits given is processed. The upper and lower limits do not have to be existing account numbers. Some formats of the financial statements support universal selections for each of the account units. For example, if an asterisk, representing "all", is put in the department code then the detail line will pick up every account in the range selected in every department represented on the Department Code Table.
- T - Total
- This line generates one or more total lines on the financial report. The line(s) are indented 10 spaces. If a description is entered, it will be used as the description of the total, otherwise the description is taken from the corresponding group heading entry. As each detail line is printed (type D) it is added to TOTALS. When you wish to print the total of the previously printed detail lines, enter a 1 in the level of totals. When this level is printed, the total is added to TOTAL 2 and TOTAL 1 is cleared. This step is repeated up to TOTAL 9. This provides you with a simple but powerful totaling tool. When you request to print a total from a level higher than 1 all lower level totals are automatically printed. Therefore requesting a total for level 3 would force a print of level 1 and level 2 and then level 3. As long as a description exists the total would be printed. Totals automatically skip a line before printing. After total 1 would be printed, it would be added to total 2 and cleared. You do not have to use the lowest level because should you have chosen level 5 then totals for level 1 to 5 would be printed, but only those with a description would be printed. Using higher numbers may allow more flexibility in handling totals and sub-totals. Valid entries:
- Description - 30 characters in length
- Lines After - Number of lines to skip before printing the next line. Zero means print on the next line.
- enter 99 to force a page break after this line
- Total Level - used with an H line it saves the description totals for future printing at that total level.
- used with a T line it prints all levels of totals up to and including the level requested.
- '1' is the lowest total level.
- The totals are only printed if a description exists for that level. The next level above the one printed is updated with the requested level totals and the totals for the requested level are cleared.
- Print - When used with D lines, if Y then print all accounts found within the G/L range. If N; print the total of the range. If C add the accounts to the line totals but do not print the line - totaling is continued with the next line. If each account is printed then the account description is printed, otherwise the description in the Financial Statement file is printed.
- When used with H lines, an N indicates that the column headers are not to be printed with this header line.
- Account Number Range
- Starting and ending account numbers in the series processed by this entry. Partial account numbers and invalid account numbers are accepted to generalize ranges.
- Percentage Base
- Used when a percentage of a total to a certain base field is needed. e.g. expenses reported as a percentage of income.
- Reverse Sign
- use to improve readability of the report.
A common requirement in financial reporting is to print the sum of accounts having all entries of the account number common except for one entry. All valid values for this one entry would be included in the total. For example, we want the total revenue for all departments where the revenue is reported as an account within the department.
In setting up the line definition in the financial statement, the range selection contains special entries. All the entries that remain the same are filled in as usual. e.g. the Control Account for revenue is 5001. The entry for the department contains an left-justified asterisk only. This tells the report generator to look to the corresponding Code Table (e.g. 4 for department) for the list of valid values to use. Each value found in the table is substituted individually into the entry. The completed range is then used to perform the accumulation. Then the process is repeated for the next value in the table until all values of the substitution entry (department) have been processed. Only then is the line completion processing done.
More than one entry can use this substitution in the same selection.