Building a report

The builder is three columns: the fields you can use, the things you do with them, and the report itself on the right, drawn as the table it will be.

Start by choosing what to report on — bookings, clients, pets, invoices, payments and so on. Then add fields: drag one across, or press the ＋ beside it. Both do the same thing, because dragging is impossible on a tablet and plenty of this gets done on one.

The four boxes

Columns — drop onto the report itself; the heading is where you set alignment, sorting and what the subtotal adds up.
Grouped by — each group gets a heading, a subtotal, and the whole report is totalled at the foot.
Only rows where — the conditions.
Sorted by — the order.

Dates

Every date folds open with a ▾ to offer its year, month, day, weekday and sometimes hour. Group by the date itself and you get one group per moment in time, which is no grouping at all — by month or by weekday is almost always what was meant.

Charts

A chart needs grouping first, since it draws one bar or slice per group. Pick one from the pictures, which are drawn by the same code that draws the real thing. More chart settings shows only what matters for the chart you chose.

Seeing it work

Show real data fills the report with up to fifty real rows. It is off to begin with because each run is a real query and a report gets changed a dozen times a minute while it is being built.

Example

A walker reports on Bookings, drags Price across, folds open Date & time and drops by month on Grouped by, sets the chart to Bars, ticks Show real data to check it reads right, and saves it as “Takings by month”.

FAQ

What does the box under two conditions do?
It says how they combine, using the numbers on the chips — for example 1 AND (2 OR 3). Leave it empty and every condition must hold. Press Check it: the answer comes from the code that will actually run the report, not from a guess made in the browser, so a rule that passes here is a rule that will work.

Why will it not let me save?
If you have written a combining rule, it has to pass the check first. An unreadable rule is thrown away when the report runs, which would leave you with a report doing something other than what its own screen says.

Why can I not add the same field twice?
Two identical columns of the same values say nothing. The same field twice is allowed when each carries a different summary — the total and how many, say.

Where did my chart go?
Removing the last grouping removes the chart with it. Without groups there is nothing to draw one bar of.

What is the difference between Save and Save as?
Save overwrites the report you opened. Save as makes a new one, which is how most reports get written — open the nearest thing and change it.

Where did it go after saving?
Straight into the finished report, not back to the builder. The builder shows fifty rows and no exports, so it is not where you want to end up.