The ‘User Defined Report’, found under REPORTS (above the large buttons) and ‘User Defined Reports’, adds a powerful new dimension to the presentation of your Tenant File data. You are able to choose from your Owner, Property, Unit, or Tenant Information and create your own listing report.
All available fields are shown on screen and all you have to do is click on the fields you wish to see in your report. You may select a maximum of eight fields to print in your report from any of the displayed information.
There are a few important considerations to know when using the ‘User Defined Reports’. Please read the information below carefully.
Sorting: The first three fields that you select will determine how your data is sorted. The first field is your 'Primary' sort and the next two fields are ’Sub-sorts'. For example, if you want to display your data by Owner, Property, and Unit, you would select the Owner 1 Last Name (last name of the primary owner) as field one, Property Name as field two, and Unit Address as field three. If you want to create a report by Tenant, you could select Tenant 1 Last Name as field (or sort) one and Tenant
1 First Name as field two. You might not need a third sort in this case. There are all sorts of other interesting things that you can do with sorting the ‘User Defined Report’. For example, you might select the Payment as your ‘Primary Sort’ to list all of your Units in order of the lowest payment to the highest. You could select the ‘Lease Start Date’ field as your first sort to list all of your Units in order of the earliest starting lease date to the most recent. Other ideas would be to list items from the lowest to the highest ‘Current Balance’, ‘Square Footage’, ‘City’, or ‘Zip Code’. The possibilities are limitless.
Spacing: The ‘User Defined Report’ was designed to provide a lot of information in a compact space, specifically one line on the report per Unit Address. You may have a maximum of 8 fields per line. The first 3 fields (the sort fields) are the largest and the remaining 5 fields are more compact.
The smaller fields are best suited to display dates, dollar amounts, zip codes, phone numbers, and numeric items. The larger fields are best suited for longer items, such as names.
Transactions: While the printing of general information is extremely useful, the ‘User Defined Report’ has gone a step further by providing the ability to pull financial transactions directly from the ledgers. You can combine information with the transactions to extract a wealth of data. For example, you can list all of your Tenant Information (up to 8 fields) and also display the 'Rent Received' for each Tenant along with a date range for the transactions.
These transactions can be displayed in either ‘Detailed Format’ or ‘Summary Format’. The ‘Detail’
will show you each specific transaction, the date, account category, remarks, check numbers, and the amount. These transactions will be totaled for you. The ‘Summary’ selection will only print the total of the transactions presented within the entered ‘Date Range’ selected. The third selection, which is ‘NONE’, disables the printing of transactions.
Account Category: If you elect to show transactions (by selecting Detail or Summary), you are required to select a specific account category to report on. All of your income and expense categories are listed in a drop down box.
Status: The ‘Status’ is determined under 'Preferences' and 'Edit Accounts' from the Main Menu. For example, ‘Rent Charged’ would normally have the status of 'T' because it is a 'Tenant' transaction.
Select the status 'U' for transactions and Account Categories that are normally posted to the 'Unit'.
'Rent Received' is normally status 'B' since it is posted to 'Both' the Tenant Ledger and the Unit Ledger at the same time.
Include Range (1st Choice): The ‘Include Range’ will allow you to limit the whole report to a specific range. This could be a range of Owner names, Property names, Tenants, or more. Simply enter the first few characters of the ‘Starting Name’ into the first box and the ‘Ending Name’ into the last box. The range will only include information from the first item you selected by clicking on a check box. For example, if the first item you chose was the 'Property Name' field, then the range entries must be a range of 'Property Names'. If you clicked on the 'Tenant 1 Last Name' selection, you will need to enter a range of Tenant Last names to limit the report to that range. If you leave the fields blank, it will give you all names. No matter what you select first, the range is determined by that selection only.
Suppress Duplicates: The ‘User Defined Report’ has the ability to suppress duplicate information from one line to the next. If you check this box the Report will not display a line, which is exactly like the line previously printed. Normally, the report would print a line for each Unit. If you are simply
listing all of your Owner Names and Phone Numbers, you would not want to see this information printed once for each Unit, so you could use the ’Suppress Duplicates' option. However, be sure not to use this option when you are printing any numeric or financial data, since duplicate lines will be skipped possibly missing some financial data. You cannot use this option at all if you elect to print Transactions with your report for the same reason.
Reset: This button simply erases your current field selections so that you can set up a new report or redesign the report you have already started. If you need to change the field selections once you start to create a report, you will need to hit the ‘Reset’ button to erase the previous choices.
Save a Report: You are able to enter the selections for your report and save them for future use.
Simply enter your choices and then click the ‘Save a Report’ button. This will pop up a screen asking you for the report name. This will save any options except the transaction options. If you have a report that you need to view periodically, this choice will save those selections (and Report name) so that you can simply click into the ‘User Defined Reports’ and ‘Display a Report’ previously saved.
Display a Report: If you have saved reports, this choice will let you choose from a list of saved
‘User Defined Reports’. Once you select the report of your choice, all of the settings will show on the screen and you can then print the report. There is also an option to delete any saved reports.