Working with 13-Review and Reporting > Selecting and Creating Reports

Selecting and Creating Reports

Sage 100 Contractor comes with over 1,200 reports, providing you with many ways to understand your business and to communicate with your clients. Standard reports include selection criteria that allow you to save your personal defaults for repeated use. For quick access to reports that you use often, you can drag them to the Sage 100 Contractor Desktop to create an icon.

You can drill down into special Dashboard reports and from there to the record source. This feature makes getting to the source of financial data just one mouse-click away.

You can also drill down into the 1,200 program-wide reports by running a report in print preview, which is available via the Preview report on screen button. With your pointer appearing as a magnifying glass with a red lens, double-clicking rows or fields drills down to report details and records.

Notes about reports

Examples of Drilling Down into Report Information

In the following examples, Sage 100 Contractor is running the Sample Company, menu 3-1-3 Receivable Aging, and the 31-Current Job Aging report. The report was run without selection criteria.

Basic Rules for Drilling Down into Reports

Note: We recommend that you try drilling down into your own business’s reports. Hands-on practice with familiar reports is the best way to understand how drilling down into reports actually works.

About report selection criteria

You can use the selection criteria to limit the scope of documents; however, many reports do not require you to use selection criteria. If a criterion is left blank, Sage 100 Contractor does not use the criterion when creating the document.

Specific criteria is required to print checks. You must provide the first check form number, check date, and ledger account number of the checking account.

If a document does not include information that you were expecting, examine the selection criteria. If all the criteria are correct, the scope of the criteria might be too narrow. Try removing some of the criteria.

GAAP-standard reports

Sage 100 Contractor provides several reports to reflect generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. These reports include the following:

Viewing reports

You can view a list of reports in three ways:

Viewing sample reports

Sage 100 Contractor provides representative samples of most reports that the system produces. These samples are not generated from the sample data, but are images for you to view. By viewing sample reports, you can get an idea of the report’s content without having to actually generate the report.

Working with Quick Reports

Sage 100 Contractor’s Quick Reports feature lets you create simple reports for review. When you view a Quick Report, Sage 100 Contractor displays the report information in a grid.

For example, here are some of the windows in which you can create Quick Reports:

You can change the font styles in individual cells or for the entire grid. In addition, you can hide columns of information. When you print the report, any information hidden in the Quick Report window will not appear on the printed report.

Although you can change the formatting of a Quick Report, the changes are not saved. They are only used for printing a Quick Report. For example, open 6-5 Cost Codes, and using the B, I, and U buttons located under the menu bar, apply bold, italic, or underline formatting to the contents of cells.

You can hide the columns by right-clicking the column heading and selecting the Hide Selected Column command from the drop-down menu. Then click the Print Records button. When the Grid Printing window opens, click the Preview report on screen button to view a preview of your changes.

In some cases, a grid may display too many columns for the report to fit on a standard-sized piece of paper even in landscape orientation. In such cases, we recommend that you export the quick report to Microsoft Excel, which has the capability to capture all the data on any grid in Sage 100 Contractor.

Setting up a shortcut from a report printing window

To create a shortcut to a specific report:

1 Open any Report Printing window.
2 Click the Report Criteria tab.
3 Select a report.
4 In the lower left of the window, click Create a Shortcut to Selected Report.
More resources

For additional online resources for Sage 100 Contractor products, visit the Sage Customer Portal. Use the portal to access the knowledgebase, chat online with customer support, or enter a customer support ticket.

For additional training on Sage products, visit Sage University.