Uses of inquiry formats

Optionally, you define inquiry formats to instruct Sales Analysis how to format the sales data for certain inquiry programs. Formats allow you to specify up to four columns of data. You can format the data including period-to-date, year-to-date, and the comparison year for:

• Booked sales. See Booked sales.

• Actual sales. See Actual sales.

• Budgeted (forecasted) sales. See Budgeted sales.

The Compute option lets you enter a calculation formula based on summarized data. The formula lets you manipulate data for a specific column. For example, you can subtract column A from column C, and the application calculates the difference. The mathematical operators available are addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), and division (/). You can specify parentheses and numbers (constants) for complex formulas.

Each type of sales data that you select becomes a column heading; up to four column headings are possible.