Formatting a Financial Report

You can customize the look of a report produced by Financial Analysis (FNL) or Financial Statements by inserting page breaks, choosing the format for the amounts, setting the width of the columns and deciding whether or not to include the transaction details on the report.

Page Breaks

All of the report writers automatically start a new page when they need to, according to the size of the paper. However, the Page Level options allow you to force a new page when the sort level number changes. This is useful if you want to distribute a report to different departments or budget holders.

Formatting Amounts

Each report writer includes an Amount Format option which controls how amounts are shown and rounded on the report. In Financial Analysis and Financial Statements, the amounts are formatted at report level. In Financial Tables the amounts are formatted by column and row.

The following formats are available to determine how an amount appears on a report:

Formats Description
Decimals Decimal places according to the Business Unit Setup or Currency Period Rates (CNP)
Integers Whole currency units, no decimal places
Thousands Thousands of currency units
Millions Millions of currency units
Blank No decimal places used

Reporting on Transactions

If you wish to print the detail transactions selected for the report on the report itself, you should set the Report Transaction preference. If this is set the transactions are always included, regardless of the Exclude Zero Value Rows setting.

If the Report Corrections field on the Ledger Setup (LES) is selected, then transactions marked with Correction are included in this report.

Note:  Transactions are not transferred onto the transfer file, even if they have been printed.

Setting the Column Width

The number of columns that can be physically printed on a report depends on your printer's character width, the number of characters per inch, and whether standard or wide columns are chosen. When you print a report, if some amounts are replaced by asterisks, it is because they are too large to fit into the regular columns. To overcome this, select the Wide Columns setting for the report.

Normal printing allows twelve columns to be printed per page. Up to nine characters, including decimals, are formatted as required, for example with thousand separators. Ten characters are printed but not formatted. Printing with wide columns, of eighteen characters, allows ten columns per page. If greater than twelve columns are required, then a proportionally smaller width is used.

You must make sure your printer and paper can cope with the width of the report you specify. If not, you should use the Amount Format setting described above to round the values in each column.