Craig,

I believe you've reached a level of understanding with your report design.  Every report created in Report Designer has a primary driving record, i. e., the data file which the report reads and sorts in the order you designate, and to which any filters are applied (i.e. "conditions" imposed via formulas or other specific criteria which are logically applied against each record as the report reads through the file.

Timberline uses Master Files and Transactions Files.  Only Transaction files have an accounting date field, and to produce a report that allows you to filter by specific accounting dates, your driving record needs to be a transaction record.  In Job Cost, the Master File contains accumulator buckets, such as YTD, JTD, QTD, MTD, Last Month, Next Month, etc.   Reports that draw on the master file are much quicker to produce, because the data is already stored, and summary totals do not need to be recalculated.  

However, if the predefined accumulator totals do not specifically meet your report requirements, then you would need to create a report that uses the Transaction file as the driving record. You can still pull information from the Master file for inclusion on the report, such as Job Name, Cost Code Description, etc., and through the use of totals and summarization options be able to present the data in a similar fashion to that stored on the master file, but have it include only the specific date range you desire.

I would be willing to help you remotely for 15 minutes or so to point out how to use these features. I support multiple Sage 300 CRE Timberline clients using GoToAssist, a remote desktop help program, allowing me to see your screen while speaking to you on the phone.  Please send me a private message if you would like to do that.

Regards,

Art Minds

Craig,

I believe you've reached a level of understanding with your report design.  Every report created in Report Designer has a primary driving record, i. e., the data file which the report reads and sorts in the order you designate, and to which any filters are applied (i.e. "conditions" imposed via formulas or other specific criteria which are logically applied against each record as the report reads through the file.

Timberline uses Master Files and Transactions Files.  Only Transaction files have an accounting date field, and to produce a report that allows you to filter by specific accounting dates, your driving record needs to be a transaction record.  In Job Cost, the Master File contains accumulator buckets, such as YTD, JTD, QTD, MTD, Last Month, Next Month, etc.   Reports that draw on the master file are much quicker to produce, because the data is already stored, and summary totals do not need to be recalculated.  

However, if the predefined accumulator totals do not specifically meet your report requirements, then you would need to create a report that uses the Transaction file as the driving record. You can still pull information from the Master file for inclusion on the report, such as Job Name, Cost Code Description, etc., and through the use of totals and summarization options be able to present the data in a similar fashion to that stored on the master file, but have it include only the specific date range you desire.

I would be willing to help you remotely for 15 minutes or so to point out how to use these features. I support multiple Sage 300 CRE Timberline clients using GoToAssist, a remote desktop help program, allowing me to see your screen while speaking to you on the phone.  Please send me a private message if you would like to do that.

Regards,

Art Minds

Thanks for the explanation Art, it is quite well described.

I would send you a private message except that, being new to this forum, i have not figured out how to do that. Also, other projects are demanding my time.

Many thanks to you!

Craig

Craig,

Short answer: for a formula to show up as an available option to apply as a condition must include a boolean evaluation (evaluates as true or false) referencing a data field in the driving record of the report. A boolean condition is one or more of these: equal to, great than, greater than or equal to, less than, less than or equal to, not equal to.

In your example, if you were evaluating against the Accounting Date of a Job Cost Transactions record, you would need two prompts: beginning date and ending date.  And your formula would read something like Accounting Date (from the Current.JCT file) >= beginning date (prompt) and Accounting Date  (from the Current.JCT file) <= ending date (prompt).

Of course, if you were building this report from scratch, you would need to create additional formulas and apply additional conditions to extract only the specific transactions containing the data you want in the report.

Hope that help.

Art Minds

Pasadena, CA

This is excellent information you're sharing here Art.  I really appreciate your participation!

Thank you,

Scott Haines