Filters tab—Financial Report Writer

Use the Filters tab to specify the report criteria, including the:

• As of date
• Reporting book
• Dimensions to include, such as the location or set of locations to report on

In practice, many reports are designed to prompt the user for the "as of date" and other criteria when the report is run. That way, you can create a single report and let the user pick the criteria when the report is run.

For example, you can create a single balance sheet report and select the location at runtime.

Specify the "As of date"

Reporting periods are always relative to the As of date for the report. In most cases, you'll want to leave the date blank and select Prompt so that you'll be prompted for the date when you run the report.

When Prompt is selected, you can optionally, enable Show time period to show the dates that will be included in the Prompt. This lets the person who is running the report see the included dates before running the actual report.

Select a reporting book

You use the Reporting Book filter to select the main reporting book to be used for the report. This option appears only if you have more than one way of reporting on your actual books, such as:

• Accrual vs. Cash: For example, if you opted for dual-method reporting in the General Ledger, do you want to create an Accrual or Cash report?
• Consolidation book: If you're using Global Consolidations to consolidate multiple entities, do you want to generate the report for a particular consolidation book?
  Reporting on consolidated budgets? Applies only to companies that subscribe to Global Consolidations. If you select a Consolidations book on the Filters tab, the budgets available on the Columns tab are restricted to those tagged as a Consolidated budget with the same currency as the consolidation book. Learn how to create consolidated budgets.

Filter by location, department, or other dimension

In addition to the default dimensions for departments and locations, your company might use other dimensions to track transactions by customer, supplier, project, item, employee, and class. These dimensions let you filter reports in multiple ways, for instance by showing data from only certain locations, customers, or projects.

Filter for a specific dimension member

For any dimension that you've enabled, you can select an individual member to filter by. For example, you might filter a report for a specific location, department, customer, or project.

To filter for a specific location, department, or other dimension member:

1. Find the dimension filters and select the option for a specific dimension or dimension group.

   For example, to filter for a location, go to the Location dropdown menu and choose Specific location or location group.

2. From the dropdown menu that appears, choose the dimension member by which you want to filter.
   • Using location as an example, choose the name of the location by which you want to filter.
   • The dropdown menus contain all available dimension groups, followed by individual dimension members, sorted alphabetically by ID.
3. To add the ability to change the filter selection when you run the report, select Prompt next to the dimension.

You might see more or fewer dimension members based on the Hide inactive values setting in My preferences. This setting makes the dimension marked Inactive to be visible and selectable in reports.

Filter for 2 or more dimension members using groups

If you're looking for a way to filter for 2 or more locations, departments, customers, suppliers, projects, items, employees, or classes, dimension groups are the answer. A dimension group is a name for a particular set of members in a dimension, or a set of members that meet certain criteria.

For example, you might create groups for:

• A set of locations (such as your US locations)
• Projects of a certain type (such as Supplier type or Customer type)
• Specific customers, customers located in a particular state or territory, or even customers with the greatest open balance

To filter for a dimension group or type:

1. Find the dimension filters and select the option for a specific dimension or dimension group.

   For example, to filter by location, go to the Location dropdown menu and choose Specific location or location group.

2. From the dropdown menu that appears, select a dimension group or type, or select Add to create a new group on-the-fly.
   • If you've defined dimension groups (such as location groups or customer groups), these groups will appear first, before any specific dimension members.
   • To create a new group, select Add at the top of the dropdown menu.
3. If you want the option to change the filter selection when you run the report, select the Prompt option next to the dimension.

Dimension type and parent type

Many dimensions can be tagged to types and groups. Customer types, Supplier types, and Project types can also have parent types for categorization purposes.

Categorize records according to type for filtering, sorting, and grouping opportunities. These types can take advantage of an additional layer of grouping by assigning a Parent type. If you assign a parent type within your project types, you can view these relationships in a visual hierarchy on the Project types list.

Prompt for filters at report runtime

You can prompt users for selected filters at the time that the report is run.

While it's typical to prompt users for the "As of date" for a report, it's also common to prompt for the location, department, or other criteria. For example, instead of creating a balance sheet report that's always filtered for a particular location, you can use the Prompt option to enable users to choose a location or location group.

Use dimension groups to specify order in rows and columns

In financial reports, you can expand rows or columns by dimension. For example, you can expand an actual column into several columns by location, department, or other dimension.

To control the order of dimension members in rows or columns:

1. Create a dimension group that contains the members.

   In the dimension group, order the members as you want them to be listed in reports.

2. Filter the report by the dimension group.

How do the location and department filters work?

When you make selections for Department and/or Location, the following rules apply:

• The calculations are based on the combination of the specified department and location. For example, if you chose the Manufacturing department and the California location, the calculations are based on numbers only for Manufacturing departments that are also found in California.
• All children of parent departments and locations are included in the calculations.
• If you created a department hierarchy using a parent/child relationship, you can report on the parent department or the individual child department by selecting the department name from the dropdown list. If you choose a parent department, Intacct retrieves all the information from the child departments assigned to that parent and displays the information with that of the parent as a rolled-up total.
• If you’re a multi-entity shared user of the ownership financials and distribution feature, you can select a location only if the owner you select in the Report On Owner field has some percentage ownership in the entity under which the location falls.