Reports and analytics: build, review, publish and schedule reports

#Purpose and scope

The MIS area is BSuit’s self-serve reporting layer. This chapter covers the report builder and the governed publication of saved reports, scheduled email delivery, and the supporting dashboard, metrics, alerts and Power BI screens. Financial statements that are produced in Finance are described in “Record to report”.

#Before you start

1. Know your company scope: saving a report needs a company chosen in the builder, and the server refuses to save or run without one.
2. Your role decides what you see on the Reports page. Superusers, and users whose role names contain admin, analyst or manager, see the authoring view (build and publish). Everyone else sees only published reports assigned to them.
3. For scheduled reports and alerts, outbound email must be configured, and recipients must be valid email addresses.

#1. Start from a standard report or a data source

1. Open Reports. The Standard reports section lists ready templates (for example Trial Balance, Balance Sheet, Profit & Loss, Receivables Aging, Sales Invoices, HSE Incidents and Library Loans). Choosing one opens the builder with that template loaded.
2. To build your own, choose New report in the header and pick a Data Source in the builder.
3. The Saved reports section below lists reports you have saved, with their publication status and last run.

#2. Configure and run in the builder

1. In the Report builder choose the Data Source, then the Columns to show.
2. Add Filters. Supported operators are equals, not equals, greater than, greater than or equal, less than, less than or equal, contains, in and between. Statement templates need their date parameters filled in before they can run.
3. Use Group & Aggregate to summarise: sum, average, count, minimum, maximum, distinct count, median, 90th percentile and 95th percentile. Add Related data to bring in a linked source, and derived columns for a calculated field.
4. Set Sort and Row Limit, then choose Run.
5. Switch the preview between Table, Chart (bar, line, area or pie) and Matrix (pick a column dimension and a value measure).
6. Choose Export CSV to download the current result.

#3. Save, review and publish

1. In the builder choose Save. Use Save As to keep a copy under a new name.
2. Back on Reports, choose Submit for review on a draft (or a rejected) report.
3. An administrator chooses Approve or Reject, with an optional comment. A different person from the submitter must review.
4. Choose Publish on an approved report. Choose Unpublish to take it back to draft.
5. Choose Audience to list the roles and users who can run the published report.
6. Use the history button to see the publication events and saved versions.

#4. Schedule delivery

1. Open Scheduled reports and add one. Under General choose a report type (Sales Summary, Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Inventory Aging, Receivables Aging, Payables Aging, Trial Balance, Monthwise Expected Expenses or Custom Query).
2. Under Schedule choose Daily, Weekly (with the day) or Monthly (with the day of month, 1 to 28) and a time.
3. Under Delivery choose PDF, Excel or CSV and enter at least one valid email address, separated by commas.
4. Under Decision & Approval, give the report parameters as JSON (required except for Monthwise Expected Expenses), an optional condition, and the allowed action: generate and email the report, send a notification email, or create a workflow approval proposal. The proposal option needs a workflow record type code.
5. Check the Last Run column after the first slot: it shows success or failed, and the time.

#5. Dashboards, metrics, alerts and Power BI

#Who can do what

Any signed-in user can open the Reports page; what they see depends on role as described above. Approve and reject need an administrator. Publishing, setting the audience and submitting for review are available to authors. Running a report respects field-level restrictions: a filter, grouping or sort on a hidden field is refused.