Generating Reports from Specifications

If you print a financial statement by choosing the Print Financial Statements icon, you do not see the report specification. Instead, the Financial Reporter program does the following:

• Continues to display the Financial Statements form while it starts Microsoft Excel.

• Loads the specification spreadsheet.

• Generates the specification commands in the Spec range of the spreadsheet.

• Prints the final report.

If no Spec range exists, Financial Reporter recalculates the sheet and prints it

If the spreadsheet doesn't contain a Spec range, Financial Reporter:

• Recalculates the spreadsheet (taking into account any restrictions placed on account selection by the Print Financial Statements form).

• Prints the whole spreadsheet (or the region defined in the spreadsheet as the print area).

Depending on the Print Destination settings under the Options/Preferences command, you may print directly to a printer. Or, you can preview the report before you print it, save it as text or send it as an e-mail.

Generating statements in the Financial Statement Designer

When you edit a report specification (using the Financial Statement Designer), you can also test the statement specification you are editing.

FR View command to generate the report

To generate the final report, choose the FR View command (from the FR menu) in the Financial Statement Designer.

FR View lets you generate the report using the same print options that you use to print a report from the Print Financial Statements icon; however, it provides two additional options:

• Audit information

• Formulas

If you generate audit information, Financial Reporter will list the results of the account number references in column A of the report range of the spreadsheet. This information allows you to check the numbers of all accounts included in your statement (as long as you use the "D" option in column D of the report).

If you generate formulas, Financial Reporter will insert a formula in each cell of the final report where you need to insert General Ledger information. You can then update the report at any time by recalculating the spreadsheet.

Once you have generated the report, you can preview it with the Print Preview from the Financial Statement Designer's File menu.

Note that spreadsheets with formulas are much larger than standard report specifications. Note also that generating statements using Include Formulas takes longer, because Excel calculates the value of each formula as it generates them.

For details on using FR View, see FR View.