Finding the report you need

Open Reports and follow All reports. That is the library: every report this product offers, on one page, drawn in full the moment the page loads. Nothing is folded away, there is no second page, and every row carries its own sentence saying what the number is — so you pick a report by reading rather than by opening five of them.

The line above the rows counts what is there and says how it is arranged: Grouped by what they answer, in a fixed order inside each group. The sentence under the heading splits that count again — how many run in full, and how many answer part of the question and say which part. Both are counted from the library itself on every load rather than typed, so neither can drift from the rows underneath them.

This is not the same screen as Reports itself, and the difference is the job rather than the data. Reports is the one-scroll version: what the shop made, where it is leaking, who is producing, and what is about to go wrong, with no navigating. The library is the other job — find one named report and open it. The two link to each other and neither replaces the other.

Eight groups, and what each one is for

The groups are headings on one surface rather than eight separate boxes, in a fixed order that does not change with your search or your favourites. Each report sits in the group whose question it answers, and a group with nothing to show — because your search excluded it — draws no heading at all rather than an empty one.

• Shop Performance — what did the shop sell, to whom, and did it keep any of it. Sales by month, by customer, by profit centre and by category sit here, and so do the questions about whether customers come back at all.
• Payment Reports — what money actually arrived, rather than what was billed: by method, by customer, by drawer session, and what a processor settled into the bank.
• Estimates & Invoices — every document the shop issued and what is still owed on it. Orders raised, invoices paid and unpaid, balances split by age, and how much of the quoted work was said yes to.
• Parts & Line Items Sold — the sold lines themselves, down to one part on one ticket. Labor, parts and fees by period and in detail, the tax collected on them, and the tire identification numbers recorded against a car.
• Inventory — what moved on the shelf without being sold, with the reason given and the person who gave it.
• Deferred Services — what the customer said no to, what it was worth, whether anybody chased it, and how much of it later came back.
• Individual Performance — who sold it, who did it and how long it took. Advisor sales and average ticket, technician hours and efficiency, commission earned, and inspections started and finished.
• Purchasing — what the shop spent with each vendor, and what went back to them.

Narrowing the list

One box, beside the page heading: type into Search reports and press Search. It is an ordinary form, so the search lands in the address bar and the page you are looking at can be bookmarked or sent to somebody. It also works with JavaScript switched off — nothing here waits on a script.

A search matches three things: the report's name, the sentence on its row, and its group's own heading. Typing a group's name therefore brings back that whole band, which is how somebody who half-remembers where a report lives actually looks for it. Several words all have to match somewhere, so adding a word narrows the list rather than widening it. The count line changes to say how many of the whole library you are now looking at, and groups with no surviving rows disappear.

If nothing matches you get Nothing matches that and a Show all link back to the full library, rather than a blank page you have to guess your way out of.

The star, and who it belongs to

Every row ends in a star. Pressing it adds that report to the Favorites band beside the list, where it becomes a direct link; pressing it again takes it out. The button says which report it is acting on, so the page does not present a column of identical unlabelled stars to anybody reading it aloud.

Favourites are yours alone. They are kept against your own membership of this shop, so starring a report does not rearrange anybody else's screen, and the owner and the bookkeeper can keep entirely different shortlists. Starring is a form submission like everything else here: it works without JavaScript, and it never changes what the report says.

Reports marked withheld

Some reports are money, and money is a separate setting from your role — see who can see what a part cost you. Where your access does not include the money a report is built from, the row stays in the list, keeps its name and its sentence, and carries the badge Withheld — money. It is not hidden and it is not removed from the count: you can see that the report exists and ask for it.

The reason is written once, at the top of the page, rather than repeated on every row it applies to — the withheld set covers shop sales, receivables, margin and what each person sold, and an owner can switch money visibility on for you from the team screen. Everything the library counts rather than prices stays yours either way: whether customers came back, how long between visits, punches and hours, inspections, and the tire numbers on a car.

Opening a withheld report is allowed and produces a sentence rather than a table. Nothing was queried to produce it, so there is no figure sitting behind the page waiting to be revealed. A margin report is the strict case: it is built from what a job sold minus what its parts and its labour cost, so it needs all three of those to be visible to you, not one.

Which day puts a row in the report

• Spend by Vendor puts an order in the month when it was placed with the vendor, not when its draft was opened. A draft contributes nothing. A later cancellation does not move that placed order into another month.
• Purchases and Returns counts a vendor return only when stock was actually shipped back, and puts it in the month when the box shipped. Packing a return is not yet a shipment, and a later vendor rejection does not rewrite the shipping month.
• Cars parked too long and Time Between Visits count calendar days in the shop's timezone. A daylight-saving change is still one shop day, not a 23- or 25-hour fraction rounded from UTC.

Retention reports read at most 4,000 order rows for one window, including the earlier history needed to decide whether a visit was a return. If either the window or that history reaches the ceiling, the report says its figures are floors instead of silently reading beyond the advertised limit.

Opening one, and getting it out

The report's name is the link — the star beside it is a button, so the row is not one big click target with two meanings. The report opens on its own page with a trail back to All reports and to its group, and a line saying whether demo data is included, which in a real shop it never is.

1. 1

   Step 1: Set the window, if the report has one

   A report that reads a period gives you From and To and a Show button; a close-out report gives you one Day box. A report that reads the position right now — what is owed today — gives you no date control at all, because there is nothing a date could change. The window lands in the address bar, so the report you are looking at is the report you can send to somebody.

2. 2

   Step 2: A year at a time

   A report covers up to 366 days in one go — a fiscal year fits, with the leap day. Ask for longer and the page shows the most recent year of what you asked for and says so above the table, so you are never reading a window you did not expect. Run it again for each earlier period; a report of several years in one file is a file nobody opens, and building it is how an export used to fail on exactly the shops with the most history.

3. 3

   Step 3: Read the table, and the notes above it

   A figure that is not there prints a dash, never a zero — a zero on a report is the number nobody checks. Where a report has something to disclose about its own coverage, it is written above the table as a note rather than left for you to infer from a gap.

4. 4

   Step 4: Export it

   One control, Export, holding Export CSV and Export XLSX. Both files are built from the same result the table drew, so a spreadsheet and the screen cannot disagree, and both are plain downloads that work with JavaScript off. The download covers exactly the window on screen, including where the page shortened it.

5. 5

   Step 5: Or have it emailed

   A report that runs in full carries an Email delivery panel at the foot of the page: pick a cadence and the window it should cover, and it arrives on your shop's clock rather than on UTC. A report that only partly answers its question carries no such panel, and a withheld one carries the panel with no control on it — neither offers to schedule a figure nobody can produce.