Finding the report you need

Open a report

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   Step 1: Open Reports

   Press Reports. The first screen answers the big questions, and All reports opens the whole library.

   
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   Step 2: Search for the one you need

   Type in Search reports, or open a group.

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   Step 3: Open it and pick the dates

   Press the report's name, then set the dates at the top.

Open Reports and follow All reports. That is the library: the reports a shop uses on one page. Each row carries its report name and status; search shows matching descriptions in full, so you can narrow the list without opening reports.

The line above the rows counts what is there and says how it is arranged: Grouped by question; fixed order within each group. Both the count and the rows come from the same library, so the line cannot drift from what is underneath it.

Five groups, and what each one is for

The groups are headings on one surface rather than 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.

• Sales — the sales summary, the day's close-out, sales by service writer and by technician, the closing ratio, what sold by line, and canned services.
• Labor — technician performance, hours sold against hours worked, promised times, commissions and vehicle inspections.
• Parts — parts margin, order profitability, and what the shop bought from its vendors.
• Customers — new against returning customers, and the work customers put off.
• Payments and AR — what money actually arrived, every invoice and what is still owed on it, customer aging, and sales tax.

Every report has one row of its own, with its star. A few rows are questions in plain words — Hours sold vs worked, Closing ratio, Parts margin — that open a view of a report listed elsewhere, already set to answer that question. They carry no star; star the report itself.

The period and the location

One bar above the list holds the search, the period and the location. Pick a named period such as Last month, or your own From and To dates, and every report opens on that period — and so does the CSV download at the end of each row. A close-out report takes the last day of the period, and a report of what is owed right now takes no date at all. The library starts on the last 30 days, the same period a report opens on by itself.

Reports read the location you are working at, named in the bar. If you work at more than one, pick another there and press Switch; the library comes back on that location.

Narrowing the list

One box, at the start of the bar above the list: 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 row'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 reports link back to the full library, rather than a blank page you have to guess your way out of.

One report, related views

A report that answers the same question several ways keeps those choices together. Use Group by for the dimension, Report view for a related question, or By period when the same grouping should be split across time. Use Show detail when you need the underlying rows. Where detail has more than one dataset, choose its Detail rows, then press Apply report. These are ordinary form controls. The choice is written into the address bar and works with JavaScript switched off, so a bookmarked or shared link opens the same view.

Old bookmarks still work. A former summary or detail address opens the combined report with the matching view selected. The same mapping protects saved reports and scheduled emails made before the library was shortened; they keep their grouping or detail instead of failing or silently changing the question.

The star, and who it belongs to

Every report's own 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.

The same star sits beside the heading of every report once you open it, so the report you just found can be kept without going back to the list — it is one preference, starred from either place. 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.

Saving a report the way you read it

A star keeps a report; a saved report keeps a report the way you set it up. Open the report, pick its dates, hide or move columns under Customize, and press a column heading to sort by it — once for smallest first, again for largest first. Then open Save as new report beside the heading, give it a Report name and press Save report. It lands in the Saved band beside the favorites in the library, and opening it brings back the dates, the columns and the sort.

A named period stays a named period: a report saved on Last month opens next month on that month's last month, while two dates you typed stay those two dates. Pick another period on a saved report and it reads that period without changing what was saved. A report long enough to be shown a page at a time keeps its own order and offers no sort, because sorting one page would present fifty rows as the top fifty.

A saved report is yours alone unless you tick Share with everyone at this location when you save it, or press Share with this location on it later; Stop sharing makes it yours alone again. Whoever made it can Rename it or use Delete saved report, and so can somebody who manages the shop's settings when it is shared, so a report left behind by somebody who moved on is not stuck on everybody's list. Sharing hands over a link, not the figures: a colleague who opens it sees exactly what their own access shows on that report. The download from a saved report has its columns and its order, and a report saved at one location is not listed at another.

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 sales, receivables, margin, and per-person sales, and an owner can switch money visibility on from the team screen. Counted reports stay available inside Customer retention, Technician performance and Vehicle inspections.

Opening a withheld report is allowed and produces a sentence rather than a table. Nothing was queried, 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.

The same rule works one column at a time inside reports you can open. Customer, service-writer, category and canned-service views carry cost, profit and margin columns only for somebody who may see what parts, sublets and labour cost the shop; anybody else gets the same report without those columns — not a column of blanks, and not in the download either. The unit cost in the detailed line-item view follows what a part cost you in the same way, and what a technician's hours billed in dollars follows whether you may see what each person sold.

Many reports now carry the columns a Shopmonkey export does — first and last name and company, VIN, unit and plate, PO number, paid status, last payment, and the labor, parts, sublets, fees, discount and tax that make up a bill. The notes above each table say which of them were frozen on the invoice when it was issued and which are the customer or order as they read today: an invoice keeps the VIN and PO it was issued with even if the car record changes later, while a split first and last name is always today's, because an invoice only ever froze the name as one line.

Which day puts a row in the report

• Purchasing puts a vendor order in the month when it was placed, not when its draft was opened. A draft contributes nothing. A later cancellation does not move that placed order into another month.
• The returns view in Purchasing 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.
• The visit-interval view in Customer retention counts 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.

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   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.

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   Step 2: Or pick a named period

   Under the heading sits a row of named periods: Today, Yesterday, This week, Last week, This month, Last month, Last 30 days, This year and Last year. One press sets both dates, on your shop's own calendar, and the one you are looking at is marked. A report opens on Last 30 days when no dates are given. Weeks run Monday to Sunday — the same seven days a scheduled email's last week covers. A one-day report offers only today and yesterday; dates you typed yourself read as Custom range.

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   Step 3: 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.

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   Step 4: Choose the view you need

   Where one report holds related answers, set Group by, Report view, By period or Show detail and, where it appears, Detail rows, then press Apply report. The page and its exports use the selected view.

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   Step 5: 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.

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   Step 6: 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, in the order the table is sorted. For a CSV without opening the report, use the download button at the end of its row in the library; it covers the library's period.

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   Step 7: 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.