8399 - Microsoft FRx Report Design Essentials I

The two-day Report Design Essentials - I course covers the basic report design skills you need to create, maintain and distribute presentation quality reports using Microsoft® Business Solutions for Analytics - FRx. It also includes coverage of additional functionality designed to help you create new reports, and distribute and analyze your company's financial information. You learn about basic foundational skills, complex calculations, drag and drop reorganization, rounding adjustments and account sets.

A thorough understanding of these topics allows you to easily design and maintain standard and essential reports your organization needs to understand its financial position. You learn how to use templates or create customized report designs as well as how to setup self maintaining reports that will dynamically include newly added GL accounts and newly closed periods. This course also teaches you how to generate and electronically distribute reports using your in-house email system. These skills enable you to take control of the financial reporting process, allowing you to be more productive and efficient in the way you create, generate and distribute financial information, which in turn help you to enable internal and external stakeholders to make well informed decisions to positively impact your organization as a whole.

Objectives:

After completing this course, students should be able to:

• Understand basic navigation and report creation in FRx
• Drill down, analyze, print and export from the FRx® Drilldown Viewe™
• Efficiently create and distribute many financial reports including
• Trial balances
• Balance sheets
• Transaction detail reporting
• Trended reports
• Side-by-side presentation
• Actual vs. Budget
• Rolling quarters
• Know some tips and tricks for increasing speed and accuracy of month-end close
• Create presentation quality reports
• Understand security settings within FRx
• Understand many ways to improve your company's financial reporting package

Lesson 1: Overview and Introduction

• About FRx Software products
• Terminology
• Demo company account structure
• Sample report demonstration

Lesson 2: Creating a Trial Balance

• Using the "Add Rows from Chart of Accounts" feature to automatically populate the row format with account numbers and descriptions
• Using wildcards or ranges to summarize data
• Using the Normal Balance field and how C's affect the account presentation
• Using underscores and totals
• Using Header Codes to automatically update column headers each month
• Use of the BASE Period and Year in the Column Layout to ease maintenance
• Setting the Report Date to an option that automatically progress through the year for ease of report maintenance
• Defining a detail level in the catalog
• Introduce the default Formatting options
• Using existing building blocks to speed setup time
• Using the View, Subtotals function in the DrillDown Viewer

Lesson 3: Creating an Income Statement

• Using the Add Rows from Chart of Accounts function to quickly create a basic template
• How proper placement of C's in the Account Balance column of the Row Format will flip the balance of an account for presentation
• How the presentation of the accounts included determine the math for related TOT or CAL formulas
• How to use a Special Format Mask on a row formula to determine display
• Using system defined or custom fonts for emphasis
• Working with rounding options

Lesson 4: Reporting Trees

• Characters used with Add Reporting Units
• Segment hierarchy
• Defining a segment range
• Adding custom units to a tree
• The default Reporting Tree
• Relating Reporting Trees to Row Formats
• How trees define multiple reports in a single catalog
• Using check rows to insure all accounts are included
• Rounding options and how they relate to calculations
• How to relate description or underscore rows to other rows
• Exception reports and how they work

Lesson 5: Review

• Review basic report design concepts

Lesson 6: More on Reporting Trees

• How to create a Column Layout based on current and prior results
• Defining unit hierarchy when building a Reporting Tree
• How to split a segment to create a virtual segment in trees
• Adding custom units to a tree
• Generating specific tree units
• Using header and footer codes in the Catalog

Lesson 7: Transaction Detail Reporting

• Creating a transaction detail Column Layout
• Restricting a column to either debit or credit activity
• Restricting a column to display beginning balances
• Generating a catalog to the Excel output option
• How report presentation varies between Excel and the DrillDown Viewer

Lesson 8: What we Know

• Review basic report design concepts

Lesson 9: Using the DrillDown Viewer

• Printing reports from the DrillDown Viewer
• Using the Send function
• Export options in the DrillDown Viewer

Lesson 10: Working with Specification Sets

• Understand the specification set (.F32) in the Company Information settings
• Learn to "save as" between spec sets
• Learn to export and import between spec sets

Lesson 11: Practice

• Practice the report design concepts learned thus far in class

Lesson 12: Balance Sheets

• Account Sets
• Presentation of Balance Sheet accounts (using C in the Normal Balance)
• Defining Year to Date Income in the Balance Sheet
• Using the XD code to suppress drill down on specific rows
• Using the Rounding Adjustments function

Lesson 13: Income Statement Variations

• Trended Income Statement design
• Using conditional statements in the Column Layout
• Using Account Modifiers in the Row Format to override the Column Layout
• Variance reporting ( Over/(Under) and Favorable/(Unfavorable) methods
• Sort commands

Lesson 14: Practice

• Practice the report design concepts learned so far in class
• Divisional Income Statement - Part 1
• Divisional Income Statement - Part 2
• Divisional Income Statement - Part 3

Lesson 15: Side by Side Reporting

• Using Account Filters in the Column Layout
• Restricting columns to specific Tree Units in the Column Layout

Lesson 16: Report Distribution

• Naming conventions
• Chain to Catalog ID functionality
• Report archive options
• E-mail distribution methods available in FRx
• WebPort distribution
• Report Manager Demonstration

Lesson 17: What's Wrong?

• Importing a .tdb file
• Troubleshooting a report

Lesson 18: Troubleshooting

• Rebuilding the GL Index (.G32 file)
• Compacting the FRx Databases
• Getting additional help
• Report Design Guidelines

Lesson 19: Advanced Concepts

• Adding an FRx report to Microsoft Outlook
• Adding FRx report information to Excel and Microsoft Word documents
• Overview of the Report Design Essentials II training class