Check out this video to see the step-by-step instructions on how to get better reports in Sage 300, or read the transcript below.
How Do You Use Sage to Get Better Reports?
Sage Enterprise Intelligence (SEI) is a web-based business intelligence (BI) reporting tool offered by Sage. It’s created using HTML5, so you can use it with a mobile app or any browser. With SEI, you’ll get access to quick, accurate reports anywhere you want.
How Do You Navigate SEI?
When you first log in to SEI, you’ll be taken to a command center. All of the left-hand column items in the command center are pre-built. It includes items such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, finance, and more. As you drill down to a specific menu item, you’ll see a lower level item that says process.
The process menu item gives you quick access to all the content and data that you need to create a report. In each of these processes, you can pick and choose the columns that you want to view in your report. So it’s based off the processes in the AP invoice statistics or batch invoices that you get your results from.
If I drill down a bit further, these are graphs and reports that have been predefined and created.
If we take a look at the Sales by Item there’s a workbook icon. Once you click on that, it will open up and provide a layout based on a sales history item. This is out of the box. We can modify this to see exactly what you want. If you want to add columns, click Dimensions and Measures. In this window, you’ll see options pulled from the sales history area. Click on the piece of data that you want to add, then drag it into the report.
All data is drag and drop. For instance, if you want to see the fiscal year, the fiscal period, and item number in the same report, just click it from the options on the top of the screen and drag it into the report.
What Makes SEI Different From Other Reporting Tools?
There’s also a nice feature that SEI added. It’s great for end users to create their own reports on the fly without going to IT and asking for a special report customization, to be added. It gives the end user the ability to build reports on their own.
Let’s start by modifying an existing report by adding a calculation.
How Do You Modify an Existing Report?
What we can do is click on the calculation icon, click calculated columns and click add. Then the pop-up windows will walk you through the specific steps.
Let’s call this one Demo Sales Process. Then, set the conditions. Consider what data type you want to show. For this example, I’ll select numerical with two decimal places. Then I’ll go to the next one where we’ll select our fields. In the search you can type in keywords and it will automatically display a match to what you type in. Finish it off by clicking save.
Now, this template column is available to add into the report. I just select it and click add to view. If we close the slide-out navigation, you can see the demo sales process fields added here. Without talking to IT to have a separate report created for you, you can do your own calculations here and save the report with ease. That’s how you can modify reports that already exist.
How Do You Create a Report From Scratch?
Let’s start with the vendor statistics. Right click on the process, then click new view. It will show the option to pick what type of report you want to create. There are a variety of options including bar, pie, worksheet, grid, and more.
Next, provide a name and consider what columns you want to add. These should come from your process. In the example, we’ll use the data from the AP vendor statistics process to build our columns. I’m going to create a report that will show us the top ten accounts payable vendors. I’ll select total invoices and ok. Once the data appears, I’ll sort the rows by vendor number.
In the example, it shows us all the vendors and the total invoices. If I only want the top ten, I can just click on a group and then advanced options. Select the first ten and ok. Now, the report shows the top ten vendors based on the total invoice.
In under a minute, I created a top ten vendor report. Finish it off by selecting save change, and select the publishing settings to everyone.
How Do I Create Clean Visuals and Dashboards?
That’s easy. Just go to view type on the right side of the window. Select pie (or whichever visual graphic you’d like to use) and then the program spits out an instant visual report. In my example, my visual report shows the top ten vendors. After saving, you’ll end up with two reports: one is a worksheet and the other is a graph.
Now, let’s add this graphic to the dashboard. Start by creating a new folder. In the example, my folder is named Demo. Open the folder to create a new dashboard. Then, name your dashboard and update your publishing settings.
The dashboard can be customized by dragging and dropping. Simply drag your customized graph to the dashboard and you’ll be able to adjust it.
You can also add from different modules. So creating a sales report is easy to tack on to your dashboard with your top ten vendors, or any other report you’d like to add to.
Once you’ve added your graphs to your dashboards, you’ll want to set your filters. Go to dashboard properties. Click filtering panel and add. I selected fiscal year and set as current year. In the example, I want the fiscal year to apply to all reports, so that when I change the date it will update to all reports.
Go to edit mode and select layout from the drop down. This will allow you to adjust where each graph or report appears on your dashboard. You can also adjust the auto refresh settings so they show you updated data every 15 seconds.
In this example, we created new reports, modified reports and a custom dashboard in under fifteen minutes!
Need Help?
Reporting doesn’t have to be such a pain. Contact me here or give me a call at 410.685.5512 to discuss new ways to build reports and make your life easy.
