Report Manager gives you access to all of your pastel data, (every single field in every single table).

Imagine what you could discover about your business with a little playing around, and, oh yes, don’t worry you can’t break anything ;)

All of your company data tables and fields appear in the field list

You Drag fields from the field list and Drop them on the design area.

Report Manager understands the links between stuff in your Pastel Data so it’s easy to create complex reports.

(This is an ABSOLUTELY UNIQUE FEATURE to Report Manager )

You right click to insert detail sections from related tables…

… Then drag fields from the related table and drop them in the new section.

…Here is an example of a report showing Group Headers, Master Detail, and Band Totals, etc…, prettier than Pastel Base isn’t it.

If you need to do some fancy footwork with a field, you can create a ‘calculated field’ that has a formula, (sums fields, divides, multiplies,…etc), using the ‘Expression Editor’.

Calculated Field Expression Editor

If you were creating a report to show sales for the last Month, you wouldn’t want the whole year’s invoices to appear right? ...That’s ‘Record Selection’.

You need a way to tell the report to “Only include the invoices between ‘x’ date and ‘y’ date,

You can do this by setting criteria for the report using ‘Filter Strings’.

Filter strings aren’t as complicated as they sound, you get a ‘Filter String Editor’ that makes them REALLY POWERFUL to use, and really simple to create, ‘It's true - I swear!' :D

Ok, so filter strings limit the records you get in your report e.g. only records from x to y date.

Cool, but having to change that stuff each time you run a report could be painful, so we give you an easy way to specify input values required in your report, these are called ‘parameters’.

So the deal is, if you need to put in a start and end date when you run your report, you create a ‘start date’ and ‘end date’ parameters using the ‘Parameter Collection Editor’….

…the parameters are used to create a screen for you to enter the required values. This screen appears each time you run the reports and the values entered are used by the filter string to select the exact records you want.

Parameters and filter strings are powerful. You can restrict a report using numerous fields This allows you to be very specific about the data you want e.g. sales of ‘Consumables’ by ‘John’ in ‘Jo’burg’ over a ‘month.’

We would like the report to look good, so we use the formatting toolbar to style report fields…

You can also define styles; these can be saved and reused. Styles are standard look and feel definitions that you can use in your reports. Use these to quickly apply a standard look and feel to a report. Styles are defined using the Styles Editor…

… Using conditions in a style is useful e.g. ‘print customers with amounts in 90 days in yellow.’

The easiest way to get started with writing your own reports is to use the Report Wizard.

The Report Wizard steps you through these screens…

…The Wizard creates a working report that you can tweak to your needs.

Check out an example label preview.

Note: the Barcodes (Yes, we do that too J)

On the reports tab you will find a list of all reports saved for the company you logged into. If you select a report and right click it, a context menu appears.

• : select this option to quick print a report to your default printer
• .This is the cool one.
• : : deletes report
• creates a copy of the report.

...the Preview window is really useful, it has all the standard printing stuff, you can even add watermarks, background colours etc, but the really sexy stuff comes with the exporting... you can export reports to multiple different useful formats.

Aha! Something important I forgot to mention is how totally straightforward Report Manager makes Mail Merge.

You just type your document and drag fields to where they should be in your text.

Here is a screen dump of showing a simple mail merge example in the Report Designer.

So if a picture is worth a thousand words, take a look at this sample showing the use of Images in a master detail type report.

You can create sophisticated catalogues yourself!

… and since you can export your reports to html easily, you can use the html pages to update your web site, or send in an email. Any bright marketing ideas coming to mind J

OK, that completes the overview of …

Report Manager for Pastel Accounting

You will benefit from Report Manager for Pastel Accounting

Think of Report Manager as The Swiss Army Knife of Pastel Accounting Data.

Report Manager helps you find those ‘Need to Know’ details, hidden in your transaction data, which help you grow that bottom line.

*see, it’ll pay for itself J

Invest once…

…You get to install on up to five machines

…You get All new upgrades for a full year

…You get the Ironclad, ‘no questions asked’, 90 day money back guarantee, to make absolutely sure that you are happy

SO… is report manager cool? ...