Readysell provides many reporting options. Getting the most from your Readysell system involves careful use of the right kind of report for each situation.
Office Brands dealers should use the standard invoice, labels and over report layouts approved by Office Brands if possible
Using the standard Office Brands report layouts for documents such as invoices has a number of advantages:
- The standard invoice and other layouts comply with the Office Brands style guide and have been expressly approved by Office Brands for use by all Office Brands dealers
- Readysell tests all the standard report layouts before every release of the program. We can't test custom report layouts because they only exist on your system. Over time changes to Readysell may break any custom report layouts you might make
Why you should not have a custom invoice or other custom report layout made just for your business
It is tempting to have a custom invoice created so that your invoice layout looks similar to your old system. Do you best to resist that temptation. If you can live with a few changes, you will be better off in the long run:
- There are a lot of customisation options in the invoice layout, use those options where possible, Readysell can help you make the best of the customisation options available
- Most dealers using Readysell 8 are using the standard Office Brands approved invoice layout and finding it suits them. Chances are that over time you and your customers will get used to any changes in the invoice layout. Most dealers find hardly any customers notice the change to the standard invoice layout
- If you go to a custom invoice layout, there will be a cost for Reaydsell's time to copy the standard layout and customise it to suit you
- Over time the custom invoice layout may break when Readysell deploys an upgrade. We can't test your custom invoice layout to check it works with each upgrade
- You will be locked out of future improvements that we make to the standard invoice layout
- Standard reports are tested by all other users, your custom reports are just for you, so are more error prone
- Readysell does not and can no warrant custom report layouts. The report layout is on your system, not on ours, so there is no way of us testing your custom reports to check they work with new versions of Readysell.
- There will be a charge for building and deploying the custom report layout
- If the report breaks due to Readysell program upgrades in future, there will be a charge for adjusting the custom report layout each time it breaks
Report training is critical
The key driver for successful use of Readysell reporting is sufficient report training. You will not be able to decide which type of report to use for any given situation without report training. We suggest a minimum of two hours report training should be included in your Readysell training program. You need to know the strengths and limitations of list views, form reports, analysis reports, list reports and emails. You will also need a one hour refresher training session once a year to keep up with all the latest report improvements.
Using the right report for each situation.
- You may not need a report, often list views, particularly saved view variants, can give you live report like features without having to run a separate report. List views and saved view variants from the main navigation menu are used for a lot of your day to day reporting requirements. List views in the main body of Readysell can be displayed live or exported to meet many of your requirements without needing a report at all!
- Use form reports most of the time when you need a report. Particularly when you need presentation quality, external reports or custom calculations, this should cover most of your reporting requirements. Form reports can be run from transactions, such as invoice layouts (non-executable reports) or run from the form reports navigation menu, such as stock on hand reports (executable reports)
- Use Analysis reports to supplement form reports for things like adhoc reporting, cross tab views of your data, your custom management reporting requirements or where it is necessary to "drill into" the data in more depth. There is a separate overview document for key analysis reports
- Use list reports in special cases where you can't get the result you want from a list view. For example product suppliers are shown on products but don't have their own list view. With list reports you can make a list of all product suppliers and use drag and drop tools to make a two dimensional list of the data you need, even if it is not covered by any existing list view
- Use email templates with emails or email batches to more effectively communicate with customers, prospects and suppliers