Sage ACT! 2011 Dashboard and Report Cookbook: Take your Customer Relations Management to new levels of efficiency with the 65+ recipes in this indispensable Cookbook. You’ll be creating and customizing superb dashboards and reports from your Sage ACT! data in no time.

Some of you may have used other software programs that allow you to filter a report after you run it. For example, your accounting software might let you run a Profit and Loss statement, and then change the date range once the report is run.

ACT! works a bit differently. The ACT! Reports offer only very basic filtering options; if a report doesn't contain the filter options you're looking for then you must do the filtering prior to running the report. For example, if you wanted to create a Phone List report of all of your customers, you'd first need to Create a Lookup or run a query for the customers in your database.

Follow these steps to run a report:

The Reports menu includes a main area of contact reports, as well as sub-areas for Group, Company, and Opportunity Reports. While this organization seems like a good idea on paper, in reality over half of the ACT! Reports are not listed on the ACT! Reports menu.

As we mentioned earlier, there are over 60 reports that come with ACT! out of the box. However, because the Reports menu is a carry-over from a much older version of ACT!, you'll find fewer than 30 of the ACT! Reports actually listed in the Reports menus. And, to make finding a report even more difficult, ACT!'s file structure places all of the reports in a single folder rather than organizing the reports into more logical sub-folders.

If the report you wish to run is not listed under the Reports menu, click Group Reports, Company Reports, or Opportunity Reports to see more choices. And if you still can't find the report you'd like then click Other Contact Reports... to see all of the ACT! Reports.

A warning about the "Other" Report menu options

You'll see 10 Contact reports listed on the top half of the reports menu. These reports are all based on the generic contact ACT! fields that come with a basic ACT! database. You'll also notice an option for Other Contact Reports... at the bottom of this list. Unfortunately, clicking this option will result in the Select Report dialog box you see in the following screenshot, which shows you not just additional contact reports but it also all of the ACT! Reports:

In addition to showing you additional Contact ACT! Reports, it also shows you additional Group, Company, and Opportunity Reports as well.

If you navigate from the basic reports menu to the Group, Company, or Opportunity reports sub-menus, you'll notice that they all contain an other section like the one you see in the following screenshot:

You probably expect that if you click the Other Group Reports… option you'll be transported to a listing of various other Group reports not included in the Reports menu. Unfortunately, you're taken back to the Select Report dialog box shown earlier that lists all of the ACT! Reports.

It might seem to be a logical assumption that if you are in the Groups view and click on Reports in the menu bar, you'll see a list of all the Group reports, and that if you are in the Company view you can click on Reports, and you'll be treated to a list of Company reports. However, the Report menu is exactly the same in every one of the ACT! views.

Because the Reports menu only scratches the surface of the entirety of the reports included with ACT!, you'll probably find yourself using the Reports view more often.

It's nice to keep things organized, especially when you are working with over 60 reports. By using the Reports view you will be assured that you will be able to find exactly the report you want. You can also think of the Reports view as a one-stop shop for all your Reporting needs.

The Reports view will allow you to:

The Favorite Reports area on the top of the screen shows a list of the reports that you have defined as your Favorite Reports, and the Report List on the bottom half of the screen lists every one of the ACT! Reports. As you modify one of the reports listed on the Report List, the corresponding item will update on the Favorite Reports area as well.

You will also notice that a status bar runs along the bottom of the Reports view. The status bar will give you a running total of the number of reports you have designated as Favorites as well as the total number of reports that are attached to the current database.

We will be discussing running reports, editing their properties, and deleting reports in more detail later in this chapter.

Adding the modification date to the Report List

You can actually make one slight modification to the Report view. You'll notice the Options button that appears in the top-right corner of both the Favorite Reports and Report List areas. Give it a click and chose Customize Columns...—this happens to be your only choice. Select Last Modified from the Available fields area and then click the double-pointing right-arrows(>>) to move it to the Show as columns in this order area on the right.

Once added, you can click on the Last Modified column head to sort your reports chronologically by the date on which they were last modified so that you'll be able to easily identify any of the reports that you've created and/or modified.

Just in case you are chomping at the bit to start editing a report or two, you can read the next few chapters in this book where we'll show you how to do just that.

The only thing you'll want to do before heading for the Reports view is to create a Lookup of contacts specific to your reports. For example, if you want to run the Source of Referrals report to find out how all your top customers found out about you in the first place, you'll want to create a Lookup for Top Customers.

The ACT! Report will include only those contacts that are included as part of your current lookup. In addition, as you run a report you can filter the contents of that report. For example, you might create a lookup of all of your customers, and then filter your report to include only notes that you've added about those customers in the last 30 days.

You can learn about the various filtering options in the next chapter. You can permanently alter the filtering options in a report from the Report Designer, which we'll discuss later in this book. For example, you may always want to run one of the Opportunity reports for the prior month, or save your pipeline as a PDF file.

As you have already learned, the procedure for running a report generally starts by creating a Lookup of the contacts that you want to include in the report, followed by a trip to the Reports view.

In order to preview a report you must have Adobe Acrobat reader installed on your computer. Fortunately, it's included on the ACT! installation disk and installs automatically as part of the ACT! installation.

Once you've run the report, and optionally printed it, the Print Preview window remains open. At this point you can close the Preview window and run the report again selecting a different output option.

If you are really happy with the report, you can click the File Save icon in the top left corner of the Print Preview window to save the report. From the Save As window that opens you can choose to save the report in Adobe (.pdf), Rich-Text (.rtf), HTML (.html) or Text (.txt) file format.

Saving a report as a PDF is a great idea if you want to permanently preserve the data in a report. If you don't save the report, the report might look a bit different if your data has changed since the previous run.

In addition to the Preview option, there are six other output options. Five of them can also be run from the Print Preview window. The sixth one, e-mail, is a really helpful feature. When you choose this option a new e-mail message will appear—with a copy of your report already attached!

Before you go about changing the Reports view, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with the various reports so that you know which ones will work for you. When you install ACT! a demo database installs as well that is populated with lots of data. You might want to open the demo database and preview any of the reports that sound appealing. Once you have had a chance to view them, jot down a list of your favorites.

As you modify the properties of an item listed in the Reports view, the corresponding report will update as well if you had already added it to the Favorite Reports.

The main reason for changing the report properties is to help you organize the reports in a way that makes sense to you. For example, many companies are used to using what they call a Face Sheet and may want to rename the Contact Report accordingly.

In the previous section, we suggested that you jot down a list of the reports that seemed to be a good match for your reporting needs. This list will prove helpful when editing the Favorite Reports section of the Reports view.

Any of the reports that you selected from the Reports List will automatically appear in the Favorite Reports area.

You can select as many reports as you want to become your favorites. And, if you edit the name or description of a report in either of the lists, the corresponding report will change in the other list as well. You can also sort the two lists differently if the mood strikes you.

When you create an ACT! database, a set of supplementary folders is created as well. These folders house the various files associated with your database such as your layouts, attachments, and reports.

If the field structure of two databases is the same, you can share reports between the databases by copying the report files of one database and pasting them into the reports folder of the other database.