Reading your accounts: the reporting screensقراءة حساباتك: شاشات التقارير

Everything you enter in Libra — vouchers, invoices, receipts — exists so that somebody can ask a question of it later. The Reports menu is where the questions are asked.

The screens look intimidating because they are all filter and no result: you fill in a form, and the report appears afterwards. Once you know that every one of them works the same way, they stop being five screens and become one screen with five different questions.

1. Every report screen works the same way

Pick a report from the menu, set the filters in the body of the screen, then press Preview at the top left. Nothing happens until you do — the screen on its own produces no output.

Four things on that ribbon are worth knowing before you use any of them:

• Preview shows the report on screen. Direct printing beside it sends it straight to the printer instead — leave it alone until you are sure of the output.
• Report selection is a dropdown, and it matters more than it looks. One menu entry can carry several layouts of the same report; the Daily journal in the picture is set to Daily Revision All Currencies. If a colleague's report looks different from yours, this is usually why.
• Filter criteria with Save and Delete lets you name and keep a set of filters you use often, so a monthly report becomes one click rather than a form filled in from memory.
• Layout customization, Save layout and Default layout arrange this screen, not the printout: the first lets you move the filter boxes around, Save layout keeps that arrangement for you alone, and Default layout puts the original back — see Libra remembers your screen. The printed page is changed in Report designer, which has a guide of its own.

Reports never change your data. You can open every screen here, press Preview as often as you like, and nothing is written. They are safe to explore.

Notice also that the reports opened as tabs across the top. Opening a second report does not close the first, so you can set up a comparison and move between them.

2. Daily journal — what happened, in date order

This is the workhorse: every entry in a date range, listed. The screen above is it.

The parts you will actually use:

• Date selection — and read the choice above the dates carefully. Transaction date is the date written on the voucher; Transaction creation date is when somebody typed it. They are usually different, and for an audit question ("what was entered last week?") the second one is the honest filter.
• Vouchers relate to narrows by account, auxiliary account, user or salesman, so you can ask "everything this one person entered" or "everything that touched this account".
• Report view changes the shape of the answer: Journal/list is a flat list, Daily Journal/by transaction groups the lines under their voucher, and Official journal is the numbered form.
• Result currency — All currencies is selected in the picture. Choose a single currency and every figure is converted into it.

The Check number and Bank boxes are there because those two details are what people actually remember. If someone asks about "the payment we made with cheque 4471", search on the cheque number rather than trying to recall the date.

3. Fixed assets statement — the movement on your assets

Two options carry the whole screen:

• Include depreciation accounts — with it off you see what the assets cost; with it on you also see what has been written off them. For a book-value question you want it on.
• Balances instead of statement turns the report from a list of movements into a single figure per asset. It is the difference between "what happened to this vehicle" and "what is this vehicle worth now".

There are two independent date ranges here — Date selection and Value Date — and that is not a duplicate. One is when the entry was made, the other the date it takes effect from. Fill in only the one you mean.

4. Auxiliary account balances — who owes you, and how long they have owed it

This is the customer and supplier balance report, and it is the one worth learning properly.

Aging reports is the reason it exists. Tick it, choose Customers or Suppliers, and instead of one balance per party you get that balance split by how old it is. That is the report you take to a collections meeting.

The filters underneath are for cutting a long list down to the part that needs action:

• Hide zero balances removes everyone who is settled. Use it always; the list is otherwise mostly noise.
• Debit greater than and Credit greater than set a floor, so small balances stop crowding out large ones.
• Only stagnant accounts and Exclude stagnant accounts are the two halves of the same question — accounts that have stopped moving. The first finds the ones to chase.
• Only debit balances / Only credit balances separate who owes you from whom you owe. A customer sitting on a credit balance has usually overpaid or been credited twice, and is worth looking at on its own.

Most of the Account panel is greyed until you tick Select the following accounts at the top. That is deliberate, not a fault: leave it unticked and the report covers everybody.

5. Asset balance — what your assets are worth now

The short screen of the set, and it answers one question: the current value of each asset.

Accounts starting with and Account length are how you limit it to a part of the chart of accounts — type the leading digits of a group to get that group and everything under it. Hide closed assets takes out the ones you have already disposed of, which is what you want for a current valuation and not what you want for a full-year history.

6. Cost Center Report — the same money, grouped by what it was for

Cost centres are how you tag an entry with what it was for — a project, a branch, a job — and this report is the payoff for having done so. It shows the balance per cost centre rather than per account, in both currencies side by side, with a Total row underneath.

The three tick boxes above the grid — Projects, Sections, Operations — decide how deeply the answer is broken down. Untick the lower two and you get one line per project; tick all three and you get the full breakdown. Show hierarchy keeps the parent-and-child shape rather than flattening it.

This report is only ever as good as the tagging. If entries were saved without a cost centre they will not appear against one here, and the total will not match your accounts. That is a data-entry habit, not a report setting.

7. If your menu shows different reports

The Reports menu is not the same in every company. Some reports are switched on by what your company licensed, and any report can be moved onto your Home quick list, which takes it out of the Reports group and puts it at the top of the menu instead. So a report a colleague can see and you cannot is worth asking about rather than assuming it does not exist.

A report your Reports group does not list can also open from the navigation pane's Search box: type Financial, press Down and Enter, and Financial Statements opens - see Opening a screen from the Search box.