Chapter 1: Management Reporter Introduction and Overview

CHAPTER 1: MANAGEMENT REPORTER

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
Objectives
The objectives are

Introduce accessing Management Reporter

Explore Management Reporter capabilities

Review the building blocks of Management Reporter

Introduction
Management Reporter is the Microsoft Dynamics ERP application used for the
creation, distribution and analysis of financial statements. Management Reporter
empowers decision makers to provide real-time insights into organizational
results allowing you to take action and align employee behavior with overall
goals.
While this training is focused mainly on report design and generation basics, its
also important to have a high level understanding of other capabilities in
Management Reporter 2012 for Microsoft Dynamics ERP. This chapter will
provide an overview of Management Reporter as well as some of the other
options available in Management Reporter.
Report design in Management Reporter extends the value of your financial data
by simplifying and enhancing your financial and management reporting.
Figure 1.1 illustrates the different components of Management Reporter and how
they relate to each other.

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Chapter 1: Management Reporter Introduction and Overview

FIGURE 1.1 MANAGEMENT REPORTER OVERVIEW

With Management Reporter, data is extracted from your Microsoft Dynamics

ERP, a Microsoft Excel workbook, or a combination thereof. Report design
occurs in the Reporter Designer component of Management Reporter, where
various roles are available to create, schedule and generate customized reports.
Management Reporter also offers a web viewer, where users can view,
collaborate and analyze reports.

Report Designer
From a report design perspective, Management Reporter uses building blocks
that allow report designers the ability to mix and match these building blocks to
create a wide variety of financial reports, while keeping report maintenance low.
Reports take advantage of the general ledger data available in the Microsoft
Dynamics ERP. Since Management Reporter allows for reports to use any
combination of dimensions, report designers are able to get more information out
of their general ledger to provide meaningful reports to their companys
stakeholders. Reports can also be grouped and scheduled to provide predictability
during the financial review process.
Figure 1.2 illustrates the main uses for each of the building blocks as well as how
they come together in the report definition.

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Chapter 1: Management Reporter Introduction and Overview

FIGURE 1.2 BUILDING BLOCKS

Dimensions
Dimensions help to organize and provide additional structure to general ledger
data. Examples of dimensions include department, geography, and product.
Management Reporter allows users define a combination of these dimensions
along with accounts to create flexible and unique financial reports.

Report Groups and Report Schedules

Report Groups enable users to assign multiple reports to a group for report
generation. This option is helpful when a set of reports is required to be
generated at the same time.
Report Schedules can further streamline the report generation process by
allowing a single report or a group of reports to generate at scheduled intervals
based on a companys business process. Reports and report groups can be
scheduled to be generated regularly, such as daily, weekly, monthly or annually
at a specific time.

Web Viewer
Management Reporter allows users to immerse themselves in their financial
reports by providing a web viewer. The web viewer requires nothing to be
installed on the users computer. Instead, it uses the users default browser to

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Chapter 1: Management Reporter Introduction and Overview

display a personalized and secure report. From within the web viewer, users can
also collaborate with co-workers by using comments, drill down to account and
transactions and view charts.
Figure 1.3 displays a departmental income statement with charts and comments
attached in the web viewer.

FIGURE 1.3 WEB VIEWER

Welcome
Management Reporter has been installed and configured to use the training data.
This training data includes a variety of companies and reports based on industry.
Users can access any of these companies to review and create reports.
For this training, students will use the Contoso Entertainment System (GLMF)
company. This company contains training report, row, column and reporting tree
definitions. The training database, in combination with hands-on exercises, is
used throughout the training class to introduce students to report design concepts.

Log On to Report Designer

Students access the demo reports by logging onto Report Designer.
1. On the Start menu, select Report Designer.
Management Reporter uses Windows authentication when logging into both
Report Designer and companies within Management Reporter. When Report
Designer is opened, the user logged into the computer is automatically logged
into Management Reporter.

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Chapter 1: Management Reporter Introduction and Overview

The navigation pane displays by default on the left side of the screen and displays
a list of previously defined reports. Reports are comprised of rows definitions,
column definitions, and optional reporting tree definitions that are saved in a
building block group. The default building block group is assigned to the GLMF
company and contains the training report definitions shown. Display of the
navigation pane is controlled from the View menu.

Building blocks
Building blocks are used to define the report rows and columns. If desired, a
reporting tree is also available to display information related to a dimension not
used in the rows or columns of the design.
In this portion of the training, each building block used for the Rolling Quarter
Income Statement is reviewed. In addition, the report definition and its tabs are
also introduced.

Report Definition
The Report Definition is a building block, which uses other building blocks (row
definition, column definition, and an optional reporting tree definition) to create a
report.
Verify the Rolling Quarter Income Statement report definition is selected on
the navigation pane, and if necessary, click the Report tab.
The following fields are defined:

Company name - determines the calendar information for the

report; a valid company or @ANY can be selected.

Detail level - determines the detail include in the report; financial,

financial and account, or financial, account, and transaction.

Provisional - determines whether posted, unposted or both posted

and unposted financial data transactions are included in the report.

Date information - includes both a base period and year that is

saved with the report, as well as overrides that are used only while
the report definition is open.

Building blocks - a row and column are required building blocks,

the tree is optional in basic designs. Tree types include reporting tree,
which is defined in Management Reporter. Other options may be
available depending on the Microsoft Dynamics ERP.

Output and distribution summary - displays information defined

on the related tab.

On the File menu, click Properties to review or update the report Name and
Description fields.

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Chapter 1: Management Reporter Introduction and Overview

Output and Distribution
Click the Output and Distribution tab to review the related definitions.
Fields displayed include:

Output name - defaults to the report name, but can be updated as

desired.

View report when generated opens the report in the web viewer
when generation completes.

Output locations - defaults to a single report library and link

location. If folders are defined, click the ellipsis (...) to select.
Multiple report library and link locations can be defined for a single
report.

Report options - select the options desired in the report when

viewed in the web viewer.

Microsoft Excel options - select the options desired in the report

when downloaded to Microsoft Excel.

XPS options select the options desired in the report when

downloaded to XPS.

Headers and Footers

Report header and footer information is found on the Headers and Footers tab
of the report definition.
Options include:

Insert AutoText - many dynamic text options are available for use
in reports. Categories include report or building block name and
description, date and time, page numbering, additional text from the
reporting tree, and a number of other codes. Each AutoText code
begins with the @ symbol. AutoText options are also available from
the right-click menu.

Images - pictures saved in .bmp (bitmap), .jpg, or .png formats are

available for use in reports.

Customized text - designers can enter up to 255 characters of hard

coded text.

Start page numbering at - by default, a report begins numbering on

page 1.

By selecting the left, center, or right section and the desired font style from the
formatting toolbar, the designer creates precisely the look desired for his or her
report.

Settings
The last tab displayed for the report definition is Settings.

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Options include:

Rounding - select from a variety of rounding options.

Calculation priority - choose between rows or columns calculated

first when calculations intersect.

Processing order - defines the order of reporting tree rounding, row

and column calculations, and rounding.

Reporting unit selection - select how reporting units in trees are

processed when generating a report.

Other formatting - select from a variety of display related options

Other... - click this button to display the Report Settings dialog

box. Tabs include page setup, account & transaction detail options,
and additional options.

Open the Building Blocks

Building blocks are opened through an icon or from the Open dialog box. Icons
are found to the right of the definition name on the Report tab or from the
Management Reporter toolbar. To access the dialog box, on the File menu, click
Open.
The Open dialog box displays a tabular listing of report definitions including:

Name

Description

Company

Row Definition

Column Definition

Reporting Tree Definition (if defined)

Folder (if defined)

Modified date

Modified By

Generated date

Generated By

Row definitions, column definitions, and reporting tree definitions are listed on
their respective tabs. Building blocks that are associated with a report display a
checkmark.
Advanced search options allow for search by name or description, as well as the
conditions, beginning with or containing. After selection of an item the Save As,
Delete, and Open buttons are activated.

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Row Definition
In most cases, building blocks can be used in more than one report definition.
The Rolling Quarter Income Statement row definition is associated with
several of the Income Statements, including the Rolling Quarter design being
reviewed.
Row definitions display the following fields:

Row Code - alpha or numeric values used in Related

Formulas/Rows. Identifies each line in the row definition and can be
specified to refer data in calculations and totals.

Description - text to display on the report or user remarks.

Format Code - select from a variety of options including

calculations, text placement, underscores, formatting, and sort
commands

Related Formulas/Rows/Units - defines rows to include in

calculations and sorting, restricts a row to a specific reporting tree
unit, or links a formatting row to an amount row.

Format Override - specifies the print format for the row and
overrides the formatting specified in the column definition and the
report definition.

Normal Balance - controls the sign of the amounts in a row.

Print Control - select from a variety of options.

Column Restriction - limits printing of row amounts to a specific

column or specifies the column of amounts to be sorted.

Row Modifier - overrides the fiscal years, periods and other

information specified in the column definition for that row

Link to Financial Dimensions - contains links to the financial data

to include in each row a report which can be either dimension values
or cells from a report or spreadsheet.

Column Definition
Like row definitions, column definitions are flexible by design and can be used in
a variety of reports. The Rolling Quarter Income Statement column definition
determines the rolling quarter and year to date data in the demonstration report.
Column definitions are broken down into header rows and column types. Column
types include:

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FD - amounts from the Financial Dimensions

CALC - displays the result of a simple or complex calculation

DESC - displays the row description from the row definition

ROW - displays row codes from the row definition

Chapter 1: Management Reporter Introduction and Overview

ACCT - displays the dimension values that apply to each row in the
row definition

FILL - displays the character contained in quotes, for example

FILL"_"

PAGE - inserts a vertical page break

WKS - displays amounts from an external worksheet

ATTR - displays an account or transaction attribute (determined by

the source system)

Column types display a default column width and additional options as required.
A variety of additional fields are available to further define the data returned.
The Column Headers dialog box is accessed by double-clicking the desired cell.
Options include AutoText codes, customized text, format options, and
justification options.
Financial data or FD columns are the most commonly used Column Type.
FD columns require the following in addition to the type:

Book Code - book codes are defined in the source system and
generally include options such as actual, budget, and in some cases
statistical data options.

Fiscal Year - either works in relationship with the report date

defined in the report definition or is hard-coded to a specific year.
Past or future years can also be defined.

Period - single or multiple periods can be included in a single

column. As in the Fiscal Year, BASE functions dynamically work in
relationship with the report date from the report definition. Hardcoded single or multiple periods can also be defined.

Periods Covered - options included Periodic, Periodic BB

(beginning balance), YTD (Year to Date), or YTD/BB

Period and Fiscal Year definitions work in combination with date related
AutoText header codes.

Reporting Tree Definition

Reporting trees are an optional component, although some advanced reports do
require them.
Reporting trees contain both summary and detail reporting units. Generally, the
detail units pull data from the source system as defined in the Dimensions
column. Summary units pull data from their childreneither the detail units, or
other summary units.
Basic reporting trees include:

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Company - select from active companies or @ANY

Unit Name - also displays in the hierarchical view

Unit Description - is generally used in the report header using the

@UnitDesc AutoText option

Dimensions - works with the row definition to pull data from the
source system

Advanced reporting trees include a variety of other options, allowing unique

relationships to the row definition, external worksheets, unique page options for
each reporting unit, unique security on desired units, rollup percentage amounts,
and up to ten rows of additional text for each unit.

Summary
This portion of the training introduced how to access the Report Designer and
discussed the other options available in Management Reporter. The Rolling
Quarter Income Statement was generated and explored using the Web Viewer.
This brief introduction is intended to give users a high level look at the easy and
intuitive nature of report design in Management Reporter.

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Quick Interaction: Lessons Learned

Take a moment and write down three key points you have learned from this
chapter
1.

2.

3.

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