As far as I can tell, reports, such as general ledger transactions and P&L reports, can’t be batch updated. They can, however, be batch deleted. I would like to request batch update be made available as well, if possible.
A practical use case for this for me is for batch updating the dates to generate the reports for, to switch from the previous to the new financial year relatively easily, instead of going in and manually updating each entry.
I tried searching for this, and couldn’t find anything. If this has already been asked somewhere before, please let me know and I’ll take it down.
That is not possible. Reports are the result of processing the database. Batch Updates are modifications to data in the database. Reports do not actually exist until you display them. When you create a report, you are only saving the parameters for it. If, while not viewing the report, you change one of the underlying transactions, the next time you view the report it will be different.
That is what the Clone button is for. Clone the report and edit the dates. That way, you do not need to recreate an entire complex report.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. To clarify, I’m not asking about batch updating the reports themselves, but rather the parameters used to generate them (for example the time periods in consideration).
I did clone all the reports the last time I did this, but now that I have around 50 in just the general ledger transactions, and over 100 overall, that I would like to generate this year as well, and the only thing I need to change is the time period, I feel batch update would be really useful if present.
Thanks for your answer, and thank you for helping me clarify my question.
The challenge in what you suggest is that parameters are different for every report. Sometimes, there is an as-at date, sometimes a date range. Sometimes there is the possibility of a user-entered description, sometimes not. Sometimes you can add comparative columns, sometimes not. Sometimes comparative columns can be renamed, sometimes not. Sometimes you must specify an account, sometimes not. The list of differences goes on and on.
Even limiting yourself to one report type, individual reports can be very different. One P&L report might be for a single year; others might include columns for 12 months or 5 previous years. There is simply no way to create a table of every variable that would apply to every report without standardizing the content of every report.
Thank you. While I would like to see batch updates for reports that have similar parameters, I can see why complications could occur because of the different customisation options on all the different reports. I guess this all depends on the way in which Manager structures this data in its own database, which may be complicated because of the reasons you described.
Thanks again for taking the time to respond and elaborate.
Manager support for relative time periods is probably a better way of achieving this. If Manager had a “Start of financial year” setting the it could generate
This financial year
Last financial year
This month
Last month
This quarter
Last quarter
This week
Last week
Etc
I accept that there are is a range of time periods people commonly use, but that just means using a structure which readily supports multiple time periods and reusing it on all reports