The latest version (21.6.54) contains new no-code development platform to create report transformations.
This should make it a lot easier to create country-specific reports such as GST Return for New Zealand.
Report transformations are under Settings then Report Transformations.
And the report transformation for GST Report in New Zealand looks like this:
No coding. Just a table to define what each cell in the report should contain.
The real power of report transformations is that when they are created, they can be submitted to our Github repository. All the report transformations from Github are then automatically included in Manager for the use of everyone.
Currently report transformations can pull in the following figures:
- Tax code totals - total sales, net sales, tax on sales, total purchases, net purchases, tax on purchases & tax liability (this is useful for country-specific VAT, GST, Sales tax etc reports)
- Payslip item totals per custom field (this is useful for country-specific payroll reports)
Also you can pull in text fields (both built-in and custom fields) from business details, suppliers and employees.
I will add more based on what’s needed. For example, we could add support to be able to pull in P&L account balances. This would be useful for country-specific income tax worksheets.
So let’s create our first report transformation.
Go to Report Transformations and click New Report Transformation.
You will get empty form.
Enter the name for your custom report. E.g. VAT Return Worksheet. Select how many columns your report contains. Currently you can choose either two or three.
For example, New Zealand report example has two columns but there are layouts which require three columns. For example, VAT Return for Saudi Arabia:
The first column is always plain text. The second and third columns are calculated figures you choose from dropdown.
Going back to our empty form, just define the structure without selecting any figures in the second or third column:
And then click Create to save the report transformation.
Once the report transformation is created, go to Reports tab.
You will see your new report available.
Create new report and view it. This is what you will see.
It doesn’t do anything but it’s a good start. You will notice both New Zealand and Saudi Arabia reports have headers which separate the report into sales, purchases and summary. We can do the same in our report.
While viewing the report, click Layout button in bottom-right corner.
This will take you to report transformation edit form.
To create a header, simply create a line item where the second line will contain sequence of dashes ------
Save the report and you will see:
Now, let’s add the figures. This assumes you already have tax codes created.
For the purpose of this excercise, I’ve created tax code VAT 20% and selected appropriate figures like this:
Now, when I view the report I see:
The amounts are zero because in my test database I have no transactions but the report is already working. All the figures are clickable.
When selecting figures on report transformation, you can select multiple figures in which case the figures will be added up. You can see this on New Zealand report transformation where one field contains total from multiple tax codes.
On report transformation form, there is also set of checkboxes at the bottom.
When Suppliers or Employees checkbox is clicked, it allows to create loop for each supplier or employee. This is useful when country-specific report needs to show figures per each supplier or employee.
For example, in Australia, some industries need to report all taxable purchases per each supplier:
So Supplier checkbox would be checked which will allows to create report which will contain totals per supplier.
The same is useful for employees when business needs to report totals per individual employee.
When Description checkbox is checked, you can provide description of the report.
When Instructions checkbox is checked, you can provide instructions how the report should be used.
This will be shown under report like this:
Of course, country-specific report transformation does not have to be in English. It can be in any language.
