Refresh Reporting Pack

The Reporting Pack functionality allows you to create a template which includes a cover sheet, index page, commentary page and any number of reports. The Reporting Pack can be refreshed automatically using new criteria, for example the report dates, and each report in the workbook will be re-executed using the provided criteria. The process will ensure that the reports include any new accounts or other applicable dimension values that were added since the Reporting Pack was refreshed previously.

The Reporting Pack can include Standard Reports (e.g. Profit And Loss), Detailed Reports (e.g. Aging Reports or General Ledger detail), supported Industry and Financial templates or dimension lists (e.g. list of Accounts or Classes including all their properties). All these will be re-executed ensuring that any new values are always included in the output.

Create Reporting Pack

In order to create a Reporting Pack, proceed as follows:

• Navigate to the Import/Build Report menu.
• Select Performance Center > Reporting Pack.
• Complete the required parameters and create the report.
• A standard Reporting Pack template is created  with the following worksheets:
  • Cover Page - this worksheet contains the parameters that can be modified to refresh the Reporting Pack. The process uses Excel named ranges to identify these parameters. Please note that this worksheet and named ranges cannot be deleted or the reporting pack will become invalid. You can hide or move the cells containing the named ranges if you prefer to create your own c.
  • Index - a list of the pages in the Reporting Pack with Excel links to enable navigation. See this Excel help page to create links - Work with links in Excel.
  • Commentary - A page where you can add notes and explanations related to the Reporting Pack contents.
  • A sample of Flash Reports and templates.

This Reporting Pack workbook can be saved as a normal Excel file to be reused. It can also be extended as required.

Extend Reporting Pack

Extend and enhance your Reporting Pack as follows:

• Add additional content to the Cover Page, Index and Commentary worksheets.
• Delete worksheets that are no longer needed (except the Cover Page worksheet which is required).
• Add additional reports to the Reporting Pack. This is done as follows:
  • Follow the normal process to Import/Build a new report. Navigate to the menu and select for example Standard Reports > Profit And Loss. Select the other criteria as you normally would and complete the process to import the report.
  • A new worksheet is added to the workbook containing the new report. You can move this worksheet as required and name it appropriately. Note, at this point the parameters will not yet be linked to the Cov and the default logo will be used.
  • Optionally add an entry to the Index worksheet with a hyperlink to navigate to the new report.
  • Repeat this process adding any other supported reports.
• The Reporting Pack process also supports adding a worksheet that contains a list of dimension values for the QuickBooks company (See these instructions to import a list of values using the Flash functionality). For example you could include a list of customers, classes or departments. These lists will be re-executed when the Reporting Pack is refreshed ensuring that they contain any new values that have been added in the interim. You can then build other reports using these lists in such a way that they will grow dynamically if new values are added. Please note you can only have one list of dimension values on a worksheet.
• You can also add any other worksheets with your own custom schedules, calculations, charts etc. These worksheets will not be re-executed when the Reporting Pack Refresh process runs, but they will be recalculated to return the latest balances from QuickBooks. It is also possible to copy or move worksheets from other Excel workbooks into the Reporting Pack workbook and simply link the input parameters e.g. the date fields to the cells on the Cov worksheet.
• Refer to this article for clarity on which reports can be re-executed by the Refresh Reporting Pack process.
• Optionally add a custom logo onto the Cover Page worksheet by inserting a new image and then naming the shape created in Excel "flashq.report-logo". When the refresh process is executed, this logo will be used on all the refreshable reports rather than the default logo image specified in the Flash settings.
• Optionally customize the colors and formatting of the worksheets.
  • For all non-refreshable worksheets you can simply use normal Excel functionality to apply the look and feel that you prefer.
  • A different process is required for the refreshable report worksheets as they will be completely cleared and recreated when the refresh process executes. For these reports you can customize the Excel styles that Flash creates. These styles will be reapplied when the reports are re-executed.
• Save this workbook as a template that you will reuse every month. The design of the Reporting Pack functionality means that you should be able to simply open the Excel workbook each month, update the parameters and execute the refresh. All the reports will be updated and recalculated and your preferred colors, formatting and logo image will be applied to each of the refreshed reports.

Refresh Reporting Pack

When you are ready to refresh the Reporting Pack proceed as follows:

• Open the Reporting Pack workbook.
• Navigate to the Cover Page. Update all the input parameters as required.
• Navigate to the Import/Build Report menu and select Refresh Reporting Pack.
• Review the information to ensure that all the parameters are correct and that the process has correctly identified all the worksheets that can be re-executed.
• Optionally click the "x" on any worksheets that should not be re-executed. Please note that this will permanently disable this worksheet from being re-executed by the refresh process.
• Do not make any changes to the Reporting Pack worksheets at this point. If you need to change the parameters, remove any worksheets from the workbook or rename a worksheet, first return to the main Import/Build Report menu and start the process again to read and validate the worksheets.
• Click the "Process" button and wait for the procedure to complete.
• All the identified reports and dimension lists will have been re-executed. Where applicable the input values on the re-created reports will be linked back to the named ranges on the Cov worksheet. For example, if you include a Profit And Loss report, the start and end date cells will be linked back to these parameter named range cells on the Cov worksheet.
• If you created a custom logo on the Cover Page worksheet, this image would have been used as the logo on each refreshed report.