Summary Transaction Reports |
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All of the summary financial reports available in Campground Master are generated from the Transactions view. You can go to the Summary Report Options dialog by checking Summarize and then using the Options… button (or just click the separate "Summary Options..." button if your screen resolution allows it), for full report control and some pre-defined Quick Reports.
Summary reports are basically a condensation of the detail reports to just the group subtotals in one dimension, with the ability to show multiple days, months, or years in the other dimension. So summary reports are shown as a grid with dates across the top and group summaries (Types, Categories, Pay Methods, etc.) in each row.
You can also flip this orientation (like flipping the Rack view), so dates are in rows and groups in columns. This can be done either through the Options dialog or from the right-click menu. Another option that can result in nicer looking reports is the Grid Lines option in the right-click menu. Turning off grid lines and printing in color to show the shaded "total" rows and columns (Print Black & White option turned off) will result in a very professional-looking report.
You have all of the same filtering options for Summary reports as you do for Detail reports, through the Filters dialog, so you can refer to those sections for filtering information.
Simple Summaries, Directly from Details
You can generate a quick and simple summary of the detailed report you're viewing by using just the control area in the Transaction view. Select a date range and a Type and/or Category filter as needed, click on a header to sort by one of the grouping fields (Type, Category, Pay Method, etc.), and click the Summarize check box. The resulting summary report will group by the field that you sorted and the dates in the range you selected, showing one row for each day and one column for each Type/Category/etc. Note: if there are more than 10 days in the date range, the orientation will default to dates in columns. If you prefer a different orientation, right-click anywhere on the grid and select "Flip Orientation". You can then print the report with the Print icon on the toolbar.
Getting out of a Summary Report
Once you use Summary Options to run a Quick Report or any other summary, you may want to get back to the default Transactions tab view display of showing all transactions for the day. The quick way to do this is to click Detail options, then click the button Reset the view to details / all transactions.
Quick Reports
From the Options dialog you can select one of several Quick-reports. These are predefined sets of filtering and grouping for the most common reports needed. You may first select a Summarize period and a date range (from the Filter dialog or in the control area of the tab view), since the Quick-report selections don't affect these, and then click the appropriate Quick-Report button.
Once a Quick-report is generated, you are free to change the filter or options if you like. While many people find that a couple of these reports contain everything they need, they were really intended as examples to show you some of the things you can do with the reporting options & filtering. For the most part they don't actually change to a particular report mode, they simple set the filters and groupings for you to generate a particular type of report. You're encouraged to "play" with them to get more specific information as needed, for instance you could add filtering to see only certain categories or to see income from only certain sites. Also remember that you can uncheck the "Summarize" button afterwards to explore the detailed transactions that are going into the report.
If a quick-report is printed without any changes to its filter or options, the name of the report will be used as the header on the printout.
The available quick-reports are described below:
Receipts by Payment Method - This is commonly used as a "Z-out" or "cash-out" report for verifying the cash drawer receipts for the day. It includes all Payments and Deposits (less Refunds) entered, grouped by the payment method (cash, check, Visa, etc.). To get a list of each receipt transaction grouped by the payment method, uncheck the "Summarize" box after generating the report.
Charges by Category - This can be used as a detailed income report if you're using an accrual accounting method (e.g. if you enter charges that may not be paid right away, thus carrying an accounts receivable and/or deposits balance). It will include all Charges, Taxes, and Discount transactions entered, totalled by Transaction Category. (Remember you can add more categories or change the existing ones through the Pick Lists functions.) As with other summary reports, you can uncheck the "Summarize" box to see the details.
Receipts by Category - This will report actual money received according to category, and is commonly used for cash-accounting systems (you only report income as it's received, and don't carry an Accounts Receivable balance). The details of this report are extensive, so see the separate Receipts by Category topic that follows later if you have any problems understanding the report.
Discounts by Discount Used - this will include only Discount transactions, grouped by the Discounts list (e.g. Good Sam, AAA, Seniors, etc.). Since it only reports the amount discounted, it's mainly used as a statistical type of report to see how much you're "giving away" in various discounts. If you want to see other information such as the amount of charges grouped by the discount used, then select the Charges by Category report and then come back to Summary Options and select the Discount Used for the grouping.
Taxes by Tax Category -- This is similar to the Charges by Category report, except that it only shows the Taxes transactions. As with Charges by Category, this report shows taxes collected as of the dates they were entered -- this is another important reason that we don't recommend entering charges until the reservation is checked in, because if you add charges when you make the reservation, this report will show that you collected sales tax when you made it rather when they actually paid.
Income & Expenses -- This includes the "receipts" types of transactions, Payments, Refunds and Deposits, plus the Expense and Misc Income transaction types. This can be used as a very simplified income report. If you use the Misc Income and Expense transactions to track other finances, then it will include those also.
Balance Charges & Payments -- This is mostly useful if you always try to make sure that no Charges are entered until the day they're paid (e.g. when they check in), and likewise no Payments are entered without corresponding charges. In simple terms, it reports the difference between Payments and Charges (also accounting for previous Deposits applied as if they were payments on the day the charges were added). The report is grouped by operator, so it's a quick way of determining if you have a particular operator who isn't entering "balanced" transactions as they should. What you "want" to see here is $0.00 in every total, meaning the day's transactions are balanced..
Deposit Account -- This report is for tracking an advanced deposits account, for instance if you treat is as a liability in your accounting. It shows how much in new Deposits was received, and how much in previous deposits were Applied to new charges that day (e.g. check-ins using their deposit, which effectively depletes the deposits account). It also shows the Deposit Transfers, which should really always be $0.00 if there aren't lopsided transfers, and also any manual adjustments made to the deposit account. Note that in addition to the daily changes, this report shows an All-Time column which reflects the actual balance of your advance deposits account.
Accounts Receivable -- Similar to the Deposits Account report, this is used for tracking an A/R balance and includes the various types of transactions that affect such a balance. Note that to Campground Master, any Charge that's not Paid is considered A/R. For instance if you put charges on a reservation when they make it rather than when they check in, it's considered A/R until it's paid.
Inventory Sales, by amount (Point of Sale only) -- This shows all inventory items and the total sales amount for the given period. Tip -- to see only the items that actually had sales, go back to Summary Options and check the box "Hide items with zero totals". If you prefer to see the report just by Inventory Class, you can also change that in Summary Options.
Inventory Sales, by quantity (Point of Sale only) -- This is like the previous report, but shows the total quantity sold rather than the sales amounts.
More Summary Options
For more control over the summary report, click the Summary Options... button if present, or click the Options… button making sure the Summarize check box is checked first. The top area of the Options dialog allows you to select the grouping method (Select one of the options, or None to show only one grand total instead of group totals) and the Summarize period (Daily, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly or none). If you have Shifts functionality enabled, you can also summarize by shift. Note that selecting None for both grouping and summarize period will result in a single total value -- not terribly useful for a report!
Keep in mind that the date range selected in the filter (or tab view controls) takes precedence over the Summarize period. So for example if you summarize Monthly and selected the date range of 4/1/2001 to 5/1/2001, it will show April and May month summaries in the report but will actually be reporting for only one day in May due to the 5/1/2001 ending date. This could result in a misleading report.
There are some other options you can select for the report, plus a button that opens the Transaction Filter dialog (this is same as selecting More Filters... from the control area in the tab view). Feel free to experiment with different settings (and try the Quick-Report options below). You can't hurt anything by changing the settings.
Hide items with zero totals -- This option is useful for reports such as category reports, When selected, only the categories (or other groups) will be shown that have non-zero totals, so the report is smaller. Of course if you're grouping by Operator, for instance to see if the charges and payments balance out, then you would not want to hide the zero balances -- the zeros are what you want to see.
Show charges & expenses as positive values (invert) -- This option is useful for reports that would normally show negative values, such as a Tax category report. (Since taxes are charges to the customer, they are considered a negative amount). This will create a cleaner-looking report.
Show Deposits Applied as payments -- This option will obviously only be useful if your report includes Deposit Applied transactions. Examples of this are the Balance Charges & Payments report and the Accounts Receivable report. Normally the Deposit Applied transaction is considered a negative deposit (payment), so that it negates deposit transactions in terms of the overall Deposits Balance. In these reports, however, it's necessary to consider deposits applied as positive payments so that the balances are correct.
Include cumulative totals for each period -- When this option is selected, two extra rows (or columns) will be added to the report, showing Previous and Cumulative Totals for each date period. This could be used to seeing a running balance, or it may be useful when exporting values to graphing software like Excel. Note that the first period's "Previous" total will be zero unless you also use the option to include all prior dates (below).
Include group totals for all prior dates -- This option is used when you need an all-time total, for instance when calculating the Deposits or A/R balance. It adds 2 extra columns (or rows) to the report, showing Prior totals and All-time totals for each group (e.g. each transaction category). Obviously it can only include prior transactions that are actually in the database, so "All-time" means since you started using the software, or since you last purged old data.
Interpolate Category for Payments -- This is a special-purpose option, primarily used for the "Receipts by Category" report. Payment transactions don't have category information (because a single payment could be entered for any number of charge items with different categories). Selecting this option tells the software to figure out (interpolate) what transaction categories each payment should be applied to. If charges for more than one category were paid for, then the payment will be divided proportionally between the categories.
Include Deposits in Receipts by Category -- This only applies if the Interpolate option is selected. If Deposits are included, then they will be shown in the report as of the deposit date. However they might be reported as "Uncategorized" because they usually appear before any charges are entered. If you need the report to show all receipts as of the date received, then this option should be checked. You may also want to check the next option (include Deposits Applied).
Include Deposits Applied in Receipts by Category -- This only applies if the Interpolate option is selected. If Deposits Applied are included, then the applied amounts will be shown as received on the date applied (rather than the date the deposit was actually received). It should be used in conjunction with the previous option to include Deposits, so that the amount will also be deducted from the "Uncategorized" amount to offset the total receipts for the day. Basically the amount will be "moved" to the correct category on the date it's applied, without showing an additional amount received on that date.
Memorized Reports
Setting up the reports the way you like them can be a chore, and can result in accounting inconsistencies if you don't use the same settings each time. To avoid this, you can save the settings once you have them the way you like, and call up the same settings every time. There is no limit to the number of different reports you can memorize.
To memorize a report, open the Options (or Summary Options) dialog once you have the settings (filter, groupings, summarize period, orientation and other options) the way you like. Note that every setting in the Filters and Options dialogs will be saved to a memorized report except the specific dates -- obviously you would want to use different dates each time you run the report. If you select one of the date range selections, such as All Dates, Last Month, YTD, etc., then that selection will be saved with the memorized report and the dates will set appropriately whenever it's loaded. Likewise, Shift range selections (if enabled) will be saved with the report.
Click the Save Report button, and you will be asked for a name for the report. You can make this name as long and detailed as you like, but try to keep it small enough to fit in the Memorized Reports list on the dialog. Click Save and the report settings will be memorized under that name. You can also delete reports as needed by selecting the report name and clicking the Delete button. You can overwrite a memorized report by selecting it in the list before clicking Save.
To recall a memorized report, simply open the Summary Options dialog, click on the name of the Memorized report you want, and click Load Report. The option settings will automatically change to the saved settings (except the dates, as mentioned above). Then click OK to generate the report, or you can click on Filter… to select a date range (You can also select the date range from the controls area on the tab view, but the Filter dialog has the handy buttons for Month-to-Date, etc. that you might prefer to use.)
You can also load a report and immediately View it in either summary or details mode, using the View Report and View Details buttons. (Alternatively you can just double-click on the report name, which will do the same as View Report.) These will automatically load the report, close the dialog, and change to details mode if desired, eliminating the extra prompt and clicks necessary to close the dialog and view the report.
If a memorized report is printed without any changes to its filter or options, the name of the report will be used as the header on the printout.
Quick guide to set up and use a memorized report:
1. Use an appropriate Quick-report to start with (something close to what you need).
2. Go back into Summary Options and select any other options desired, and any filtering you want.
3. Click Memorize, enter a name.
Now to use the report:
1. Go to Summary Options.
2. Select a memorized report.
3. Click either View Report or View Details, depending on whether you want the summary view or details view.
Alternatively you can use Load Report, but this will only load up the filer and option settings -- if you just click "OK" after that, it will do the same as View Report -- but you can also change filters/settings after Loading it if needed. But again, a Quick-report ignores all filters and most settings and resets things to exactly what's needed for the default quick report.
Note that double-clicking the report name (in step 2 above) will do the same thing as Load Report (saves a step).
Also see: