TopForm Reporting Options

This month's tip on TopForm reporting options relates to the three Salespersons Sales Analysis Reports.

When you run these reports with the defaulted (NORMAL) in the Options field, the data is sorted first by salesperson, then by order type, then by either product code or customer category. The three order types are New, Repeat and Other.

However, if you enter an "A" in the Options field, the data will accumulate across all order types in order to provide summarized sales analysis without regard to the Order Type.

Many distributors like to analyze new sales compared to repeat business. TopForm does the best job it can to attempt to default the proper order type in accordance with the following rules.

PO Code	Custom	Line Type	Order Type Default
Yes	Yes	New	New
Yes	Yes	Exact Repeat	Repeat
Yes	Yes	Copy Change	Repeat
Yes	Yes	Spec Change	Repeat
Yes	Yes	Both	Repeat
Yes	No	Stock	Other
Yes	No	Non Stock	Other
Yes	No	Special Charge	Other
No	N/A	All types	Other

However to accumulate truly accurate data, generally involves operator intervention at the time of billing. Today, billing may be an automatic process under many circumstances. For instance, it could result from an interface with your shipping system, or from XML interoperability with your manufacturing partners, therefore this intervention becomes counterproductive.

This reporting option allows you to streamline your Sales Analysis Reports by eliminating the sort by order type when it is not desirable to have it.