Reporting Use Cases

Overview

Given all the different means of reporting from the CommunitySuite system, it can be difficult to decide which reporting area to go to in order to find the information you're looking to analyze or use. Below are some brief descriptions of when each type of reporting is best used and some example use cases for each area.

Financial Reporting

Financial reports are going to be the best place to find aggregated transactional information in almost all cases. Choosing the correct financial report will vary based on the information you’re looking for specifically. The great thing about these financial reports is that if you do realize a different report would be a better means of looking at your data, choosing another report from the left menu options will maintain any date selection, filters and financial views (if applicable).

Example Use Cases:

• You’re wanting to review fund balances for upcoming grant commitments
• You’re wanting to see transactional totals of donation revenue

Filter Reporting

Filter reports are a great way to get basic information out of the system or as a means to find records in the system. Filter reports do have limited fields available to filter information into or out of the report, so if you are looking to condense your list of items down by something more specific than date or profile type, you’ll probably want to skip filter reports altogether.

Example Use Cases:

• You’re looking for a specific transaction; the filter report available in the General Ledger area allows you to filter down to transactions by things like the amount or date.
• You’re looking for a quick count of how many donations came in on a certain date.
• You’re wanting to get a comprehensive list into excel to create visualizations.

Standard Reporting

Standard Reports available are a great way to see summary data for any of the major areas of CommunitySuite. These standard reports also allow for any summary information to be drilled into to see further detail.

Example Use Cases:

• You’re looking for a count of donations by campaign.
• You’re looking at scholarship payments to each school at the end of scholarship season.

Custom Reporting

Custom reporting is by far the most comprehensive reporting option CommunitySuite has for non-financial information. This option is best used for any need that is beyond what a basic filter or canned report can offer. These reports will allow for aggregation, grouping, additional filter fields, etc.

Example Use Cases:

• You want to narrow down a list of donors to invite to a campaign based on the total amount of donations they gave last year.
• You’re looking for funds that haven’t granted recently