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Work with Financial Reports

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Use financial reports to get insight into the financial data stored in your chart of accounts. Financial reports analyze figures in general ledger (G/L) accounts, and compare general ledger entries with general ledger budget entries. The results display in charts on your Home page, for instance the cash flow chart.

Business Central provides a few sample financial reports you can use right away, or you can set up your own rows and columns to specify which figures to compare. For example, you can create financial reports to calculate profit margins on dimensions such as departments or customer groups. You can create as many customized financial statements as you want.

Setting up financial reports requires an understanding of the financial data in the chart of accounts. So, for example, you could view general ledger entries as percentages of budget entries. This requires you to have created budgets. Learn more at Create Budgets.

Account categories and financial reports

You can use account categories to change the layout of your financial statements. After you set up your account categories on the G/L Account Categories page, and you choose the Generate Financial Reports action, the underlying financial reports for the core financial reports are updated. The next time you run one of these reports, such as the balance statement, new totals and subentries are added, based on your changes.

To create new financial reports

You use financial reports to analyze figures in general ledger accounts or to compare general ledger entries with general ledger budget entries. For example, you can view the general ledger entries as percentages of the budget entries.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Financial Reports, then choose the related link.

  2. On the Financial Report page, choose the New action to create a new financial report name.

  3. Fill in the fields as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description.

  4. Choose the Edit Financial Report action.

  5. On the Financial Report page, fill in the fields as necessary.

    When you have created a new financial report and set up the rows, you must set up columns. You can either set them up manually or assign a predefined column layout to your financial report.

  6. Choose the Edit Column Layout Setup action.

  7. On the Column Layout page, fill in the fields as necessary.

Note

If you did not assign a default column layout to the financial report, you must set the columns up manually.

To create a column that calculates percentages

Sometimes you may want to include a column in a financial report to calculate percentages of a total. So, let's say you have a number of rows that break down sales by dimension, you might want a column to indicate the percentage of total sales each row represents.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Financial Reports, and then choose the related link.
  2. On the Financial Reports page, select a report.
  3. Choose the Edit Financial Report action to set up a financial report row to calculate the total on which the percentage will be based.
  4. Insert a line immediately above the first row for which you want to display a percentage.
  5. Fill in the fields on the line as follows: In the Totaling Type field, enter Set Base for Percent, then in the Totaling field, enter a formula for the total that the percentage will be based on. For example, if row 11 contains the total sales, enter 11.
  6. Choose the Edit Column Definition action to set up a column.
  7. Fill in the fields on the line as follows: In the Column Type field, select Formula; then in the Formula field, enter a formula for the amount that you want to calculate a percentage for, followed by the percent sign (%). For example, if column number N contains the net change, enter N%.
  8. Repeat steps 4 through 7 for each group of rows you want to break down by percentage.

To set up financial reports with overviews

You can use a financial report to create a statement comparing general ledger figures and general ledger budget figures.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Financial Reports, and then choose the related link.

  2. On the Financial Reports page, select a financial report.

  3. Choose the Edit Row Definition action

  4. On the Row Definition page, in the Name field, select the default financial report name.

  5. Choose the Insert Accounts action.

  6. Select the accounts you want to include in your statement, then choose OK.

    The accounts are now inserted into your financial report. If you want you can also change the column layout.

  7. Go back to the Financial Reports page and choose the Edit Financial Report action.

  8. On the Dimensions FastTab, set the budget filter to the desired filter name.

  9. Choose OK.

Now you can copy and paste your budget statement into a spreadsheet.

See also

Finance
Setting Up Finance
The General Ledger and the Chart of Accounts

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