Operation Manual

Report Design Concepts

Basic report design

74 Crystal Reports User’s Guide

Basic report design

The purpose of this chapter is to suggest a structured approach to preparing

a Crystal report. This approach includes the following elements:

• Deciding on the content of the report.

• Developing a prototype on paper.

This section has been designed to provide a conceptual understanding of the

reporting process.

Deciding on the content of the report

Before you do anything else, you should outline the information you want the

report to provide. The following sections provide a guide to making that outline.

Stating the purpose

What is the overall purpose of the report?

Reports are management tools. Their purpose is to help you quickly grasp the

essential elements and relationships found in raw data, to help you make

effective decisions. For a report to be effective, it has to present the correct

data in a logical way. If it presents the wrong data, or if it presents the right

data in a haphazard manner, the report may slow the decision-making

process or may even encourage incorrect decisions.

A good starting place in the development of a report is to write out the purpose

of the report in a sentence or two. The purpose statement helps you focus on

your primary needs, and it gives the report both a starting point and a goal.

Here are some examples of purpose statements.

• The purpose of this report is to show monthly and year-to-date sales by

sales representatives, compare this year’s numbers to last year’s, and

flag representatives whose sales figures do not meet company

standards.

• The purpose of this report is to show sales activity for each item in

inventory, and to suggest reorder quantities based on that activity.

• The purpose of this report is to calculate bowling averages and

handicaps for each member of the bowling league.

Defining the purpose of the report before you start is a critical step in the

overall process.