FRx Tips & Tricks – Part 3

FRX DRILLDOWN VIEWER
1. When printing from the DrillDown Viewer, you can select a Print Range of Current Selection' to print only what is currently viewable on screen. This allows you to print the drill down detail for one specific line item.
2. From the FRx DrillDown Viewer, you can export to a spreadsheet by selecting File > Export > Worksheet file.
3. In the DrillDown Viewer, highlight a column by clicking on the column header. Right mouse click and you can hide a column. You can save the file with the changes, so the next time you open this file, the columns you selected will still be hidden.
4. Use the ability to hide columns in the DrillDown Viewer to create a vertical page break for reports you want to print. Hide a section of columns and print the report. Then unhide those columns and hide another section and again print the report.

CATALOGS
1. You can have FRx Financial Reporting generate a report that shows any accounts that are missing from the account range on the row format, as well as any that are duplicated. In the catalog, go to the Report Options tab, Advanced tab, and check the exception report boxes. Generate the report. In the FRx DrillDown Viewer, select from the menu, View > Exception report. An exception report can be exported to Excel, where it can then be sorted. This is helpful when there are many duplicate or missing accounts.
2. To run multiple reports at once, you can chain them together by using the "Chain to Catalog" field on the Output Options tab. Open the first catalog item that you want to generate and chain it to the second catalog item. Then open the second catalog item and chain it to the third, and so on. When you select to generate the first catalog item, or any items in the chain, you will be prompted on whether or not you want to generate the chained reports. If so, select yes and all subsequent chained reports will generate.
3. If you have a report with a reporting tree and you always generate reports for all the branches of the tree, select "Include all Units" from the Tree Options tab under the Reports Options tab. This will save you the keystrokes to select the units every time a report is generated.
4. Use a @CAT code in the header or footer to print the catalog ID on the report. This way you will always know which catalog was used to generate each report.
5. Use the @CATDESC code in the report header to pull in the Catalog description onto the report header. This will save you from typing an additional description for the report. Likewise, when cloning the catalog, the report header description will update automatically to the new catalog description that you type.
6. Create a catalog called "Template" (or any other name you like). Set all the options that are standard for your reports, such as headers, footers, rounding, page options, default date, etc. Whenever you need to create a new catalog, open the "Template" and clone it. This will save you from having to select all of your standard options each time you need a new catalog.
7. Cloning a catalog ID is a better option than clicking on File > Save As. When selecting to clone, the output file name will be updated with the new catalog id. When using the Save As function, item will have the same output file name as the original catalog item. You will then need to manually update the output file name.
8. Whenever you have a report with both Calc type columns and CAL rows, you may encounter a "calculation collision". Where a calculated row and a calculated column intersect, you need to determine which calculation will be printed on the report – the row calculation or the column calculation. If your report has the wrong result, you can change the calculation priority in the catalog. This option is on the Report Options tab, Advanced sub-tab.
9. After making changes to a Report Catalog, save the catalog before generating. When changes are made to a catalog, the catalog should be saved before the Generate button is clicked. If the new changes are not saved, FRx Financial Reporting must create a new record to store these changes before passing the report to the FRx Reporting Engine. These records will accumulate over time, resulting in larger data file and possible corruption if the records are damaged in some way.
10. Using the OLAP output option for FRx Financial Reporting and Excel 2000 you can view cube files in an Excel spreadsheet as a pivot table. Simply choose the output as a Microsoft Local Cube and generate the file. Then launch Excel. Select Data > Import External Data and New database query. Create an OLAP data source and browse to find the .cub file that you created in FRx Financial Reporting. Excel then takes over and you can select the dimensions you wish to display. Graphing and data interrogation then becomes a breeze. The OLAP output option was a new feature in Version 6.0.
GENERAL
1. If you have added a new budget, but do not see it in the dropdown for book codes, you may need to rebuild your index. Likewise if you have added a new account, but the account is not included on your report, again the solution is likely to be rebuilding the index. The index is a file that ends with the extension *.G32. To rebuild the index, go to the catalog screen, choose from the menu, Admin > Build Local Index.
2. If you get an error message that starts with "Check OFSI connection…", check the information in the Company > Information screen. Be sure to check the System Specific Information tab.
3. KEEP REGULAR BACKUPS!! This is the most important step a company must follow for a software program that stores data, including FRx Financial Reporting. Backups should be run nightly if FRx Financial Reporting is used on a day-to-day basis; otherwise backups should be run at least once a week. If frequent backups are not kept, reports and other FRx Financial Reporting data may be lost due to any number of circumstances. While you can attempt to repair a corrupted file, there are no guarantees that repairs will be successful. A frequent backup of the entire Sysdata directory is recommended.
4. Compact the FRx System Database and FRx Specification Sets regularly. This should be done weekly or bi-weekly depending on the usage of FRx Financial Reporting. The FRx System Database contains Companies, Registration Information, FRx Security Information, Users, font styles and other information pertaining to the operation of FRx Financial Reporting. Specification Sets contain Row Formats, Column Layouts, Reporting Trees, and Catalogs, all of which make up the reports that are designed by FRx Financial Reporting users. When one of these databases is compacted, a new file is created with the same structure. User deleted records and other unnecessary information is removed and the remaining information is moved into the new file. When compacted regularly, these files will remain smaller in size and less likely to cause errors and/or lost data.

To compact these databases:

• Have all other users exit out of FRx Financial Reporting – the user performing these steps must have exclusive access to the FRx Financial Reporting files.
• Select from the menu File > Compact FRx Database > FRx System Database. If all other users are out of the program, this should compact successfully.
• Select from the menu File > Compact FRx Database > Current Spec Set.
• If more than one specification set is being used in FRx Financial Reporting, repeat the previous step for each company that uses a different spec set.