Tips for Blackbaud eTapestry® Reports

If the functionalities within eTapestry were capable of feelings, the Query's Valentine every year would be the Report. To use another analogy, they are like peas in a pod. If the Query is finding the results of whoever did something based on whatever criteria you've selected, the Report will help you display them in a particular way.

In the previous blog post earlier this week, I said that the query is not the end-all, be-all of the data extraction inside eTapestry because if you pull a Journal Entries Return Type Query to see all the transactions in a date range, for each donor who gave multiple times over the course of that time span, they will have each of their entries listed in the query preview. So, it's good to review the results to see if the Query is indeed pulling the proper people/entries, but the Query's preview will not have all the various export options for how the data is presented. So, let's talk about a couple of tips you can use when building a report to get a good-looking and workable Report to share with the Board, your supervisor or director, or other interested parties.

In the Report, you can select options from the "Group Results" section in the Edit Report screen. Here, you have the option to Group By Account or Households if you are reporting on journal entry results in the Query, or you can not group the report if you're working with account results. If you choose a Group By option, you will see a second drop down menu that will ask if you want to Hide Group Totals, Show Group Totals, or Collapse Groups. When grouping, journal entries will be listed under a line that shows the account's name. Hide Group Totals will simply list the entries under the line that displays the account name. Show Group Totals will do the same, but will show a total under the list of entries. Collapse Groups will corral all entries for an account, and squish it all to one line with the account information, and a grand total for Received. So keep this tip in your back pocket because these features are also common ways to make the reports much more readable.

My second tip I have for you in Reports concerns the Summary Fields. These fields are found on each account's Home page, and they summarize information such as lifetime giving or giving within a specific time period. This is an entire category of fields that you can find under Report Columns. These are great additions to a report that is otherwise simply displaying account information. Do you need to pull a list of accounts of board members or others with a particular attribute? Then add a Summary Field to show the account's Lifetime Received Total or individual calendar years like Year to Date Received Total, One Year Ago Received Amount, Two Year Ago Received Amount and so forth. These would be a great way to view giving details from accounts without having to twist a query into pulling that information for you before getting the report.

The greatest thing about working with Summary Fields is that you can do this with an Account Return Type Query! That's right: You can pull giving information into your report if you are working with a list of accounts instead of a list of journal entries.

I have a request for you: call this your homework, if you will. Right now, go into eTapestry, and go straight to Reports. Either copy an existing report that is just pulling account information, or create a new report. After naming the report, go down to the Report Columns section and choose Account Name and any other account field you want to select. Then, go to that Summary Fields list and pull Year to Date Received Total, One Year Ago Received Amount, Two Year Ago Received Amount, and Three Year Ago Received Amount. Just for funsies, let's also add Last Received Date and Last Received Amount. Now, click Save and Run and for your Query, choose Base as the Category and All Constituents as the Query. Run the Report to your screen and take a look at what those Summary Fields provided you. I bet you'll think of other ways to use some of those Summary Fields for other reports!

Those are my tips for today. I recommend checking out the webinar I hosted earlier this year regarding Querying and Reporting in eTapestry for more on these tips as well as a few more!

Check back next week for two more blog posts with more tips for Queries and Reports. The first will be tips surrounding Compound Queries and later in the week, I'll discuss another way to summarize giving information in a Report by using Aggregates. Until then, keep on eTapping on!