What's the Deal With Aggregate and Summary Fields?

Knowing whether you need to use aggregates or Summary Fields in an eTapestry report can be a difficult issue to tackle, as they appear to have very similar functions. However, there is a major difference between the two that we will explain here to help you know which one you should use in future reports you build.

To get us started, here is a basic definition of both aggregates and Summary Fields:

An aggregate is an option you can select for a specific report field that will make the field display a calculated value based on the journal entries being included in your query. For example, if you build a query that contains all donations to a specific Fund over several years, you can add multiple Received fields to your report (one for each year) and then set an aggregate within each Received field to display giving just to that Fund within the year in question. To set an aggregate on a field in your report, you can click the + icon next to the field in question (under Selected Fields), and then you will see the Aggregate field with a drop-down menu next to it where you can select what type of aggregate you’d like to apply to the field.

Summary Fields are actually entirely separate fields you can add to a report to show totals or other data for the accounts in your query. However, they are different from aggregates in that they take all information for an account into consideration and they don’t just pay attention to the journal entries being returned in your query. To add a Summary Field to your report, you can set the Available Fields drop down menu to Summary Fields and then select one of the Summary Fields you see listed to add it in.

To help illustrate the difference between the two, imagine you have a query built to find all donations to a particular Fund last year and the current year. One of the donors gave a $20 donation to this Fund last year, and he gave $30 to the Fund this year. He also had a separate $50 donation to another Fund in the current year.

In your report you add two Received fields and set the Aggregate drop-down menu next to the first Received field to One Year Ago; you set the Aggregate drop-down menu next to the second Received field to Year-to-Date. However, you also add a Summary Field for Year-to-Date Received Total.

When you run the report, the Received field where you added an Aggregate for Year-to-Date will just show a total of $30, since that is what the donor gave to that specific Fund this year and that is the only journal entry being returned in your query for that donor during the year. However, the Summary Field of Year-to-Date Received Total will show as $80 for this donor, because it is looking at the entire giving for the account this year, not just the $30 donation to the Fund in the query.

For more information on the differences between aggregates and Summary Fields, check out the Using Aggregates in Reports help document.