Sage Accpac ERP Training

By David Lee, Consultant - DaveConsulting

Financial Reporter Overview

• The Financial Reporter is a

spreadsheet add-in Concepts
program that uses
Microsoft Excel to read and
print General Ledger data. Layouts
• Financial statements are
spreadsheets that use Functions & Formulas
special Sage Accpac
functions to extract data
from the Sage Accpac
Exercise
accounting database.
Financial Reporter Concepts

 Statement Designer
Choose the Statement Designer to create or edit a financial
statement.
Important: FR is only available when you start Excel inside
Sage Accpac.
 Worksheets with FR functions
Financial statements are worksheets containing FR functions
that read data directly from a GL database.
 Excel Functions
You can use any other Excel functions to further manipulate
the extracted data.
Financial Reporter Concepts (contd…)

 FR Statement Specifications
A FR statement specification is a structured layout (description) that you
want to produce.
 Flexible Data Selection
FR allows you to enter data and restrict data at print time.
 Account segment
 Account group
 Fiscal period
 Fiscal set (actual or provisional amounts)
 Transactions Drill-down
If you use transaction-related functions (FRTRN, FRTRNA, FRTRNDR and
FRTRNCR), FR allows you to drill-down to the transactions level.
Note: Only actual amount transactions will be included in the report.
 Layout of a FR Specification

Worksheets that contain FR statement specifications have two

separate regions:
 The Spec range
The region containing the specification.
 The Report range
The region containing the final statement that is generated from
the specification.
Note: The Report range also contains the Print range.
When you generate a financial report from a specification, the
Financial Reporter processes all the specification information in the
Spec range, and creates the final report in the Report range.
Spec range of a financial report

Columns with control information. Columns of the specification that form

First 4 columns (normally column A the statement template.
through D) are reserved for control The Report range is generated from
information. the Spec range when you print/view
the financial report.
 Report range of a financial report

When you generate a financial report

from a specification, the Financial
Reporter processes all the specification
information in the Spec range, and
creates the final report in the Report
range.
Note: The Report range also contains the
Print range.
The Report range excludes the first 4
columns (A to D).
 Column A
Column A determines the purpose of a Row.
There are five types of rows in a report specification:
 Comment rows starts with “..”

 “As is” rows starts with a blank

 Default rows starts with “\\”

 Title rows starts with “\T”
 Body specification rows contain any other data. FR will assume that data to be a
reference to one or more account numbers.
Column A

You specify your account numbers in Body specification rows.

For example:
Account Number Reference FR translates as follows
100-C Account 100, department C
100:200 Accounts between 100 and 200, no matter which
department they are in
100-A:200-F|ACCT Accounts between 100 and 200 in departments A
through F, processed by account segment
100~200-F Accounts in department F with account segment
value between 100 and 200
100-A,200-F Accounts 100-A and 200-F only
 Column A
Some special account number reference. For example:

Account Number FR translates as follows

Reference
100%% or 100:100 A range of account numbers that start with 100
%% %% by itself refers to all accounts in the ledger
%-A~F-% A range of 3-segment account numbers, the middle
segment is between “A” and “F”. “%” is a wild-card
character for one or more characters
1_0-A “_”, the underline character is a wild-card character for
a single character. Accounts having the first character
“1” and the ending character “0-A” e.g. 100-A, 120-A,
130-A, etc.

You cannot combine account reference ranges with wild-card characters. For example:
A123%:B567% is not allowed.
 Column A
Account ordering, processing order and account segment ranges

Account Ordering By Segment 1 Account Ordering By Segment 2

100~120-A~B 100~120-A~B
100-A 100-A
100-B 120-A
120-A 100-B
120-B 120-B

The default order for processing accounts is the order specified

at print time or FR View time.
The account order affects:
 Print order – The order in which accounts are listed or printed
 The speed in which accounts are retrieved from the database
 Column B to D
Column B, C and D filter accounts specified in column A.
 Column B – to restrict to a particular account group, type, name or
segment (ACCTTYPE = “B” – Account Type equals Balance Sheet
accounts).
 Column C – to remove any lines with zero balances (use “Z”) or
with a condition like “balances <= 500” or combine FR functions
with Excel functions like
=IF(FRAMT("BALP","1000")>6000,FRAMT("BALP","1000"),0)
 Column D – to consolidate the retrieved information.
 Use “T” – consolidate the data
 Use “D” – list each account separately
 Use “RD” – print top-level rollup details
 Use D(ACCT) – list by account segment
 Use D(acctgroup) – consolidate by account group
 Use D(ACSEGVALn) – consolidate by account segment number n
 Use D(acctsegID) – consolidate by named account segment. For example –
D(REGION)
Column D –Consolidate by Transaction Details

Column D – to consolidate by Transaction Details.

 Values must begin with “P”
PD – Transaction details in posted transaction order
PT – Transaction consolidated total
P(POSTRAN) – Transaction consolidated by account
P(POSTDATE) – Transaction consolidated by journal date)
P(POSTSEQ) – Transaction consolidated by posting
sequence)
 Exclusive Sorting Order – Consolidating by transaction
details must be by the correct sorting order:
POSTTRAN – By posted transaction, in account order
POSTDATE – By Date Order
POSTSEQ – By Posting Sequence Order
POSTACCT – By Account Posting Sequence
 The Report template (Column E onwards)

The Report template starts in Column E onwards

(the fifth column).
Any value or formula placed in the report template
will appear in the generated report. In this
example:
 =FR(“CONAME”)
This FR function will put the company name
in the report.
 Any text
like “Schedule of Expenses” will appear in the
report as it is.
 Combined text and function
“For the period ending ”&FR(“END”)
This text & function combination will insert
the period end date from the database.
 “\”
Where a “\” backslash is found in the cell (row 12 in the example), FR will look in the same column
of the default row with “\\” in column A [“=FRAMTA(“NETP”)” in row 9] and insert the result
[“=FRAMTA(“NETP”,”6000”)”] of the FR function located in the cell.
Note: You can use Excel’s cell formatting controls (to underline, bold, change font, colors, dollar format,
alignment, borders, etc) to enhance the Report range.
You can also hide a row or column that you don’t want printed in your final report.
FR Functions
FR Functions Information they provide
FR GL option & company data, and statement print options
FRACCT Account data
FRAMT, FRAMTA Fiscal set data
FRCREDIT, FRDEBIT

FRFISCAL Fiscal calendar data

FRRATE Exchange rates
FRSDESC Segment code descriptions
FRTRN Net totals and net quantities from transaction history
FRTRNA Net amounts and net quantities from posted transactions for a
specified period
FRTRNCR Net credit totals and net quantities from transactions
FRTRNDR Net debit totals and net quantities from transactions
FRPOST Account and transaction records, including optional fields from
posted transactions
FR Functions and Formulas
You can use FR Functions in 2 ways:
 To place information in a cell
 FRACCT(“ACCTDESC”,”1000-333”) – FR gets the account description
from account 1000-333 and places it in the current cell.
 FRAMT(“ABALP.2009”,”1000-333”) – FR gets the actual balance of
account 1000-333 for the current fiscal period for the year 2009
Note: xBALP where x = A (Actual), P (Provisional), QA (Actual quantity), QP
(Provisional quantity), 1 to 5 (Budget sets 1 to 5).
If A or P is not specified, it defaults to the report setting chosen at viewing or
printing time.
 In a default row (or single row) of a report specification.
- to define information that will appear in each column of your
report specification.
Note: This is the recommended way to create your statement
specification.
You can use FR Paste to create formulas like Account numbers,
account selection criteria (query-by-example expressions, rolled up
amounts (FRAMT, FRAMTA, FRCREDIT, FRDEBIT only), FR Functions
 Default Column Specifications

Lines with default column specs start with “\\”. The default
column specs are in effect until you define a new set of defaults.
To use the currently default column specification, type a “\” into
a cell.
Note: You can add “-” or “+” after the “\” to reverse the absolute
value of the formula result (e.g. “\-” or “\+”).
Default Column Specifications

In this example, if you have 200 accounts, you will have to enter 400
formulas to print out the current balances of all the accounts.
In addition, you would have to change the specification each time you
add a new account to the chart of accounts.

 The default column specifications row begins with “\\”

 Where “\” is found, FR assigns a particular formula
 The default column specifications and the formulas in example 1 is
the same except for the account reference.
 The account reference is for a range of accounts. This single line
will expand to as many accounts there are in the range.
Default Column Specifications

A default row can contain selection criteria (filter criteria) in columns

B, C and D. You do not need to specify a “\” to use the default values.
To override a default value, you must specify in columns B, C and D.
 If column D in the default row contains a “T”, to override this
default value, you enter “D” in column D in the last line of the
example.
 If column C in the default row contains a “Z”, to override zero
suppression, you must enter “N” in column C in the last line of the
example.
Sample Default Column Specifications
 Balance This Period and Last Period

 Balance This Year and Last Year with percentage of total columns

 Current Period and Year-to-date expenses

 Current Period and Year-to-date expenses as percentage of sales

Sample Default Column Specifications
 Current Period and Year-to-date expenses compared to last year

 Side-by-side Departmental statement

Print Financial Statements
Printing using FR View
Exercises