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Using the Reports
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Using the Reports
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FF&EZ has a large selection of reports, and you may at first wonder which reports to use. Here is an overview of how to use them. There is a complete Design Reports List in the Reference section. If you have the Purchasing Module, there is a similar Purchasing Reports List in that section of the Help system. General Data Maintenance Reports First, the following data editing forms include at least two reports that are meant for use in reviewing and maintaining the data in them: Client Form Project Form Vendor Form Library Form Area Form Room Form Specification Form Object Form There will be at least a "List" format and a "Detail" format available for each, and some may have versions with alternate sort orders. Except for the Area and Room list reports, which might be useful as part of a project document, these reports are generally meant for internal use, and their default settings will tend to show all information about the items in the report. In the case of the Specification Form reports and the Object Form reports, it particularly important to understand that these reports show all project items in those tables, whether they are used in the FF&E Worksheet or kept as alternates. This is intentional, as it gives you a way to review all the information you've entered. These two forms also include two very useful check reports, the Spec Usage and Object Usage reports. These display not only how each spec and object you've created has been used, but if it has been used. Project Presentation Reports In contrast to the reports above, the reports on the FF&E Worksheet only show what is on the worksheet, that is, the actual proposed contents of the project. These reports are meant for presentation to clients as well as for ordering support and their default options tend to hide information that would be either not useful to clients or which should be confidential. Specific reports were designed to support different phases of a project: Budgeting, Project Programming Use these to develop initial target budgets and feasibility studies. Note that if you enter a nominal area (e.g., size in square feet) on each room, you can create room budgets based on a cost per unit area. This is covered on the Room List page.
Product Selection and Presentation
The "Illustration Sheet" reports come in several basic sorting types:
The first two of these will typically be similar in length, however if your project uses many different but similar room types (e.g., a hotel), the "area, room and tag" sort will probably produce a substantially longer report due to repeating items. The "Materials Reference" and "FF&E Specification Reference" reports were introduced as a compact visual directory of fabrics and finishes and of FF&E items respectively. However be sure to check out the report options that are available for them. These allow the reports to be used for many other purposes. Specification Status Reports These reports show various aspects of each specification's status and can be extremely useful in managing the progress of approvals, pricing and image selection. Note: These are available primarily on the Object screen and the Specification screen report lists.
Pricing and Budget Management These reports offer several ways to track proposed budgets during and after product selection and pricing occurs.
Note that the "Budget / Price Comparison" report can substitute an object's budget for its price if the price is zero. This helps you use the report for budget status even if pricing is incomplete. Quote / Contract reports This group of reports is used to create a price quote or contract document to be approved by your client (which could include an internal client, with perhaps less "legalese").
The reports divide into several major differences: The "by Tag" reports list objects as a simple list in object Tag order, while "by Area/Room" shows your client a breakdown by location so that the contract shows cost per room and major area. All of the reports can print boilerplate text at the end of the report that is entered with an Edit Boilerplate command on the Report Options tab, however the boilerplate is either embedded in the signature block and expands as needed or is printed on a separate "Terms and Conditions" page at the end of the quote, which works better for longer text. The boilerplate is different for the two types of uses so that you can have a short version for smaller quotes and a more elaborate one for large contracts. The "Terms and Conditions" page can accept up to approximately 6,000 characters or the text that will fit into two pages of a plain-text word-processor document, using Arial 12 pt text with 1" margins on all sides. Important: Due to the limitations of the "summary page" used for this feature, your text must fit within these limits to avoid being truncated. As of version 4.1.10, the "w/Terms & Conditions" options also allow you to edit the shorter note in the signature block separately from the longer terms at the end (that is, it has two types of boilerplate). In addition to the reports above, which are based on the prices you set on the Specifications screen, there is also a specialized quote format that uses the objects' "Budget" field instead:
These reports are meant to be used in a situation where someone with experience in pricing is able to price a quote without need to determine specific product costs. To use them, enter the proposed price in the "Budget" field on the Object screen for each object being quoted, then use one of these two reports to generate the quote. Note that the "Budget" amounts on the Object screen do not transfer to the "Price" field on the Specification screen. However, you can use the Object List's Utilities> Set Budgets command to insert an object budget amount after you have cloned an existing project as the start for a new one. Note: as of version 4.1, these two reports have been deprecated to "legacy" status, but are still available if the "Show legacy reports" option is selected. Project Management & Documentation
Also, the Export command on the FF&E Worksheet includes some basic exports of room contents, including a "raw data" finish schedule that can be opened with or pasted into a spreadsheet program and formatted. This has been supplemented by the ability to save report previews directly to the Excel format. Purchasing Support (in FF&EZ-Design)
Note that a large selection of additional purchasing-related reports is included in the Design/Purchasing version of FF&EZ on the Orders and the Expediting screens. The reports in FF&EZ-Design are meant for use when someone else will be handling purchasing and the purchasing data will be "handed off" in the form of 1) an exported FF&EZ data archive send to another FF&EZ system, 2) printed reports sent to a purchaser or 3) in the case of the optional Orders Export plug-in, as exported data for another system. Note: Worksheet reports, including the purchasing-related reports, include all product components for objects on the report — even if a query has been set up for only one vendor or only one type of product — to avoid reporting incomplete costs, pricing or purchasing requirements. For instance, if you print a report for objects from a chair manufacturer, the report will also include specs from the fabric manufacturers if the chair includes COM. Installation Most of these reports have an option to include a thumbnail image of each object's primary specification.
Also, the "schedule" reports (mentioned previously) are useful for this purpose. |