Book a demo →
How-to

Build a report

Pick the collection, choose what to measure, choose how to group it, set the period, and pick a chart. Preview it, then save it if it is worth keeping. What you can measure and group by depends on the fields that collection actually has.

Requirements: access to the collection you are reporting on, and a role that can create reports.

Steps

  1. Choose the collection. A report answers a question about one collection — deals, bookings, work orders. What you can measure and group by is drawn from that collection's own fields, so the options you see are specific to it.
  2. Choose the measure. Count the entries, or total a numeric field — how many deals, or how much they are worth. If a field you expected is missing here, it is because a measure needs a number to work on.
  3. Choose how to group it. Break the number down by stage, by owner, by a set of options like priority, or by a date. Grouping by a date needs a step — day, week, month, quarter, or year — so the report knows how to bucket it.
  4. Add a second grouping if useful. A report can split each bar or row by one more field — deals by month, split by owner. Two is the maximum, which keeps a chart readable.
  5. Set the period. Choose which date field the period applies to, then the range — the last week, month, or quarter, the current month or year, everything, or dates you set yourself. You can also compare against the previous period to see movement.
  6. Filter it if the question is narrower than the whole collection — one status, one owner, above a threshold.
  7. Pick the chart. A single figure for one headline number, bars or a line for comparison and trend, a pie for shares of a whole, or a table for the raw grouped numbers.
  8. Preview, then save. Run it to see the result, adjust anything that reads oddly, and save it with a name that states the question. Saved reports can be added to a dashboard.

If the options are not what you expect

The builder offers what the collection supports, which is the fastest diagnostic there is. No numeric measure means no number field to total. No grouping by stage means the collection has no stages. No date period means no date field. In each case the fix is in the collection, not the report — see create a collection.

Notes and limitations

  • Two groupings at most — a primary one and one split.
  • A date grouping needs a step (day, week, month, quarter, or year); it cannot group on raw timestamps.
  • Only one grouping can be a multi-value field — a field holding several values at once, such as tags or a multi-select.
  • The period applies to a date field you choose, so "this quarter" means something different depending on whether you picked the created date or the expected close date. Pick deliberately.
  • Reports read live data — there is no stored snapshot, and history comes from comparing periods, not from saved copies.

What a report is and how it differs from a view is in how reports work. Stages and typed fields — the things that make a collection reportable — are covered in working with collections and fields.

Frequently asked questions

I cannot total a field.
A total needs a numeric field. If the collection has no number or price field, only counting is available — add the field to the collection first.
Grouping by date is not accepted.
Choose a step — day, week, month, quarter, or year. A date grouping needs one, otherwise there is nothing to bucket entries into.
My numbers look wrong for the period.
The period is measured against a date field you pick. Check which one is selected — created date and expected close date give very different answers.