Best Practices for Testing Custom Reports

Follow best practices to efficiently design and test custom reports.

Custom Reports for Transactions in a Match Type

Assume that you want to create a custom report that lists the transactions for a specific match type. The quickest and error-free way to create a custom query for this report is to use the auto-generated query in the match type view of the required match type.

For example, you want to create a custom query that lists all the transactions in the POS to Bank match type. This match type contains two data sources. To create this custom query:

1. From the Home page, click Application, and then Match Types.
2. Click the ID of the POS to Bank match type.
3. In the Properties tab of the Edit Match Type dialog, click the Match Type View for Data Sources icon.
4. Copy the query displayed in the dialog and then click Close.

While creating a custom query, use the copied query in the Query field of the New Query dialog.

Testing Custom Reports Quickly

One of the important steps in creating and generating custom reports is to create a report template. However, creating a report template takes time and planning. To quickly test your custom report, without spending time on creating the required report template, you upload an empty .rtf file as the template for the report.

When creating a report definition, upload the empty .rtf file in the Template field of the New Report dialog. And, when generating this custom report, select csv as the Output Format.

Minimizing Navigation When Designing and Testing Custom Reports

When testing a custom report, you may need to frequently switch between Report Configuration and Reports in the Account Reconciliation application. When defining a custom report, you click Report Configuration from the Home page, and then use the Edit Report dialog to define the report properties. To test this custom report, you need to click Reports from the Home page, select your custom report and click Generate. After the report is run and you view the results, if there are generation errors that need to be corrected, or definitions that need to be updated, you must again navigate to Report Configuration.

To simultaneously develop and test custom reports, you can log in to Account Reconciliation and navigate to Report Configuration to develop the custom report. Then, create another new Account Reconciliation session, by using a different browser or a private window, and log in using your credentials. From the Home page in the new session, navigate to Reports. Now you can switch between these two sessions to simultaneously develop and test your custom reports.