Reporting with FileMaker 8

[Mike513jr]

I am fairly new to all of this, but I have a real good start on a FileMaker solution that I have designed to keep track of individual sales reps in our company.

I am having a problem getting any reporting to work, mainly because I'm not sure how to do it.

Here is the short of it - I have several value lists set up where I can select from a main screen which sales rep - what the product is - and the result of the sales call.

I am trying to come up with a reporting page that will show me, based on each sales rep - different stats on them - but I have figured out that I need to be able to read into a value list for a search.

I'm at a dead end with this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have uploaded my file for anyone that wants to help.

Thanks.

SalesTrax.zip

[mav]

Mike513jr,

Think of a 'Report' as a way of presenting a 'found set' or 'filter' of your records. You can present this data on screen or on paper, and this will decide which method to use.

For on screen reporting, try using a portal.

Right now, your database has one main table (you haven't used the expenses table), where a user will create a single record without any relationship.

I've modified your file so that each client has it's own record, which each lead is related to that client, via the Client ID field in both the client and lead table occurances.

In your file, each time a new record is created, you need to retype in the data in each field for each client.

In the new file, once you have added a new client (or searched that they don't already exist), you click the button with the 'plus' sign to make a new lead for that client. For navigation, I have added a > button in both the client and lead layouts.

If all this all makes sense, you can now seperate the sales reps into their own table and create a seperate record for each rep, with a portal showing the relationship to their leads and even another one showing their cleints.

You will see I have made the Client ID and Lead ID auto enter, ensuring these are always unquie. It also stops users manually entering record numbers with IDs of 1001 10002 1003 . . .

You will need to change your search request to point to the client details in the Clients Table, and then remove the Client Name and Address fields from the Leads Table, as these are now being looked up from the Clients Table when displayed in the Leads layout.

Please let me know how you go . . .

SalesTrax_2.zip

[FileKat]

You can make reports pretty easily by going in Layout Mode to "New Layout" and let the Layout Wizard help you set up a Columnar Report with sub-totals - follow the directions and you can set your report to sort on any number of criteria. For example, you can create a report that sorts by your Product type and you can see which Lead Types were most successful and how much each one brought in, etc. The Layout Wizard is really quite helpful and you can get results from just the way your database is now or similarly with the one with some very good suggested changes you were sent by another responder.