Building a report

Begin does not ship your old reports. You build the one you need from a data source, a set of columns, and a date range. This page covers the four choices that decide what a report shows.

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Start a report

Go to Reports and open any report, or create a new one. Every report is a saved view: your choices are stored with it, and it opens the same way next time.

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Choose a source

The Source decides which records the report reads. One report block reads one source. Two sources exclude records on purpose, and the report says so under the source picker:

• Shifts — cancelled and rejected shifts are not counted.
• Time entries — hour figures count approved entries only.

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Choose a layout

Layout decides the shape of the report:

• Report — a dashboard of chart and table blocks.
• Table — one configurable table with filterable rows.

A Report layout holds several blocks, each with its own source. That is how one report can put a chart of scheduled shifts beside a table of reported hours.

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List records, or summarise them

This is the choice that changes a report the most, and it is made with Group by.

• Leave Group by empty and you get a record list — one row per shift, entry or request. Use it to check individual records.
• Set Group by to a person, position, location or label and you get a summary — one row per group, with the columns totalled. Use it for payroll and for month-end.

Calculated hour figures need a person to calculate for, so most of them only appear when the report groups by person. Group by position and the report says so rather than showing a blank:

Calculated figures are unavailable unless the report groups by person. The calculator produces them for one person at a time, so a position, location or label group has nothing to sum.

Charts add Aggregation (count, sum or average) and Granularity (day, week or month) on top of the same idea.

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See a person’s days

A summary by person answers “how many hours in the month”. The next question — how many on each day — needs no setting at all. Click a person’s row and their days appear in its place. Click a day and you get the shifts or entries that made it. A trail across the top — Summary › Ava Stone › 21 Aug — names every level and takes you back up. The interval follows the range you chose: a day each up to 31 days, then a week each, then a month each. A range that holds only one interval has nothing to tile, so a row click goes straight to the records. Days as columns turns the same breakdown on its side: people down the page, days across it, one measure per cell, and the period total at the end. It is the month grid Begin Classic showed inside a single cell, laid out as a real table you can read, sort and download. Three things the report tells you underneath, because each one looks like a mistake until you know the rule:

• A shift is counted once, on the day it starts, even when its hours fall on two days.
• Where an overnight shift’s hours land — the start day, the end day, or split across both — follows this workspace’s overtime rule. The report names the rule in force.
• Each day is rounded on its own, so the days need not add up to the period total to the last minute.

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Choose columns and a range

Open the column picker to add columns. They are grouped by category — hours, breaks, dates and times, and counts. The hour columns explains what each hour figure means. Range sets the period. Presets cover the last 7, 30 or 90 days, this month and last month, and you can set a custom range.

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Filter

Filter narrows the rows. Filters are offered only where the report can honour them, so the set of filters changes with the source and the grouping. One filter has a consequence worth knowing:

Norm and overtime are unavailable while a filter narrows the report. A norm covers the whole contract, so a subset of records cannot divide it.

If norm or overtime columns go unavailable after you add a filter, that is why. Remove the filter to get them back.

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Share it

You choose who can see a report when you create it, and you can change it later from Share. A report is Private to you, Shared with the whole workspace, or Restricted to named people and roles — each of whom gets Can view or Can edit. Sharing a report shares its configuration, not a snapshot. Everyone opens it against current data, and each reader sees only the rows their own permissions allow.

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Next

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