At the end of the month, the financial staff and IT people have to catch up with the report.
The financial staff cried:
Since I have done the general ledger accounting, I found that people are eating, I am doing the report; when people are sleeping, I am doing the report. The report is really from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, from the end of the year to the beginning of the year, there is no other life, only EXCEL.

IT people are even more dissatisfied:
The company has purchased tens of millions of SAP, and the report that comes with the business system is not used. It still excels mailbox copying. There is fewer data in the task system, and the caliber is not right there. Back to the various complaints data is wrong. SQL taught you to write, and the simple database function took two days of training. At the end of the day, simple reporting requirements are still being handed over to IT, but demand is getting more demanding.

Enterprise reporting tools are the basic things that are indispensable in the enterprise. They maintain the circulation of the entire business information, but now they become the shackles of many people’s daily work, which inevitably leads to a reflection.

Sharp tools make good work!

The main reason for these problems is the lack of an efficient tool.

Doing a report to make a form, many people think of Excel in the first place. Excel as a personal office software is unique, but for commercial use, in fact, there is a slight lack of efficiency in office collaboration: collecting data with Excel is easy to mess, using Excel to store data is easy to lose, affecting data quality. Moreover, the general enterprise report demand is greater than the personnel load, and using Excel to make the report change report is undoubtedly increasing the workload.

A friend who knows IT may say that hand it to the database, my SQL, oracle, write two SQL and solve the problem with the computing performance of the database. No more, find programmers to write code, batch report, data entry, graphical reports, and even data analysis can be submitted to the program development, powerful performance.

If there are ready-made tools, you can directly interact with the database (data export + data filling), can connect to the data of each system, can efficiently report in batches, display, interactive analysis, visualize large screen, and achieve office collaboration.

That is the FineReport I want to talk about today, which is an excel report generator that will free you from problems you meet in creating reports in Excel.

First,  using FineReport to make a template, you can replace N manual repetitive work with Excel!

Why do you say this, first understand the principle of FineReport’s tabulation?

1.FineReport’s  tabulation principle

FineReport is to design a report template by connecting to the database and reading the data fields. Therefore, before making the template, you must know the type and address of the database, and the username and password for accessing the database. Before you can establish a data connection, you can start designing the template. Then, according to the required functions (form display, report? dashboard analysis?) and the pattern to operate the template, and finally display on the web.

The object that is processed when the template is created is the data field (different from the cell data of Excel). One cell in the template puts a data field, and the field extends when the web site displays. The expansion of cells in the FineReport report is directional, can be scaled up, or scaled horizontally, or not.

The expansion of a cell is for a single cell. When multiple cells are bound in the body of the report, the cell and another cell follow the extension by the parent-child relationship. The data of the sub-grid is filtered and grouped according to the data of the parent cell and is also expanded according to the extension direction of the parent cell.

2.Three types of report design methods solve all daily reporting needs and a table reuse

1) Ordinary template design, which is most commonly used. Relying on the expansion of the cell and the relationship between the parent and the child to achieve the template effect, you can query the parameters, report the report, chart design, and so on. Such as cross-reports, free reports, group-reports, and so on.

2) Aggregate report design for irregular large reports. Applicable to a report that displays multiple independent modules in a template, and complex reports with several report blocks grouped together.

3) Decision report design, which is a form, is also a dashboard, which is a visual data report in which various common charts are spliced together.

By dragging and dropping the chart to make, the prepared dashboard can adapt the size of the screen by itself, and it can also be made into the report of the mobile phone, and the large screen is visualized.

Here are some common report formats:
Cross Report

Group Report

Free Report

3. Parameters for data query and filtering

In many cases, we need to query the data according to the conditions and filter it. In FineReport, by setting parameters to bind data fields and filtered controls (single boxes, checkboxes, etc.), the parameters can be edited by JS to more complex situations, and the query conditions are input through the interface to control the content and form of the report display. Then export and print.

Many employees in many companies will do weekly reports, such as weekly newspapers, and some national companies have branches, stores, and offices. Frequently do these repetitive reports. Then use FineReport to centrally upload each data detail to the database (fill in the function, as explained below). When doing the report, do some common dimensions “region”, “time”, “city”, etc. as a query parameter control, similar to the filtering and the exporting in Excel.

4. Filling

Reporting is the entry of data into the database for fixed-format and fixed-case data collection. Just like the mailbox, collection, username, and password you submitted when you registered the website, it will be stored in the database according to the format.

A template is also required to fill in the report. The operation flow is as follows:

The report template consists of controls, text controls, numeric controls, password controls, single checkboxes, web pages, files, and more. The control corresponds to the data field. With the report, you can collect data and allow users to add, delete, and modify the database. For data quality and data security considerations, it is also possible to perform verification operations on the entering data.

The most useful use of the report is to replace the excel to collect data, do a template, the award template link is sent to the relevant person, after filling out the data review, you can enter the library, save the excel pass, and fill it in the web, it is very simple .

Second, not just reports, but also data visualization

Cool dashboards need to be designed and displayed through FineReport’s form (decision report). Preliminary design interface by dragging and dropping report blocks, chart blocks, and various controls.
Unlike ordinary reports, ordinary reports are a whole and cannot be partially refreshed. The form is composed of various components, which can be refreshed within the component, that is, partially refreshed. Like dynamic large screens are global or partial refresh, so you need to use decision report production.

1. Decision-making process

New form: FineReport supports a new workbook, which is a common report template, and also supports new forms, two design modes;

Drag component: FineReport form supports a variety of different component types, including report blocks, tab blocks, absolute canvas blocks, parameters, charts and controls, and so on;

Defining the dataset: defining the data source of each component. The chart component data can be derived from the dataset or from the cell;

Set the form style: set the display style of the form.

2.data visualization and interaction

A lot of netizens have commented before, asking what kind of visualization is made by such a chart. In fact, most of the H5 charts that come with FineReport. Previously, FineReport was mentioned as a good openness, allowing IT colleagues to write code development, so when making, you can also access third-party controls such as Echarts to create charts.

3. Practical and powerful data map

Finereport has a very powerful map function: basic maps, GIS maps, thermal maps, big data flow maps, ect..

The GIS map is based on the GIS map layer for data display, supports custom GIS theme style, and can be linked with the data table. For example, the provincial level drills to the city, county, and street.

Third, summary

The space is limited. The above only shows some of the functions of FineReport, and many details cannot be expanded.

To say efficiency, the biggest advantage is that the data is automatically generated from the database, and a type of report is made into a fixed-style template. Each time it is synchronized, it automatically produces periodic reports, such as daily, weekly, and monthly reports. , quarterly reports, etc. Each time according to the conditions of the query, Excel batch export/print, less manpower to go one by one with Excel statistics summary.

And in operation, most of the functions FineReport are packaged into modules, including writing SQL access, summary filtering, etc., basically, have corresponding function keys. Like the famous balance sheet, if you write code or write complex SQL statements in the past, and if the complicated SQL statement is wrong, if the data comes from multiple sources, it will not be completely liberated.
Secondly, in terms of data processing speed, part of the performance depends on the database, and part of it relies on the line report engine of FineReport.

Compared with the stand-alone efficiency of Excel, hundreds of thousands of lines of data are output in seconds. Furthermore, the enterprise database has various self-contained or third-party clustering schemes, and the heap machine can approximate the infinite increase in data storage capacity.

Finally, in addition to liberating individuals, FineReport should be the most important contribution to the business. In commercial use, we must consider efficiency, personnel training costs, synergy, but also consider the support and contribution to the business, Excel is more difficult to contribute to these points.