Report Writer

Hi all -

I'm looking to utilize the report writer functionality to generate more robust financial reports from Lawson, but not sure where to get started. Does anyone have any experience utilizing the Report Writer features and have examples of custom built reports they'd be willing to share?

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Infor Lawson Financials Group - Discussion

Comments

unknown

My experience with RW is that it is difficult to learn and master and ultimately the output is not worth the time or effort. My advice is to determine your larger reporting needs and then find a solution to fit those needs. It is highly likely that RW would not fit into your long-term needs.

unknown

RW takes time and trial & error when learning. We have 192 RW report formats that have been developed since we went into Lawson (we went live January 2014). The last reports we built were to generate auditor trial balances for the past 3 fiscal years. Our organization finds them useful and publishes the data out to management, but it all depends on what you want to create and if you have the time to dedicate to trying to make it work.

unknown

At a recent user group, the Infor presentation on the future of GL indicated that RW will go away in Infor XI. Infor is moving to OLAP reporting for GLAMOUNTS data. Rather than invest time in RW, it might make more sense to look at IBI or SSAS reporting.

unknown

I'd agree with what the others are saying . . . it's pretty complicated to set up. Don't know if it is that much more than other report writers, but it does take awhile. We've used RW's for 8 years tho' and it basically works fine. Not sure we set it up the most efficiently, but the more named ranges you can use, the better off you will be in the future. I'll attach an RW299 from one of ours. If doing it again, I think I'd do fewer different reports and just use selection criteria on the front end. With the present environment, you might want to consider either Infor BI or Dashboard Gear for an easier/more flexible option.

amacknig

our company finds the RW a very usefull tool. You don't have to purchase extra software, it comes with the GL package. you can run a report as a spreadsheet, csv, and easily bring data into another workbook for additional analysis. having RW's preset, you just run them from RW100 whenever you need them. by running them by process Groups, Folders, or Frequencies. i once did a presentation at CUE about Lawson Chart Structure and Report Writers. i will attach the presentation info, and possibly you can find this useful information.

unknown

Very Helpful, Gail. When you re-worked your chart, did you do a separate, new one and keep the original also? We need to do the same thing, but I was unsure about the transition.

unknown

The chart setup is important whether you use RW or an OLAP reporting tool. The key to efficient maintenance is to build reports from summary accounts or summary accounting units so that as accounts and accounting units are added, no maintenance is required in the report design. We re-worked our chart when we went live on Lawson (2001) and brought multiple facilities onto a standard chart. We always focus on the desired financial statement reporting when adding new accounts or accounting units.

amacknig

we re-worked the existing chart..the first year we kept old posting accounts with the new accounts, under the same summary account (example old sales 3010-0001 was under new summary 2010-0000) Report Writers were VERY difficult the year of transistion...because you had to compare this year (2010) against last year (3010). then after 1 year, we moved old accounts to a section we called "Inactive Accounts" so they no longer appeared, but were still there for history. An alternative would be to move the data from old posting accounts to the new accounts...could be a a large query, make changes and upload...using Add-Ins to Query then Add-Ins upload GL40.

unknown

I agree with Gail in that RW100 is very useful. But I also can't disagree with folks who say it is difficult to learn, but part of that is because it has so many options. It isn't flashy - no pie graphs or visualizations, just a way to slice and dice your Acct Unit/Account combinations in any way you can come up with. You can use it for "data dumps" to get the data into another system (Excel) or you can do formats within formats and some other fancy stuff and basically have it spit out your monthly financial statements.
It is concerning that RW100 is going away after version 10, whenever that is. We have spent 10 years perfecting our usage of RW100 and have many highly complex reports that we will have to replicate somewhere somehow. Hopefully Infor will come up with a way to migrate/upgrade those existing reports (hint! hint!).

unknown

Jason makes some good points... good luck with the hint!

unknown

Thank you all for your feedback and for sharing your resources!

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