Overview

Reports answer the questions somebody else asks you: a funder, a board, a school coordinator, an insurer.

Most of what you need is already built, so the work is usually filtering, choosing columns, and saving that arrangement so you never rebuild it. This article is for administrators.

1. What reports do I already have?

Look here before building anything. These cover the questions organizations actually get asked:

• Hours logged, the one every funder wants
• Check-in and check-out records
• Shift lists, who was scheduled and who attended
• Emergency contacts, for whoever is running the event
• Medical information, where you collect it
• Birthdays
• Site membership history, for multi-location organizations

2. What does Manage fields do?

Every list in Vome shows a set of columns, and Manage fields is where you decide which ones.

• Show or hide any field, including your custom ones
• Reorder columns, so what you read first comes first
• Save the arrangement as a named custom view

3. What is a custom view?

A saved report. It is the single most useful feature in this module and the most overlooked.

A custom view remembers three things together:

• The filters. Your data filters are saved with the view, so it opens already narrowed to the records you care about rather than the whole database.
• The fields. Which columns are shown and which are hidden.
• The order. How those columns are arranged left to right.

Name it, save it, and it is one click away from then on. The quarterly funder report stops being forty minutes of rebuilding and becomes an item you select.

Custom views are not only for reports. They work across your forms, database and reports, and all of your saved views are listed together in one place, so you are not hunting for the one you made last quarter.

4. Can I make a custom view load automatically?

Yes. Open the view and choose Make it my default view.

From then on that view loads immediately whenever you open that page, instead of the standard list. If ninety per cent of your work happens inside one filtered slice of the database, this saves you the same three clicks every single day.

It is per page and per person, so your default does not change what a colleague sees.

5. The trap: rearranging without saving changes your defaults

This is the behaviour that catches people out, and it is quiet.

If you change the columns and do not save the result as a custom view, that layout becomes the default for both your Active and your Archived lists. You did not ask for that, nothing warned you loudly, and a week later your lists look wrong and nobody can work out why.

Most administrators keep those two lists complete, showing every field, and build custom views for the tailored layouts. So when you have finished arranging columns, save it as a view.

6. If I delete a view, do I lose data?

No. Deleting a custom view removes the saved layout only. Your profiles, submissions and records are untouched.

That is worth knowing because it makes views safe to experiment with. Build one, try it, delete it if it was wrong.

7. How do exports relate to all this?

Exports carry your layout. The columns you chose are the columns you get, in Excel, CSV or PDF.

That is the real reason to set up a view before a reporting deadline rather than during one. The export is only as good as the arrangement behind it.

8. What should I set up first?

Work backwards from who asks you for things, and make each one a saved view.

• Funders and grants: hours, headcount and impact, usually on a fixed schedule and in somebody else's format. Build the view once and reuse it every cycle.
• Day-to-day operations: who is scheduled, who turned up, which shifts are short. Read weekly, so this is the one to make your default.
• Compliance and safety: clearances, waivers, emergency contacts, medical information. Set these up now, because the moment you need them is never the moment you have time to build them.
• Recognition: hours per person, anniversaries, thresholds worth marking.

9. Why is my export missing a column?

Because it is hidden in the layout you exported from.

Open Manage fields, confirm the field is shown, and export again. If it is a custom field you recently created, check it is enabled for that list rather than assuming new fields appear everywhere.

Summary

• Check the ready-made reports before building anything.
• Manage fields chooses which columns a list shows, and in what order.
• A custom view saves the filters, the fields and the column order together, under a name, one click away.
• Custom views work across forms, database and reports, and are all listed in one place.
• Make it my default view loads it automatically every time you open that page.
• Rearranging without saving silently changes the default for both the Active and Archived lists. Save it as a view instead.
• Deleting a view deletes the layout, never the data.
• Exports carry the layout, so build the view before the deadline, not during it.

Where to go next

• How do I export filtered records from my database and reports?
• Profile tags or custom fields?
• Trackers, KPIs and goals