How to use the Report Generator (part 1)

From the main menu:

• Report
• Report Generator
• Create a report

The following two boxes will appear on your screen In the top right hand corner, you will notice the words PRINTOUT selection

This is where you tell the report WHAT INFORMATION YOU WANT PRINTED. It does not care at this point WHO you want the information about.

Nomads Veterinary Group New report -             PRINTOUT selection (BDS)

For this example we shall be asking for a telephone list for all clients who own an Abyssinian cat !

We want to have their name, address, and telephone number printed. It would also help to have the animals name.

So, we will select these criteria from the LEFT HAND box by using the arrow keys to highlight our choices one at a time.

Don't be put off if you cannot see what you are looking for, there are more than THREE pages of choices, keep pressing the down arrow. Or type the 1st character of the field you are looking for. Only when the little asterisk in the right hand line of the LEFT HAND box is at the very bottom have you run out of choices !

Once each one is highlighted, press the SPACE BAR to transfer it into the RIGHT HAND box.

Your screen should now look like this:

Once it looks like this, press return to Continue.

This screen will now appear, it is dealing with HOW the printout will look.

For now, we will leave this screen as it is. Report Generator Part 2 will cover print format options.

Press return to Continue.

A screen with the line " Do you wish to allocate sort fields? Yes/No will appear

Again, we will leave this for now, answer No

You will now have two boxes back again. BEWARE .. there is a difference between these and the first two you saw ! This time they are for the SEARCH criteria ( see top RH of screen)

Using the arrow keys again, highlight the breed field and use the space bar to transfer it into the RIGHT HAND box.

Press return to continue

The screen will now show the following

Enter the word abyssinian into the highlighted box and press return to continue.

TIP: It is likely that, at some point, you will want to run the same report for a different breed. If this is possible then, rather than specify abyssinian, simply enter a / in the highlighted box. This means " I don't know which breed, ask me when I run the report"!

Press return to continue

Depending on which version of the Vet system you have the next screen will show either

Report Description [                   ]

or a list of miscellaneous options.

If you get the options, press return to accept all the defaults (Part 2 will cover this)

Once you are at the report description screen enter a descriptive name for the report eg: Abyssinian tel no's. and press return

Filename to store under: [                ] will now appear. This name can be much shorter eg: abytel

You will now be taken back to the report generator menu.

Select Run a Report and answer the questions !

When it asks for report to run, either enter the short filename abytel or, if you cannot remember this then press return to get a full list of all the full descriptions.

Enter your required start and finish numbers (1 & End normally ) and choose either Print or Display (disk/summary covered later)

If the computer will not let you display your report, it is because the report is too many characters wide.

If you entered a / in the breed box in Search criteria, the computer will now ask you to enter the breed you want to search for at this time.

The report will run and either display the details on the screen or print them on the default printer.