Period & Comparison Columns
Set the dates a report covers, break the period into columns, and scale the figures — the three controls that decide what every number on the page means.
Three controls sit at the left of every report toolbar and settle the question every figure below depends on: which dates, how many columns, and at what scale. Nothing else on the page can compensate for getting them wrong, which is why they come first.
Set the Period
It reads the current period — a preset name such as This month, or the two dates when the range is your own.
A preset applies and closes in one click. The From and To fields beside the presets accept any range; presets are the shortcut, not the only door.
The toolbar card ends with Period: from → to. That is the range the figures cover, in plain dates, whatever the picker's label says.
The picker offers thirteen presets, ordered by how often they are reached for:
| Group | Presets |
|---|---|
| Days | Today, Yesterday |
| Weeks | This week, Last week |
| Months | This month, Last month |
| Quarters | This quarter, Last quarter |
| Halves | This half, Last half |
| Years | Year to date, This year, Last year |
There is no "all time" on a report. A financial report is a statement about a period, so both bounds are always set.
What a report opens on
A report you have not given dates to picks its own opening range.
| Report | Opens on |
|---|---|
| Sales reports (every path under sales/…) | The current month — the 1st to the last day of the month |
| Every other report — finance, purchases, operations, people, group | The current calendar year — 1 January to 31 December |
The calendar-year default was written for the financial statements, where a year is the only range that makes a comparison meaningful. Purchases, operations and people reports inherit it. If you open Payables Aging or Payroll Summary and see more than you expected, the period is why — set it before reading anything else.
The period travels in the address
Every change writes from, to and dateRange into the page's address. Copy the address and the person you send it to opens the same report over the same dates — no instructions needed. Change the period and the report refetches; the previous figures stay on screen until the new ones arrive, so the page never blinks back to a skeleton.
If you enter a From later than the To, the two are swapped rather than refused.
Compare: Break the Period Into Columns
The second control turns one column of figures into a column per sub-period — a P&L month by month, a Trial Balance quarter by quarter.
| Option | Offered when the range covers |
|---|---|
| Total | Always — one column for the whole period |
| Weekly | At least 7 days |
| Monthly | 1 to 36 months |
| Quarterly | 3 months or more |
| Semi-annual | 6 months or more |
| Annual | 11 months or more |
The list is rebuilt every time you change the period, so an option is never offered that the range cannot fill — and Monthly disappears above 36 months rather than rendering a statement 40 columns wide.
Which reports offer Compare
The control appears only on reports whose body is built to carry period columns. There are sixteen:
| Module | Reports |
|---|---|
| Financial | Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, Trial Balance, Bank Account Summary, Working Capital |
| Sales | Sales Summary, Sales Orders, Customer Receipts, Sales Trend |
| Purchases | Purchases Summary, Purchase Orders, Vendor Payments, Purchase Trend |
| Operations | Stock Reconciliation, Cost of Sales, Inventory Valuation Trend |
Three of them open with columns already on, because a single column would make them something else: Working Capital, Sales Trend and Purchase Trend open Monthly when you reach them from the hub or the catalog.
Its period columns are balances as at each period end, not amounts earned in each period. They are never meant to add across. The report carries its own Movement column for the change between them.
Units: Scale the Figures
The third control divides every money column on screen:
| Units | What a figure of 4,820,000 reads as |
|---|---|
| Units | 4,820,000.00 |
| Thousands | 4,820.00 |
| Millions | 4.82 |
Units is a display choice, applied at the moment of rendering — no figure is recomputed, and the export carries the same scale, so a printed page and the screen it came from always agree.
Scaling applies to money columns only. A column the server types as a quantity — Stock Reconciliation read in Quantity rather than Value, for instance — keeps its own units whatever this control says. A stock count of 12 is 12, never 0.01.
Related
- The whole toolbar in order: Reading a report.
- Choosing the row dimension and the figure: Grouping & measure.
- Keeping a period and its filters for next time: Saved views.
- How the hub picks a fair comparison period: Reporting hub.