How Do I Adjust the Date Range on a Report?

Another entry in our 'Basics' series, this article will look at

Video more your thing? Check out the video version of this guide here.

- How to change the dates/times on a report and

- How to adjust the breakdown of the displayed data (summary vs. daily, weekly, monthly etc). 

This can be very useful if you're hoping to limit a report to a particular period and change how your results are grouped.

We'll begin with a Sales by (Billing) Location report from the built-in Reports section like so: 

Understanding Date Ranges (Last X...)

By default, most reports in Report Toaster are set to the 'Last 30 Days', meaning that they run from 30 days ago to Today.

This updates every day, so if I looked at this report on January 31st 2022, it would go back as far as January 2nd. 

However, if I checked this report on the same day next week (February 7th) then the report would of course run from then till 30 days prior (January 9th). 

This is quite important to understand when you consider some of the specific default date options.

For example. 'Today' means literally just this day. So if you're looking at the report first thing in the morning, it will likely have less data in it than if you look at the same report by evening. 

Likewise, 'Week to Date' will have very different data depending on if you are checking on a Tuesday morning vs. a Friday afternoon.  

So be aware that when you're creating a report on a Wednesday, there's a big difference between:

1. 'Last 7 Days' (Wed - Last Wed)
   
2. Week to Date (this Mon to this Wed) 
   
3. Last Week (Mon - Sun Last Week) 
   

Now that we've covered that, let's look at how to change the date range on a report. 

Changing the Date and Time

At the top right of the screen where it says 'Last 30 Days' you can click that to change the date range. 

Notice that, on the right hand side, you can see those default options we discussed.

You can click any one of these and the report will update automatically. 

E.g. If I selected 'Today', the report would now look like this: 

Alternatively, you can set a custom date range by doing the following: 

1. Click on that same menu to access the date picker.
   
2. Under the first set of dates (red), I can pick the date I want the report to start running from. 

For example, if I wanted to run the report from Jan 1st to Jun 30th, I could click the arrows  to scroll through the different months and click on the dates in question

You'll notice the date range also changes in the Start bar at the top.

This is actually a typeable field, so if you prefer to simply type in the range you want to use, you can do that too. 

(For more tips on what text you can enter in this field, check out the question mark hint next to the box like so:) 

Note that if you want to get REALLY specific, you can also introduce times (see the example in the help box above).

This might be important to measure the impact of a key sale, so in this case, I could add times and narrow down the window even further.

Changing the Date Range Breakdown 

Now suppose I want to change my report between seeing the totals for the period vs. a breakdown (by daily, weekly, monthly etc.)

For this example, we'll use the Finance Summary report as the results are already totalled:

As you can see here, this displays the totals for the 'Last 30 Days', where I had 5,419 Orders, with a Total Sales of $1,170,435.46

But suppose I wanted to see a breakdown of how much I sold each week?

First, let's change our breakdown via this dropdown: 

Step 2 - In this case, we'll select weekly. Now the report should look like this: 

As you can see here, this is very useful to look at smaller data sets and measure trends over a specified interval of time, rather than trying to simply look at the totals for the period.

Through this chart, I can see my Sales are down for the week! Now perhaps this is not surprising considering I created this on a Thursday and the week isn't complete yet (!)

However, this might be something that's quite useful if we're looking at a complete period of data (e.g. Last Year) where the numbers aren't subject to change. 

And that's it :)

For other articles in our Basic Guides series, check out our main section here.

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