Report Generation is a useful tool for narrowing down your customer list by criteria that exists in various other modules. But it's not just for generating reports - despite its name. Report Generation can build reports, print or email letters and labels for your customers, and help you to export information for the customers in your list of results.
To access Report Generation, head to Customer Info → Reports → Report Generation. The primary screen is where you will be entering and editing the criteria you need to use to select your customer records. Clicking OK will lead you to the results area where you can decide what will happen with the records you have chosen.
Using Report Generation
The primary Report Generation screen will consist of several tabs: Customers, Agreements, Equipment, History and Sort Codes. These tabs will collaborate with each other in order to give you the most specific results possible.
For instance, if you select a Zip Code of 33907 in the Customers tab, set the Active State to Active Only in the Agreements tab and then select a Sort Code of RES (for Residential) in the Sort Codes tab, your results will be for all residential customers in the 33907 area that currently have an Active agreement with you.
You will also have the ability to omit certain information. If we look at the same example above, but instead choose to Exclude all customers with the Residential Sort Code, then the results will be the opposite: all customers except Residential ones will be selected.
One more thing to keep in mind is that when working with customers, you have the actual general customer record - which is for billing purposes - and then the locations belonging to that customer. If you want your results to return only the primary customers matching your criteria, you'll choose Select Distinct Customers in the Selection Method field. If you want all Locations matching the criteria, you'll choose Select Individual Customer Locations instead.
Handling the Results
Once you have selected your criteria in the Report Generation screen, click the OK button. The results will be calculated and you will be presented with several options for handling those results. The total number of records selected by your search will be displayed at the top of the window. To see the actual customers selected, click the Display Selected button at the bottom.
Print/Email Using a Template
ESC's built in Word Processor allows you to build a variety of templates that can be used to send documents - such as letters, coupons, newsletters, and more - by mail or email.
Print a Report
Selecting a report in this section will allow you to run ESC's more popular reports with a greater filtering capability than the report itself can provide. For instance, running the Service Agreement Report will allow you to filter the agreements in the report by information from the Agreement module and on basic customer information. However, running the same report from Report Generation gives you the added ability to filter by History, Sort Codes and Equipment.
Print Labels
The ability to print address labels for your customers can be a huge time-saver when it comes to sending out post cards or letters to your customers.
Export Customer List to ASCII
We're not afraid to admit it, ESC can't do everything. And for that reason, we give you the ability to export all of the customer information from your search to a tab-delimited text file. There are a variety of programs and services that will work with this type of data file - including Excel and Word.
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