A commonly asked question that the Support Team receives is, 'What historical data does the Flash report utilize? Does it look at the actual dates (January 31, 2022, versus January 31, 2021) or does the report utilize a specific day of the week within the period?'
The Flash Report will utilize the day or date depending on the current structure of your Fiscal Years found under 'Administration' in the Accounting module.
There are a couple of ways to troubleshoot this:
- Review the Fiscal Year Structures in place (recommended first)
- Run the Fiscal Year report for years included in the Flash Report and compare their week structures
It is important to remember that the Operational Reports run based on the Operational Calendar. Therefore,
- If there is no Operational Calendar, the Flash report or other Operational reports will default to utilizing the Fiscal Calendar because if no Operational Year is created, Restaurant365 will default to a combined structure.
- If your Operational Year is set as Calendar Months, the report will look at the date MM.DD.YY in terms of historical data versus the day of the week (M, T, W, TH, F).
Compare the Day of the Week
If your Operational Period Structure is set as 4/4/5, the Flash Report will display data based on the day of the week (M, T, W, TH, F) and not necessarily the date MM.DD.YY. This is also true of the period structure 13-4.
Compare the Date
If you would like your Flash Report to reflect the date MM.DD.YY, using a combined Fiscal and Operational report or setting the Operational report to be 'Calendar Month' will accomplish this.
Compare the Day Number within a Year Structure
If you create a Custom Operational Calendar, the report will compare Day 1 to Day 1. If 2021 started on 1/1/2021, and 2022 started on 12/30/2021, then the report would compare those two dates as they are both 'Day 1' of their calendar.
Historical Days
If you are wanting the Flash Report to reflect historical days of the week (M, T, W, TH, F), the following must be true of the settings:
- Operational Reporting Period is the same as the day of the week (M, T, W, TH, F) that is the beginning day in the prior year. To make changes to the structure of the Reporting Period, please review the Fiscal Period/Year Setup.
- If the Reporting Period is changed, Users need to work backward to update all years accordingly. Ensure that all days are accounted for so that there are no gaps, which is necessary if the reports are to correctly function.
- Example: If 2022's Reporting Period start date is updated to 1/2/2022, be sure 2021 ended on 1/1/2022 on 2021's Operational Year. An easy way to review this at a Summary Level would be to set a filter in the Fiscal Year Grid for the Legal Entity in question.