Building custom reports: Frequently asked questions

We’ve designed Reporting be as powerful as possible, which means allowing all the available options that we can at each stage. So if you’ve only got Time data sources, you’ll be able to group by Item Name, Team Member etc. But if you include other data sources such as Expenses or Invoices, they don’t belong to any Team Member or specific Item, it’s not possible to include that grouping.

Your report is structured by your chosen groupings. Each row displays an item from your primary group, which can be expanded to show a secondary group.

The column view shows the specific metrics for these items in each column, using either Streamtime data or your own custom formulas. The time series view then visualises this data as a chart, showing you performance trends over your selected date range.

Any discrepancies would be related to the Unscheduled Time portion of the calculations. We've made some improvements to the how calculations are made for the new reporting section in order for it to be more helpful.

In the new Reporting, Unscheduled Time now rolls forward instead of disappearing.
In the current WIP, if there was unscheduled time in the past, it would no longer be included in calculations regardless of item status. Now, completed item time will be excluded from calculations, but if there is unscheduled time in the past on an item that was Paused or In Play, we assume work may still be done and move that time forward. To exclude, simply Complete items you no longer want to be included in that calculation.

You can create a new filter set simply by clicking the dropdown from Expenses and selecting ‘Create new empty set’. You can then name this set, and add filters on the right hand column. This also allows you to move columns between filter sets if you accidentally add one to the wrong set. You can also duplicate filter sets on the right hand side if you need to.

Because columns from Job Totals aren't affected by the date filter, you'll need to specifically filter out any jobs that you don't want to see: either using the Global Filters to remove them entirely from the report, or using the Job Totals filter set itself if you don't want to exclude the job entirely and still see it appear if it fits other data sources.

If you're seeing jobs that are out of date, or completed many moons ago, consider adding a Job Status filter at the global level. This might also be a nice nudge to tidy up your jobs and archive those that are no longer required 🧹

Columns from Job Totals show the totals stored on the job — exactly the same as on the jobs list. This means you can't map them across time. To get the same data plotted over time, create a column using To Do's as a data source. It's handy to have both options so that you can create reports that can compare totals as a whole separately from specific data columns based on Time, Expenses, Quotes and Invoices.

Aside from Budget, all other Job Totals columns can be made from the specific data sources to be mapped over time, or via a combination of data columns using formula columns.

When Streamtime displays a total percentage, it goes back to the underlying numbers and recalculates from the combined totals across all rows. This gives you a truer, weighted picture of performance across your business.

Any percentage column works this way, so larger jobs and longer time entries naturally carry more influence on the final figure. This is also the case for percentage totals in list views including Groups, Jobs, Time, Expenses, Quotes, and Invoices.

Example: Budget Variance

Each row shows the budget variance for that job alone. The total is recalculated from the combined actual and budgeted amounts across all jobs.

Imagine two jobs:

That's $6K overspent across $101K of work, so the true Budget Variance total is 6%.

Example: Billable Utilisation

Each row shows the billable utilisation for that job alone. The total is recalculated from the combined billable and total hours across all jobs.

Imagine two jobs:

That's 10 billable hours out of 40 total hours, so the true Billable Utilisation total is 25%.

We understand why you'd like to do this so please message us with your specific feedback. We hope to roll out this capability further at a later date.