Being a non-accountant (who has been harassed in the past for not understanding the difference between "payables" and "invoices"), I found the chapter very useful.  You may find it a bit too simplistic.  After all, you already know probably half the information in the chapter.  On the other hand, the other half of the chapter does include some very practical information on precisely how to create these kind of reports from common accounting databases.  Depending on your background, this may be exactly what you are looking for, or something you figured out by yourself five years ago.  I can tell you, though, that this kind of advice is not something I've seen in any other book on Crystal.  So, you may not have much luck finding anything else to work better.

If this chapter doesn't do what you want, you will likely do better by looking for a book on your particular accounting package.  For instance, there probably is a book (or similar resource) on using Crystal to create reports for, say, Solomon.  But, you'd find it as a Solomon book, not a Crystal book, and the concepts may not transfer well to using Crystal with another program.

Hi - I'm at the mountains for a few days and about to go skiing, but I thought I would check the forum real quick to see what the activity was like.  So I won't be able to respond for a while.

Anyway, the book cover basic accounting principles b/c I want to make sure that non-accountants understand all the concepts necessary. But after that I go into detail about which tables you will use, how they are linked together and what fields you need to use. Then I walk you through the steps for building the reports from scratch. For you, you should skip the introductory stuff (of course) and get right into the discussion of table structures.

Also, I would really appreciate any and all comments you have about this chapter. I searched all over for books that teach the details of how to create financial reports and couldn't find anything at all. So this was a bit of an experiment for me to see if there is a market for this type of content, and if so, did I do a good job of it. So having someone like yourself give me critical feedback would be fantastic. I also gave a copy to a CFO and he is going to review it and mark it up with suggestions.

Well, I hope you like the book and that it meets (or exceeds!) or needs. Please let me know.

Off to the slopes!!! 


Brian