Financial Chapter
Printed From: Crystal Reports Book
Category: General Information
Forum Name: Talk with the Author
Forum Discription: Ask Brian questions about his books and give him your comments. Like the book? Hate the book? Have suggestions? Let me know!
URL: http://www.crystalreportsbook.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2199
Printed Date: 04 May 2024 at 5:07pm
Topic: Financial Chapter
Posted By: bonsmcook
Subject: Financial Chapter
Date Posted: 01 Feb 2008 at 5:36am
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Hi Brian. I am interested in your book because it has an entire chapter on Financial Reporting. However from reading the summary in Amazon it makes me think that the chapter has more to do with teaching non-accountant types about financial reports overall and general ledger tables. (I am a CPA and business analyst so I wouldn't find that particularly helpful). Does it contain information on actually pulling in data from GL tables to create multi-column income statements as well or can you recommend another Crystal Reports book that emphasizes financial reports (income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, e.g.)? Thank you. ------------- SMCook |
Replies:
Posted By: Lugh
Date Posted: 01 Feb 2008 at 5:50am
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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. |
Posted By: bonsmcook
Date Posted: 01 Feb 2008 at 7:43am
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Thanks for the feedback. We'll get the book ordered today.
------------- SMCook |
Posted By: BrianBischof
Date Posted: 01 Feb 2008 at 11:55am
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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 ------------- Please support the forum! Tell others by linking to it on your blog or website:<a href="http://www.crystalreportsbook.com/forum/">Crystal Reports Forum</a> |