8 Formats in RW100

RW100 is limited to 8 formats. P.S. I'm moving this to S3 Financials forum...

If the report is complex enough to need more than 8 formats, there is a good chance that it should be broken up into smaller pieces.

Can you briefly describe the formats you are asked to create?

I think you have mentioned Crystal on other posts. Why not just create the report in Crystal right from the tables and not use RW100 as a source?

This report uses budgeted units, Budgeted amounts, units and amounts for current period, YTD, last year Current period and Last YTD. It uses different calculations to claculate different rows in the report. Since the rpeort is so somplex the easiest way is to use RW100 since the data dictionary item calculates all of this for you versus a crystal report.

Also if I use RW100 as a source and pull it into crystal there has to be only one format defined in this report so I am limited either ways.

I appreciate all the reply messages though and I think there may not be any solution to the above other than Lawson trying to increase the no: of formats.

I do not know the full details of how your report is set-up and what calculations you are doing with in the report but here is how I got around the 8 formats limit.

I set-up some statistical accounts and used the allocation module to perform the calculations and populate the statistical accounts with the results.

Some of the formats you mentioned can actually be combined in a single format. If you have columns for Actual MTD, Actual YTD, Actual MTD LY, Actual YTD LY, and Budget, then you would only need a single format for amounts and a single format for units. These 2 formats would apply to all columns.

Calculations are also not necessarily additional formats. Do your calculations in rows or ghost columns, then display the result. If you wanted to do percentages, you may need a third format.

I have built dozens of reports just like this and never hit 8 formats. Your report is not really that different from what every CFO wants to see.

I actually solved this issue on my own. Here's what I looked at. I need 12 different calculations just not based on units and amounts but each different row is calculated with a different formula which used not only the regualr data dictionary names but also total names in RW100.

Since Lawson's RW100 supports only 8 formats, I have created 8 different RW100 reports each that calculates one row of the reportwriter report. I am using each report as a datasource to pull into my crystal report. So I have 12 rw100 reports written and each report becomes a subreport in my crystal report that are linked by company number. This way I can solve the issue of having 12 different formats in my report as one report.

I am yet to publish the report on LBI that has 12 sub-reports and see whether Lawson will refresh the report with 12 different sub-reports.