Question: What kind of reporting is available from TimeControl?

Answer: You have several options for TimeControl reporting thanks, in part, to its long legacy.  Let’s take the options in order of preference.

Report Interface

The first and most popular reporting tool in the system is the TimeControl Report Interface.  This What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) report tool allows you edit existing example reports supplied with TimeControl or create your own reports from scratch.  It includes numerous abilities including being able to mix charts and table views, customizing fonts, logos, headers and footers, adding calculated fields and being able to sort, group, sub-group, total and, sub-total the data and even a dynamic pivot table view.

Once a report is created, it can be secured so that the report format is only visible to those who have permission for it.  Inside the report, TimeControl security is still in place down to the field level.  Even if a user has been given access to a report format that has a field in the format that the end user is not supposed to see, that field will become blank thanks to TimeControl Security.

At runtime, the data for the report can be selected according to available filters including TimeControl Dynamic Filters which ask for input at runtime.  For example, you might want to impost a date range for the report and you can do that by creating a Dynamic Filter that allows the user to enter the start and end date of the range at the time the report is executed.

The report interface is built in TimeControl’s multi-device, multi-browser architecture so it can be run from your PC in almost any browser, on your tablet or on your phone.  Once your report is on the screen, you can elect to print it or save it in one of numerous formats including PDF, Excel, CSV, Word, JPG and more.

Whew!  That should be enough, isn’t it?  Well it is of course, but you have other options as well.

The Drill Down Analyzer

This module is popular with Administrators because it allows tremendous flexibility in making data queries.  Using the Drill Down Analyzer presents a selected amount of data which can be a small selection or a massive selection into a simple list. But, just like an Excel Pivot table, you can then drag a column header to the top of the screen and the data instantly reorganizes into sub-groups and sub-totals by that column.  Drag another column and another level of sub-grouping and sub-totaling appears.  It has to be seen to be fully appreciated (which you can do on the TimeControl.com Online Lessons page).

Using the Drill-Down Analyzer, you can answer a question like “how many hours did we spend on unbillable meetings last month) in seconds.

Once you have a view of the data you like, you can immediately save the data in PDF, Word, JPG or other formats or save it directly into Excel to do further analysis or reporting from there.

The Legacy Report Writer

For users of TimeControl prior to version 6, they will be familiar with the spreadsheet-like reporting tool based on a FormulaOne component that was automatically installed by TimeControl.  Using this ActiveX control, you can organize your selection of TimeControl data into groupings, sub-totals and totals and then either print it directly or save the result into Excel for further reporting.  The Legacy  Report Writer is not viewed by default in new TimeControl systems.  It is visible in the Legacy menu area as it will be most attractive for clients who have created many reporting views in that report writer and wish to keep using them while they create new reports in the TimeControl Report Interface.

TimeControl Links

TimeControl’s Link menu includes a Table Export function which allows exporting TimeControl data with a virtually unlimited selection into numerous formats including Excel and XML.  When data is exported into XML, you can optionally attach an XML Stylesheet which can condition the view of the data to include an incredible variety of effects to make your own reporting view that is saved right into your browser in XML and from where it can be printed.

Whichever your preference TimeControl’s remarkable flexibility in reporting has you covered.

You can find out more about TimeControl reporting at TimeControl.com.