I've already talked about FinFolio's on-screen graphs here. Our graphs are modular, allowing you to see the same graphs on the screen as well as in reports. Some reports allow more than one graph.
You can mix and match graphs with reports, giving you a wide array of possibilities. On reports, the color scheme and other formatting options become much more important.
Palettes
The chart palette is the color scheme for the chart. A palette has colors defined for each pie slice, bar, etc., as well as a color for the chart background. Colors can be one solid color or they can be a gradient, which is a blend of two colors.
Inside the FinFolio software, the default palette is a muted, full-spectrum rainbow with light-blue shading, similar to the default for Microsoft Office apps.
But what looks good on the screen doesn't look always look good on printed reports--this color palette tends to clash with the themed report graphics. For that reason, we use a different default graph palette for each report theme.
If you are using the dark-blue "Bank" theme, the default graph palette uses shades of blue and purple. It looks good when placed inside a report that uses graphics from the same spectrum.
...now see how the chart colors change when you switch to the orange "Glasses" theme:
Each report theme uses a graph palette with colors carefully selected to complement the report graphics. We recommend sticking with these professionally designed palettes, but it is possible to override the palette for individual graphs.
For example, you could use primary colors...
...or a nice pastel with blue-green shading.
Render styles
Like palettes, each chart has a render style. Render styles dictate how the chart is displayed--should it be 2D or 3D? Should the lines be straight or dashed? Should there be a border? Should edges be straight or rounded?
"Blinds" render style:
"Floating" render style:
"Spotlight" render style:
Render types
The render type lets you change the format of your chart. You can display information as a pie or donut, or in a bar chart. Not all charts let you change the render type, as not all types of information can be displayed on all chart types.
Mass customization
When you see a chart in a magazine, you can be sure the editor has formatted the chart to perfectly display that specific data set--not a single wasted pixel. But when you are running thousands of client reports, you don't have the luxury of tweaking each individual chart. FinFolio gives you several tools to do mass customization, ensuring that every client chart displays well.
You can designate a maximum number (or minimum percentage) for pie slices, and the chart will group everything over that number into an "other" slice. I set a 2% slice limit for all the examples I showed above, which allowed me to graph an account with a large number of small security holdings. Without the "other" filtering, the chart would have been too messy to display:
By default, pie charts use labels and bar charts use legends. But you can override the default and specify labels or legends on each chart.
You can change the formatting of the legends/labels using tickers, cusips, or full security names. You can print the percentage or full value of the slice in your label. The label text is free form, giving you fine control over the formatting and placement.
For the screenshots above, I specified SYMBOL (PCT) which displayed the ticker symbol with the percentage ownership in parenthesis. If I had specified NAME - VALUE then the charts would have displayed as:
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As you can see, charting on reports is extremely flexible. I used our simplest chart to better contrast the various formatting options. I'll be doing posts on specific FinFolio charts over the next few months.