Would you rather have 1,000 static reports, or 100 dynamic reports that could be customized in 10,000 ways? Whenever possible during our design process, we've opted for the more flexible option and nowhere is it more apparent than the report grouping.

FinFolio lets you apply grouping at four different report levels:

1. Report item
2. Page group
3. Detail group (x3)
4. Detail item

Report Items

Report items are set in the print wizard when you select the items for which you will be printing reports. For every report item, FinFolio prints a report package, complete with a table of contents and cover page. Report items can be households, portfolios, clients and accounts. You can print on different types of report items at once and you can print for multiple items at once using FinFolio groups.

Page Groups

Page groups are set in the report package for each report section. It determines whether each report section prints for the main report item, or whether it is broken out into subgroups, with the report section printing for each separate subgroup item. Changing the page group changes adds a level to the table of contents for each report package. Graphs and callouts (string substitution) both print for the page group item.

Detail Groups

Detail groups let you subgroup the detail rows on each report. If your report page lists your account positions as the detail row item, you could set a subgroup of "Asset Class" and your account positions will be sub-grouped by asset class. You can set up to three detail groups, allowing you to create multi-level grouping where each detail group subgroups the prior detail group.

Detail Items

Detail items allow you to set the item that prints on each report row. If your report page lists your account positions, you could change the detail item to "Asset Class" and instead of printing account positions, the report engine will print asset classes on each row. Any report columns will use the detail item to calculate their values.

Summary

These four grouping levels greatly extend the usefulness of FinFolio's report library. In fact, as we were creating reports, we found several that were identical except for a grouping level. It resulted in us having fewer reports than we'd originally expected, but with each report flexible enough to count as several reports in most other portfolio accounting software.

For example, in other systems you would have Return by Security and Return by Asset Class reports. In FinFolio, you can take the Return by Security report, set the detail item to "Asset Class" and you have the Return by Asset Class report. Or you could set the detail item to "Sector" and create a Return by Sector report. And so on...

To summarize the effects of each type of grouping:

• Report items:
  • A report package is printed for each report item
• Page groups:
  • Table of contents
  • Report item names
  • Graphs
  • Callouts/string substitution
• Detail groups:
  • Sub-groups headers
  • Calculation sub-totals print for the subgroup item
• Detail item:
  • The row name on each detail item
  • Row values are calculated based on the row item

I'm very happy with the grouping flexibility. More than any other reporting feature, this is the one that makes it feel like we nailed the reporting subtleties that we missed at Techfi.