Reports & Analytics

BigLedger’s reporting is not one report screen. It is a set of read-only applets, each sitting close to the documents it reads, and the main skill is knowing which one to open. This page is that map — plus the three or four things that catch people out when a report comes back empty or wrong.

Nothing here is a procedure. Each applet’s own reference page has the screens and the fields; this page tells you which page to go to.

Meet GadgetSphere

GadgetSphere Sdn Bhd closes its books monthly across three companies and 22 branches. The questions its people ask — “what did that branch sell last week”, “who owes us money and for how long”, “why is the trial balance empty” — are the questions below.

Money owed to you, and money you owe

The question	Where to look
Which customer invoices are still unpaid, and how old are they?	Debtor Report — open documents and ageing
What does this customer’s statement look like?	Statement of Account
What was the receivables position at the end of a past month?	Debtor Report — historical snapshot
Which invoices is each salesperson still chasing?	Debtor Report — collection by salesman
Which supplier bills are outstanding?	Creditor Report
Both sides at once, for a customer who is also a supplier	Debtor and Creditor Report

The debtor report is also the one place you can contra two open customer documents against each other — a credit note against an invoice, for instance — without going into either applet.

The financial statements

The Financial Report applet holds four things:

Month End Processing — closes one month for one set of books. This is what writes the closing and opening journals and the per-account balance summary.
Financial Report — a frozen Trial Balance, Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet and MITRS view over a range of closed months.
Profit Loss Report — an ad-hoc P&L straight from posted journals, which you can group by branch, dimension, segment, profit centre or project.
Error Checking — the Stock Flow Report (inventory value against accounting value, per module) and Trace Document (why a particular document did or did not post). Both are diagnostic tools worth knowing about before you need them.

If your Trial Balance comes back empty, this is almost always why. A Financial Report snapshot does not read your journals. It reads the monthly summary rows that Month End Processing writes. A month that has never been processed contributes nothing to the report — so the statements look empty even though every journal is sitting there perfectly.

The fix is to run Month End Processing for the months in your range. The ad-hoc Profit Loss Report reads journals directly, so it is the quick way to tell the two situations apart: if the P&L has numbers and the Trial Balance does not, the months were not closed.

Sales

The Sales Report applet is a set of grids over finalised sales documents — cash bills, invoices, returns and trade-ins, plus receipt and payment vouchers for the collection views. You can cut sales, cost, gross profit and margin by item, document, salesperson, hour, day, week, month, branch or customer category, and export any grid.

Two things about it are worth knowing in advance:

Cost and gross-profit columns are permission-gated. If a colleague can see margin and you cannot, that is deliberate configuration, not a fault. Which cost basis is used is also a setting.
Only finalised documents appear. A quotation or a draft invoice is invisible to it.

For the counter, Daily Cashier Reports gives you Cashier Collection — every settlement taken, line by line — and the Z Report, the end-of-day summary for one branch and one date. The same two reports are also reachable from inside POS.

Purchasing

The Purchase Report applet answers “what did we buy, from whom, at what cost” — purchase lines with their linked GRN and purchase order numbers, or the same data rolled up per item with quantity, cost and closing balance.

It reads only finalised Purchase Invoices, Purchase Returns and Purchase Invoices (No Stock In). Purchase orders, goods received notes and draft invoices do not appear. A purchase shows up the moment its invoice is FINAL, and not before — which is the same rule that governs when it hits your stock and your accounts.

Stock

The Stock Report applet carries thirteen reports over the stock transaction ledger and the item-location balances: where stock moved and when, how old it is, what each location holds, what the balance was on a past date, what was bought and sold per item, and stock value by category level. Every one has an advanced search, a column toggle, grouping and totals, and Excel or PDF export.

Alongside it, Stock Balance is the live position and Stock Level Monitoring is the reorder view.

Remember the distinction that catches everyone: balance is what you physically hold; available is that balance less what open sales orders have already promised. A gap between the two is open orders, not a discrepancy.

Looking forward rather than back

The Cashflow Projection applet is a planning register rather than a report: you group work into programs, record engagements and their lines, and enter target and actual billing and collection per fiscal month. A dashboard and two reports read those figures back as collection rates, outstanding amounts and month-by-month projections. The figures in it are the ones you type; nothing forecasts them for you.

What success looks like

Give yourself thirty seconds on each of these. If you can name the applet, you have what this page is for:

“How much does this customer owe us, and since when?” → Debtor Report.
“What was our gross margin on accessories at GS-KV-01 last month?” → Sales Report.
“Why is the Balance Sheet for March empty?” → Month End Processing has not been run for March.

Common mistakes

What goes wrong	Why	What to do
The Trial Balance or Balance Sheet is empty	Financial Report snapshots read month-end summary rows, not journals	Run Month End Processing for those months; use the ad-hoc Profit Loss Report meanwhile
A purchase does not appear in the purchase report	Purchase orders, GRNs and draft invoices are not in it	The purchase appears when its invoice is FINAL
Cost or gross-profit columns are missing	They are gated by a setting plus a client-side permission	Ask your administrator; it is not a data problem
Stock Report and Stock Balance disagree with what the sales team expects	Available quantity is reduced by open sales orders; the balance is not	Close or void order lines that will never ship
Two reports on the same subject give different totals	They usually read different document sets — finalised only, or a particular date basis	Check each applet’s reference page for what it reads