How To Setup Reports And Letters

This document is meant to give you an introduction to the predefined reports and letters in Collect!. Before you begin to enter Clients and Debtors in your database, you will want to have your basic letters and reports in place so that you can assign them when scheduling contacts and setting up processing routines.

Requirements

- Setup Company Details

Most reports and letters display your Company's details as part of the standard format. If you have not setup your Company Details, there will be no way for Collect! to personalize reports and letters for your business.

Introduction

Collect! comes with a complete set of letters and reports. A few reports are built-in (Internal) and cannot be modified by the user, while letters and most reports may be modified. New reports and letters can be added at any time.

Who May Edit Reports

Reports may typically be modified by the System Administrator or Office Manager.

Report Library

All aspects of the reports, letters and printer control codes are kept in a report library which consists of several files beginning with d00_report.

Modifiable reports include:

Client/Debtor Listing

Client/Debtor History

Debtor Work Cards and Coupon Books

Statements

Client and Debtor Mailing Labels

Client Listing

Contact Plan Listing

And Many More

Fixed reports include:

Total Listings

Client Trust Summary

Debtor Trust Summary

Trust Account Summary

Daily Cash Report

New Business Report

Accounts Payable Report

Accounts Receivable Report

Client Analysis

Operator Analysis

Transaction Summary

Letters

Letters may be sent to debtors and to clients. These may be modified by the user, and new ones can be added as necessary. For each letter, there are actually two copies in the database, one which can be printed on letterhead, and one which can be printed on blank paper.

Letters And Reports

The Report Definitions list shows you all the reports in your version of Collect! To view this list, pull down the Print menu and choose Customize Printing, Edit Report Templates. This list will give you an idea of the types of reports included in Collect!'s Demonstration database. Any of these can be copied into your Masterdb database.

There are also a variety of Report Samples that you can import into your Masterdb database. Refer to Report Samples to view this list.

Printers

Collect! can print to whatever type of printer you have. Dot matrix, laser jet and ink jet are all supported.

Pull down the Print menu and choose Settings, Report and Printer Setup. Then choose your default print method. This method can be over-ridden on the Operator level or for a particular item that you choose to print.

Printer Control Codes

Control codes control aspects such as font, bold, double wide and so on. The control codes have been set up so that regardless of which printer you choose to print from, the letters and reports will print correctly.

Some reports will print in landscape mode on a laser, while the same report when printed on a dot matrix will print with a very small (20 characters per inch) font.

Reports Used By Collect!

Some reports and letters may be edited by the user, but they are expected in the database and are called by Collect! when it prints. You can change the contents, but SHOULD NOT CHANGE THE NAMES of the reports.

Statement and GStatement

Collect! uses these reports to when you generate and print your monthly statements.

Client Acknowledgments:

Client Acknowledgment Header

Client Acknowledgment Body

Client Acknowledgment Footer

Client Acknowledgments is printed for each client who has listed new business on the chosen day, The header is printed first, then the body is printed for each newly listed debtor, and then the footer.

Debtor Work Cards

Debtor Card

Debtor Card (8.5" Format)

Debtor Card (Preprinted)

Three debtor cards are provided with the system. When you print a batch of debtor cards, the program looks for the first report it finds with the name 'Debtor Card', and uses that to print. If you want to use the 8.5" format, or the preprinted card just cut the desired one and put it before the other cards.

Client and Debtor Mailing Labels

Client Mailing Label

Debtor Mailing Label

These are also optionally printed when you print client acknowledgments or debtor notice batches for the day. The program looks in the report library for these reports. They can be changed to suit different label formats.

Only vertical labels can be supported, not fancy dot matrix ones.

To handle laser labels you have to print the labels to a file, import that file into a word processor so that you can manipulate the format, and then print the labels.

Graphics

Collect! is capable of printing graphics in your reports if they are in BITMAP format.

Summary

There are basic elements common to most reports and letters you will print. They are described briefly here to get you started. Detailed information on particular topics is available in help documents. You will find references to How To topics throughout the help text.

Pull down the Help menu and choose How To to locate a particular How To topic.

Please look through the pre-defined reports and letters. You will find sample reports listed with code snippets illustrating many report writing topics. As well, Collect! ships with many report samples complete with code and our web site always has new offerings.