The Generate Reports Screen ("Report Generator") is reached by clicking on the appropriate button on the Main Menu or choosing MAIN TASKS and GENERATE ROYALTY REPORTS from the Menu Bar.

The following describes the parts of the generator and the generation process

Generate Reports after End of Reporting Period. It is best to wait until some time after the royalty period to do your reports.  If you do reports at the end of the year, wait until December 31st has past before generating reports.  If you do a report on December 15, for instance, you may be missing some sales that occurred between December 15 and December 31.

Start and End Dates. To begin the process, enter the start date and end date of the period of time you want the royalty to cover.  To help you enter dates, an automatic insert feature has been built into the generator.   More information on entering dates is found here: Start & End Dates

Create a Log File. Level VI-VII Feature. If you place a checkmark here, AnyBook will create a log file of the data that goes into a royalty report.  The log file is accessed in Royalty Reports and can be viewed in Excel or another spreadsheet program.  More information: Report Generator Log Files

Cash Reserves Feature. Level VI-VII Feature.  This allows you to create a report summarizing the total royalties for a period.  It does not create individual reports; rather, it creates only one report with the total amount of royalties for all reports.  This feature is often used to make sure that enough cash has been set aside to pay royalties at the end of the year.  For more information, see Cash Reserves.

Select From List. From the list on the Generate Reports dialog box, select the royalty holders and products for which you want reports generated.  To make a selection, click in the first column so that a checkmark appears.  Click again to remove the checkmark.  If desired, you can select more than one royalty holder or all royalty holders.

You can also select one or more groups of royalty holders.  To select a group, click on the first of the group.  Make sure a checkmark is beside the first member of the group.  Hold down the SHIFT key and select the last member of the group.  All the royalty holders between the two will be selected.  You can de-select a group by doing the same thing, but in this case, the first member of the group should not have a checkmark beside it.

You can speed up the process by keeping the number selected to ten or less.

"Check" and "Selected" Buttons. To find out how many you have selected from the list, click on the "Check" button.  If you want to limit the list to only those with checkmarks, click on the "Selected" button.

"Active" Box. Place a checkmark in the Active Box to limit the list to only those royalty holders with "Active" enabled on the Set-up Screen.

On-click. Place a checkmark in the On-click box if you want to select from the list by using one-click; otherwise, two clicks will make a selection.

Search Features. The search features are helpful if you have lots of royalty holders.  Use the "First Letter Search" to go to the first letter of royalty holder's name.  "Multi-letter" search enables you to type in two or more letters of the individual's name.  Finally, "Partial Word Search" allows you to search for a portion of an individual's name.  If you don't find the individual after clicking on "Search," you can click on "Repeat Search" to continue the same search throughout the list.

Turn Running Tally Off for this Batch. Running Tally is a feature which is turned on or off from the Royalty Set-up Information Screen.  It allows you to keep track of accumulated sales.  When it's turned on, each time you do a royalty report, the number of products sold will be updated, and you'll always know how many total units have been sold.

The Running Tally feature assumes that you go in order.  You create a royalty report for 2015.  Then you create one for 2016 and so.  Each time you run a new report, the "Number Sold" and "As Of" date in the Set-up Screen are updated.  But if you go out order - for instance, run a two-year old report - the normal time sequence of updating the running tally figures is now thrown off kilter.

If you know you are going out of order, you can turn off the Running Tally feature by checking this box.  The "As Of" date and "Number Sold" figure will not be updated.  If you are running reports which have been set-up with Quantity Breakpoints, AnyBook will assume that you want to use the first quantity breakpoint.  That will give you ballpark figures.  If, however, you want complete accuracy, leave this box unchecked and allow the Running Tally Wizard to guide you through the process.

Start Generation Process. When ready, click on "Generate Report" to begin the process.

Information on the Generation Process. The report generator consists of a long and involved series of sophisticated database processing instructions.  It begins by looking at individual royalty holders and grouping those utilizing similar royalty payment systems together.

It then runs one or more inventories based on the groupings.  Once the proper quantities and sales data has been obtained from the inventories, it compiles all the information into a report file.  You can track the progress of the generator by watching the informational messages on the bottom of screen.

Considerable processing power comes into bearing when it deals with reports which utilize a variable structure, particularly when the structure consists of both discount ranges and quantity breakpoints.  When total sales of a product overlap into two or more quantity breakpoints, it calculates the relative percentage of sales between the breakpoints and assign numbers based on the percentages.  When dealing with discount ranges, some rounding off is always necessary, but it re-checks all figures which have been rounded and adjust the quantities and sales figures so that the totals appearing on reports are always accurate.  Of all the tasks undertaken by AnyBook, some of the most complex occur in the Royalty generator.

Exiting Before the Generator Finishes. Since a significant amount of processing power is utilized during this portion of the program, it may take several minutes for the reports of a group of royalty holders to be generated.  If you must exit the program before the processing is completed, press <ESC> on your keyboard.

Plan to wait a few seconds while everything is shut down.  Many database files are opened during the process, and to protect your valuable files, AnyBook will take a few moments to carefully close everything first.   When all files are closed, a message will appear telling you that it's OK to exit.

Report Screen Automatically Opened. When the report generator has completed the generation process, it will automatically start View Royalty Reports which allows you to look over--or print--the newly created reports.