About Financial Statement Specifications

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A financial statement specification is a structured description of a statement you want to produce. Financial Reporter creates a report based on the statement specification and the options you select when you print or view the final statement.

Statement specifications allow you to assign default functions and formulas to columns of the spreadsheet, and to specify that a range of accounts will be expanded to many rows on a final statement.

You do not need to create a statement specification to extract and print information. You can extract and print balances from General Ledger by placing a few formulas in a spreadsheet, recalculating the spreadsheet, and then printing from Excel.

You can also save the spreadsheet, and then use General Ledger's Print Financial Statements screen to print the values in future. If the worksheet does not contain a statement specification, Financial Reporter simply recalculates the spreadsheet, and prints it out.

Layout of a Report Specification

Spreadsheets that contain statement specifications have two separate regions:

The Spec range is the region containing the report specification.
The Report range is the region containing the financial statement produced from the report specification.
The Report range contains a third range called the Print range, which excludes all audit information that can be generated in the first columns of the Report range.
Tip: Statements that are not generated from specifications have no Spec range, but you can set a print range to restrict the size of the worksheet for printing.

The statement specification and the report it creates both reside in a single worksheet.

When you generate a financial statement from a specification, the Financial Reporter processes all the specification information in the Spec range, and creates the final report in the Report range.

If you opt to create a separate report for each account segment when you generate the report, Financial Reporter inserts a separate worksheet for each segment into a new workbook.

Rules for Defining the Spec Range, Report Range, and Print Range

The following principles apply to the ranges in a financial statement specification:

The Spec range can occupy any columns. A specification can begin in any column of a spreadsheet. The only requirement is that the first column of the Spec range must be the first column of the specification.

For more information about the Spec range, see About the Spec Range and Setting the Spec Range.
The Report range is created when generating the report. The Report range is generated from the Spec range when you print the financial report. It contains data that is generated by the report, as well as data extracted from the General Ledger.
The Report range starts in column E. The first four columns of the Spec range (A through D) are reserved for control information for Financial Reporter. All other columns form a template that determines the appearance of the report and the kinds of data that will appear.
The Print range starts in column E. The control information in the first four columns of the specification is replaced by audit information in the report range when you use the FR View command.

Financial Reporter prints a smaller area of the worksheet than the Report range because it excludes columns A to D.
The Print range is set by the Spec range.