About Selection Criteria for Filtering Accounts
You use the selection criteria feature in Financial Reporter to include account figures in a report based on settings in the General Ledger account master.
For example, you could use the selection criteria expression ACCTTYPE = "B" AND ACTIVESW = "ACTIVE" to select all accounts with an account type of "B" (for balance sheet) and an active switch set to currently active.
When you place a selection criteria expression in a formula or on a statement line, Financial Reporter:
- Looks up the account identified by the account number in column A of the line (or by a formula).
- Checks to see that the account master information matches the selection criteria you have specified.
You can include selection criteria in column B of a specification (to restrict the accounts selected from the Account Code reference specified in column A), or in formulas that retrieve account balances, net amounts and quantities from posted transactions, or net amounts from General Ledger.
- The easiest way to define selection criteria is to use FR Paste. For more information, see About FR Paste.
- Generally, you should not use selection criteria if you can achieve the same result with a more selective account number reference.
- You can improve report performance by being more precise in your account references to restrict the number of initial account lookups.
- You can choose report criteria variables you select from the Preview Financial Reporter screen while you are in a worksheet. Financial Reporter recalculates FR commands according to the criteria you have saved. (For example, if you have created two workbooks for different years, you can switch between the workbooks without losing the value of FR commands after running FR View.)
Using Selection Criteria in Column B
You can use selection criteria in column B of a specification to restrict the accounts selected from the Account Code reference specified in column A.
Defining a default expression for column B is similar to defining other default report columns: you place the default selection criteria expression in column B of a default specification line.
If you enter criteria on a default line, it is used for all subsequent lines that do not have a criteria defined. In other words, if you do not want the default expression to apply to a line, you must override it on the line.
Note: You do not need to type \ on lines for which you want to use the default selection criteria.
Using Selection Criteria in Formulas
You can also use selection criteria in formulas that use FRAMT, FRAMTA, FRCREDIT, FRDEBIT, FRTRN, FRTRNA, FRTRNCR, and FRTRNDR functions to retrieve account balances, net amounts and quantities from posted transactions, or net amounts from General Ledger.
If you paste an expression into a formula, the selection criteria acts on the formula only. If you paste the expression into column B of a statement line, the selection criteria further refines the account number reference specified for the current line.