Management Reporter for Microsoft Dynamics ERP

Management Reporter for Microsoft Dynamics ERP is an interactive reporting application that financial and business professionals can use to create, maintain, deploy, and view financial statements. It moves beyond traditional reporting constraints to help you design a variety of reports efficiently. Communication is stream-lined with the use of interactive notes and instant messaging.

Management Reporter includes dimension support, which means that account segments or dimensions are immediately available. There is no need for additional tools or configuration.

For more information about Management Reporter and your Microsoft Dynamics ERP system, such as news, training, downloads, updates, demos, and additional documentation, go to CustomerSource.

The following topics are included in this section:

• Management Reporter Components

• Information flow

• Management Reporter 2012 Features

Management Reporter components

The following components of Management Reporter provide ease of use to create, view, and schedule reports.

Management Reporter component	Functions	For more information
Report Designer	Used to create report building blocks that are combined to define and generate a report. The report wizard guides less experienced users through the design process. Advanced users can create new report building blocks or modify existing building blocks to meet their needs.	Create and manage report components
Desktop Viewer	Used to organize and view reports and supporting files. It also stores the report library.	Desktop Viewer
Web Viewer	Displays Management Reporter reports in a web browser. The Web Viewer does not require an installation of Management Reporter server components.	Web Viewer
Report schedules	A user can schedule a single report or a group of reports to generate regularly.	“Schedule report generation” section in Generate a report
Management Reporter database	This SQL database stores the components, known as building blocks, which are used to generate reports. It also stores report definitions and previously generated reports.	Create and manage report components
Application service	Controls access to the data provider and provides connectivity to clients.	Configure the server connection
Process service	Generates the reports that are created and queued by the Management Reporter client.

Information flow

The following illustration shows how Management Reporter fits into the flow of your financial information.

Management Reporter 2012 features

Management Reporter 2012 contains the following features to help you create, view, and interact with reports.

Feature	Description
Report design flexibility	Report Designer features the following reporting options when you design a report: Save dimension combinations, and reuse the dimension for multiple reports. Control how dimension descriptions are formatted and displayed. Identify accounts or dimensions that have been omitted from report building blocks. For more information, see the “Missing account analysis feature” section in Generate a report. Format headers for rolling forecasts. For more information, see Create a conditional spanning header.
Financial report collaboration	The following features help you manage the generation and distribution of reports: Schedule reports to automatically generate on a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual basis. For more information, see the “Schedule a report” section in Generate a report. Export to the read-only XPS format, which provides better document security with digital signatures. For more information, see Management Reporter and XPS. Export to a Microsoft Excel worksheet. For more information, see Management Reporter and Microsoft Excel. Publish reports to Microsoft SharePoint or a network location. For more information, see the “Specify output locations” section in Output and Distribution tab settings. To share reports, you can create emails that contain links to reports. For more information, see the “Share a report” section in Print and share a report in Desktop Viewer.
Interactive report viewing	Interactive features let you perform the following actions: Create a chart based on selected report rows and columns. Locate key features in Report Designer with enhanced toolbar options. Jump to key areas of the report for analysis. Find a specific page in a report. Add comments to rows in a report version. Copy comments from one version of a report to another version. Initiate an instant message exchange with coworkers using Microsoft Lync 2010 SDK while you are viewing the report. View or share reports in a web browser. For more information, see Web Viewer. For more information, see the “Interactive components and navigation features” section in Desktop Viewer interface.
Integrate with Microsoft Dynamics ERP systems	Integrate data between a Microsoft Dynamics ERP system and Management Reporter to create reports. You can view and work with information from Microsoft Dynamics AX in financial reports from Management Reporter without affecting the original data in the Microsoft Dynamics ERP system. The following features are available for integrations: While you view a report, you can view the source information and transaction detail in the Microsoft Dynamics ERP system. For more information, and for ERP compatibility, see Drill to Dynamics. Display or filter on properties of dimensions and transactions to design more precise financial reports. For more information, see the “Financial Dimensions column” section in Specify a column type in a column definition. Import company information from a Microsoft Dynamics ERP system into Management Reporter. For more information about integration options and reporting features for a Microsoft Dynamics ERP system, see thedata integration guide for your Microsoft Dynamics ERP.

See Also

What's new in Management Reporter 2012

Administrators

Application users

Additional resources for Management Reporter