Transaction Reports

A transaction report answers "how much". What came in last month, what a campaign raised, how this year compares to the three before it, which categories are carrying the budget.

The builder works the same way as a contact report — Reports covers the basics — with one section of its own: Grouping & Totals.

Payments or Bills

Report type decides what you are counting:

Payments — money actually received. What you want for almost every financial question.
Bills — what was pledged or invoiced, paid or not. What you want for outstanding balances and for counting registrations.

Narrowing It Down

Section	Narrows by
Categories	Your transaction categories and subcategories, with Limit to or Exclude
Date	The period. The single most used criterion there is
Amount	A range — everything over $1,000, everything under $36
Method	Check, cash, credit card, and so on
Family Categories	Giving from a particular group of families
Deposits	A particular deposit or bank account — useful at reconciliation time

Grouping and Totals

This is what turns a list of payments into a figure you can act on.

Rows down the side, columns across the top, and a choice of whether to show every transaction or only the totals.

Setting	What it does
Show details / Totals only	Whether every transaction is listed, or only the totals
Total rows by	What each total row stands for — category, family, method, month
Break into columns by	What runs across the top. Set it to years and you have a year-by-year comparison in one table
Subtotal rows by	A second level inside each total — subcategories within categories
Aggregate	How the amounts combine. Sum, normally; a row count always comes with it

Three Reports Worth Having

Last month's income by category

New transaction report, type Payments.
Date: last month.
Grouping & Totals: Totals only, total rows by Category.
Save it. Run it on the first of every month.

Five years side by side

New transaction report, type Payments.
Date: the five-year range.
Grouping & Totals: Totals only, total rows by Category, break into columns by years.
Preview, then Export for a spreadsheet.

One table, categories down the side, years across the top — the report most boards ask for and the one that used to take an afternoon in Excel.

Everyone who gave over $1,000 this year

New transaction report, type Payments.
Date: this year. Amount: from 1000.
Grouping & Totals: total rows by Family, so you see one line per donor rather than one per gift.

Describing the Report Instead of Building It

✨ Assistant, at the top of the builder's rail, lets you type the report you want in plain words — total payments by category, by month, this year — and fills in the parameters for you. A new transaction report opens on it.

The Assistant is for transaction reports, and it has to be switched on for your organization under Settings → Integrations → AI Assistant. Contact and yahrtzeit reports are built by hand.

The Assistant panel in the transaction report builder, offering example questions such as last month's payments and giving by category with years as columns, above a box to describe the report you want.

The examples are a fair guide to what it understands. It asks if something is unclear, and shows you what it will run.

It sets the parameters; it doesn't run anything by itself. Everything it chose is there in the sections for you to check and change, which makes it a quick way to start even when you intend to finish by hand.

Getting It Out

PDF for something to hand over or file.
Export for a spreadsheet.
Save, so next month is one click rather than ten minutes.

The reports worth saving are the recurring ones — the monthly income summary, the year comparison, the campaign total. Build each once, file it in a folder, and the question is answered for good.

Article ID: 4848, Created: Today at 1:14 PM, Modified: Today at 1:14 PM