Time-series columns and exporting

One number per row versus one row per period

A normal report column gives you a single figure per row, Riverside Apartments' total revenue, one number, full stop. A time-series column takes that same figure and breaks it into a run of periods instead, revenue in January, then February, then March, so the table stops reading as a total and starts reading as a trend.

This builds on the same Projects report shape from Build a custom report. Here, a single revenue figure for one of Northlight Architects' commissions gets spread across the months.

It's a column, not a picture

It's easy to assume a time-series column is basically a chart living inside a table, but that's backwards. A chart is pixels, something you look at and can't do anything else with. A time-series column is actual data, real columns sitting in the table, one per period, that you can sort and total exactly like any other column. It lives inside the report rather than beside it, which is the entire point, you get a trend's shape and a table's precision in the same place.

Every time-series column comes down to three settings underneath: period type sets the size of each bucket, month, quarter, or year, which is the grain of the trend. Period count sets how many buckets fan out: the quick preset configuration supports 1–24 periods, while the advanced Custom Time Series editor supports 1–60. Direction sets which way the periods run from an anchor date, ending at the anchor counts backwards, the twelve months up to now, which is history, while starting at it runs forwards, the twelve months from now, the plan you've made.

You'll rarely set all three by hand, though. The Time Series group in the Add Column menu offers presets, and Monthly Revenue is the one you'll reach for most often, opening a configuration panel with sensible defaults you can still tune before adding the columns.

Add a time-series column

1. 1

   Start a fresh Projects report and open the Add Column menu.

2. 2

   From the Time Series group, choose the Monthly Revenue preset to open its configuration.

   
3. 3

   The default is six monthly columns ending at today; adjust the period type, count, or direction if this window isn't your question.

4. 4

   Click Add 6 Columns (or the current count) to fan the revenue figure out into one column per month, for every row at once.

Choosing Monthly Revenue opens its configuration with six monthly columns already set up. Click Add 6 Columns and the single revenue figure that was one column a moment ago fans out into six, one per month, across every project row simultaneously.

When the question is direction, not amount

The presets always show value, the actual figure in each period. Sometimes the real question isn't how much but which way is this moving, and for that there's an advanced editor: Custom Time Series, at the bottom of the Time Series group.

That modal adds far more than any preset offers. Custom Time Series lets each cell show Values, a Cumulative running total, percentage or absolute change versus the previous period, or percentage or absolute change versus the same period last year, so a slowdown or a shift against last year shows up long before the running number actually sags. It also lets you set a configurable header label, so a change column can honestly call itself Revenue change instead of quietly masquerading as plain revenue.

Getting documents out: bulk PDF

When a report's rows are actual documents, invoices or quotes specifically, Monument can hand you those documents directly instead of just the data about them. Select the rows you need and click Download PDFs, and Monument generates one PDF per selected row and returns all of them zipped together. This is the move at end of month when a bookkeeper needs every outstanding invoice as an actual file, not a row in a table.

1. 1

   Open an invoices (or quotes) report and select the rows you need documents for.

2. 2

   Click Download PDFs, and Monument generates one PDF per selected row and downloads them together as a zip.

Troubleshooting

• A time-series column is data, not a picture. If the instinct is to reach for a chart, ask first whether what you actually want is columns you can sort and total, most of the time you do.
• Custom Time Series offers more than Value versus Change. Every preset always shows value. Custom Time Series offers Values, Cumulative running total, percentage or absolute change versus the previous period, and percentage or absolute change versus the same period last year, plus a configurable header, so give it its own header label whenever a cell no longer shows a plain value.
• Columns showing the wrong months? Check the direction and the anchor date first. Ending at counts backwards from the anchor, starting at runs forwards, a report that looks unexpectedly empty may simply be pointed at the future instead of the past.
• Quick preset configuration supports 1–24 periods; the advanced Custom Time Series editor supports 1–60. Two years of months, six years of quarters from a preset. Need more room? Open Custom Time Series instead of switching to a coarser period type.
• Download PDFs only exists for invoice and quote rows. A projects report has no PDF button at all, because the feature generates one document per row, and only invoices and quotes are actually documents in that sense.
• A downloaded PDF is frozen the moment you download it. The zip is a snapshot, the saved report behind it keeps updating live but the files in your download folder don't. Re-download whenever you need current documents rather than trusting an old zip.

Where this fits next

You can now build a report, trend it over time, and pull documents out wherever they actually exist as documents. To keep an eye on the firm without building anything at all, the live version of these same numbers lives on the home dashboard. Start there each day, and only build a report once a widget on it raises a specific question worth answering.