Sage ERP Accpac 6.0 Adhoc Query

A common complaint about Accpac today is the difficulty of getting the data out of the product. If there is a stock Crystal report then, great, you can get the data. If there isn’t a stock report that meets your needs then, typically, you need to hire your Business Partner to write a custom Crystal Report. Generally end users find Crystal Reports too intimidating to use on their own. Additionally if you take Crystal Report training, but don’t use the tool regularly, then you will lose the knowledge and have to re-learn it.

Many users use a combination of data export to Excel and printing reports to Excel to get their data into a tool they are more familiar with and then in Excel, sort and sum their data to get the numbers they need.

With the Adhoc Query tool we are looking to allow users to get at their data quickly and easily without jumping through all these hoops. We want to provide an extremely simple interface that anyone can use to query their data. No one will need to know anything about the Accpac database schema or about advanced formatting with groups, headers and footers. As a consequence this tool will give simple but powerful methods to sort, sum and choose your data. A simple way to preview, print and export the data. It will not allow fancy features to make the interface too complicated for occasional users. We are being very strict on keeping the interface simple and accessible. Hence the power will be in the accessibility of the data rather than in the formatting of the data.

Basically we define a number of “data domains” such as “A/R Customers and Transactions”. You choose which data domain you wish to query and then we give a simple interface where you can specify which data you wish, how you want it sorted and summed and then see the data right away instantly in a table control. Then we also give you easy ways to export, print, and email the data to anywhere else that you might need it.

Below is a screen shot of the current Ad Hoc Query tool returning all customers with their name containing the word “Mr.”.

As you can see from the screen shot, the interface is very simple. This is our main objective for this tool, that anyone can use it. But at the same time we want to ensure that you can get at the data you need easily. This is partly why we called it “Adhoc Query” rather than “Adhoc Reports”, because we didn’t want to set the expectation that this was all about formatting. It is in fact all about the data and hence the name.

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