This simple little tip won a “best in show” award for Alan Phillips at the recent Sage Summit Conference for Peachtree consultants. If you have developed any custom reports for Peachtree give this little trick a try and see if it doesn’t make your reporting a little easier.

Sometimes clients have a difficult time finding the correct custom report to view or print from the long list of report titles available in Sage 50 / Peachtree. I generally make the following recommendation for naming and organizing custom reports in the Sage 50 / Peachtree report window.

Report Name and Label Convention

When creating a custom,report, change the title at the top of the report (the “report label”) by

1. accessing options

2. and then fonts, or fonts directly,

3. and change the “Title 1, Report Label” to the name you want to use, for example:  “Bookkeepers A/R Aging”.

4. Then choose apply and this label appears at the top of the report.

Then save the report using the same label name, for example: “Bookkeepers A/R Aging”. This convention makes it easier to identify and access reports in the drop down menu, especially when you have numerous custom reports. Those little blue wrenches next to the report name don’t really help all that much when you have a lot of custom reports to sort through.

Organizing Reports in the Drop Down Menus

When you have numerous custom reports in a report menu, if you put numbers or letters in front of the report name you can organize them. Peachtree lists reports as follows:

1. custom reports first (blue wrench or red arrow designation),

2. then alphabetically, with numbers preceding letters in conventional “computer-sort” format,

3. and then standard reports, also listed alphabetically.

Give this tip a try and see if it doesn’t make your report generation tasks a little easier.