All "Quick Reports" work in the same way.
As enrolments are the most common type of report, a very simple enrolment report, listing all students arriving in a particular week is used here as an example.

First, select an existing report for editing, or create a new report.

Report Types
Select "Enrolment General".
Other enrolment types are listed and differ from the general type primarily in the "First/Main" sort key.
So for example, if the report is needed in "Course" order, then Coursing Finance or Booking Report type should be selected.
By clicking on each type, the sort sequence can be seen.
Selecting the right also affects performance.

Defining a Report
Before you start, jot down the items you want to report to contain, eg:
Surname
Forename
Arrival Date
Coursing Booking Name
Accommodation Start Date
Accommodation Name
Accommodation HF - Surname/Forename
Accommodation Address Line 1
Accommodation Telephone
Transfer Item
Transfer Date

Give the report a name (this may be changed later if required).
Other headings such as school, date filter etc. can be ignored for the time being.

Select "Add Item" and the list box below will be displayed:

Items for selection are assembled in groups, enrolments, course booking, accommodation etc.
It is a matter of judgement (or trial and error) to select the appropriate group, and the field within the group that you require.
(Click on the '+' to open up each section).

The below shows a section of the Enrolment Group (sub-section Student).

Double-clicking on the item (Surname) or highlighting it & selecting "Add" will transfer the item to the report.
This list of items will look something like the above.
You will need to bear in mind Quick Reports is looking for the selected records without any knowledge! This means it does not know whether you want cancelled records included or not.
In this case, cancellation records are not required, so the system has to be told.

Cancelled enrolments are automatically excluded, by the selection of "Exclude" "Cancellations" (see below School/Date filter)

Main sections of an enrolment report:

Enrolment
Course Finance Item
Course Booking Item
Accommodation Finance Item
Accommodation Booking Item
Transfer Item
Sundry Item

In the example report being created, the sections required are:

Enrolment
Course Booking
Accommodation Booking
Transfer Item

Cancelled enrolments are automatically excluded.
However, the detail item, eg. course booking, may be active or cancelled.
Therefore the status for each of the sections used needs to be added to the report so a test can be made as to whether the items in each section are active or not.

Course Booking
Select the Booking Status Name and add it to the report.

Do the same for Accommodation Booking and Transfer Item.

The end of the report will look something like the following:

By clicking on "Criteria", a list of the available options will appear.
As the "Comparison" is pre-set as "Equal To", "Active" can be highlighted and "Set" pressed.

To ensure the system is able to select students that do not have a course, perhaps just accommodation, an additional test is required.

"Equals to Null"
This means that if there is no course ('null' means 'nothing'), continue to the next test.
Without this test, if the student does not have a course, the system will not continue to check other elements of the student's enrolment.

You can either have the comparison set as "Equal To", and select all the items to be included, or you could select "Not Equal To" and select only cancelled (see below):

Either of the above will give the desired result.
The above principle applies to selecting records that match to any criteria.
Examples: Selecting specific agents, countries, courses etc.

Sorting the results:
The selected records must be sorted. For this exercise, Student Surname and Student Forename are selected:

If any of the selected or sort fields are in the wrong order, just highlight the line and drag it up or down the list.
The "Include" column allows items to be included in the report.
In the above example, the "Status" fields are not required to be printed (only required for testing), so would NOT be ticked.
Now you can run the report by clicking on "Search", & you will see the below:

If you are unsure about a particular records, highlight it (double-click or select "Edit") and the enrolment record will be displayed.
By clicking on "Send to Excel", you will be presented with the 2 below report options:

Subtotalling allows a range of options, for example, you may wish to count the number of entries shown in Excel on change of school.

None = no sub total required
Count = show the number of records found
Sum = show the total for all records
Average = show the mean value for all record
Maximum = show the largest value of all records
Minimum = show the smallest value of all records

Note: Sum and Average should only be used on numeric fields.

The above output to Excel can have the headings tidied up, and by repeating the "Search" process, highlighting the heading needing to be changed, and then changing it.

View Documents
Document record for the highlighted enrolment is shown, allowing documents to be added, if required.

Send Document
This small button is a major feature of the Quick Reports process.
From here, the selected records can be sent to a document. In the above example, it is a certificate.
This method could be "Email", so for example if this was a list of all your French agents, you send all of them a marketing email.

HOW? Change "Method" to "Email", and then tick the "Send To All" option:

If the "Select Now" option is not set, then the documents are added to the documents for "Batch Printing" later.

Send As Labels
Fields selected can output as a label.
Select from the existing list of formats, or select "User Defined", and create your own design. Header, footers and margin controls are provided. This is normally all that is required for Name/Address labels.
If more control over the label is required, then when Word creates the template it can be further edited at that stage, and saved.
This is useful for example, if "Labels" are required for say Meal Tickets.

Example of Agent Labels:

Templates are in Word and can be further edited and saved for the next merge.

More detailed explanations:

Code
Enter a quick reference code.

Date Filter
Dates are only used by enrolment reports.
On all other types of report, these fields are disabled.

Select the type of filter to be used:
None = date filter not used
Starting = test on a range of arrival dates
Finishing = test on a range of departure dates
Present = test if student is present between these dates

If a date filter is used, enter the range of dates to be included. BOTH dates must be valid.

Repetitions
If selected, the program checks the matching records after sorting.
If more than 1 record is identical, only the first will be included.
Note: all selected fields on the record are checked, not just the sort fields.

The full current selection criteria are displayed in the left-hand box.

Operator
If the selection criteria consists of more than 1 test, an operator of "Or" or "And" will be required.

Comparison
This is the test to be made against the value entered.

"Equal To" = record value is the same as the test value
"Not Equal To" = record value is NOT the same as the test value
"Greater or Equal" = record value is NOT LESS than the test value
"Greater Than" = record value is MORE than the test value

Value
Enter value to be used as a test, if it not possible to pick from the list in the left-hand box.

Search
The first 50 actual values for this field are automatically displayed, so highlight a value and select "Set" (in the above example, "Active" has been selected)

Next 50
Click to display the next 50 actual values for this field.

Clear
Click to remove the current selection criteria.

In the above example, records will only be included on the report if the booking status is set to "Active".

Comparisons
More options...
"Less or Equal" = record value is NOT MORE than the test value
"Less Than" = record value is LESS than the test value
"Similar To" = text fields only
"Starts With" = text fields only
"Ends With" = text fields only
"Is Null" = a value is not present
"Is Not Null" = a value is present

Examples:
For numerical values 1-9
"Greater or Equal to 3" will exclude 1 and 2
"Less of Equal to 3" will only exclude 1,2 and 3

Similar tests can be applied to dates and text fields.

Note: text field sequences are determined by comparing each character in turn. Each character is tested on its position in the ASCII conversion table. In this table, letters are in alphabetical sequence, with all upper case characters before any lower case ones.
Numbers precede any letters. All other print characters do not have any obvious sequence. These can lead to unexpected results if they are at the start of the text, eg. the following fields are in ascending sequence:
"1ABC", "2ABC", "ABCD", "ABDD", "abcd".
The last 3 comparisons only work for text values.

Similar To "abc" will match with any record where the field contains "abc" anywhere in the text.
Starts With "abc" will match with any record where the text in that field starts with "abc".
Ends With "abc" will match with any record where the text in that field ends with "abc".

Text Messaging

By clicking on "Text", all students with a mobile phone number will be displayed. Unwanted ones can be "dropped". Click Send.

A message will be displayed confirming message has been sent to the network provider (not necessarily received by the mobile phone user), alternatively an error message will be displayed.

A log of texts sent is kept here: