Totals Only Reports

From the Inside Sesame Help Desk

My guess is that this has been asked before, but one of the things I miss from Q&A is the ability to make a Totals Only report simply by setting an option at the Print Option screen. What I want to do is see a total of all my orders paid by check, credit card or PO for a given time period. I don't need all the details. I just want the totals for each so I can confirm my deposits. I read the approach on the Lantica Software website about using two different views in a report design but, to be honest, it's confusing to me. Isn't there a simpler way to accomplish what I need?
Bill S

You're not the only one who wants to practice the KIS (keep it simple) principle. It's the best design policy around. If you can accomplish the same end with a simpler approach - do it. It will make your life easier today and will allow the person who updates your work to have a much easier time of it.

So here goes - a simple way to do a totals only report.

The reason the sample at lantica.com uses multiple views is to be able to get the field value and the total on the same line. But here's an easier way to do the same thing.

Layout your regular report with the subtotals and totals you want. The easiest way is to use Sesame 2.0's Report Wizard. You can add a static text LE to tell the user what the totals are on the bottom line.

Now what we need to do is get rid of the detail lines and move Type down to the subtotals line so it lines up with the subtotal amount. You get rid of the detail lines by making them Not Visible in the Property Editor.

In order to get those Types to appear once in the footer where the subtotals are, you need to capture the value of the Type before you start each group, then copy that value into the footer. To do this, create two unbound value fields - one in the header area (we can use Group Header 2 since it also breaks by Type) and one in the subtotal footer - TypeCopy and TypeCopy1 respectively. Make the one in the header invisible.

One more step. Open the program editor and add this program to the TypeCopy LE:

TypeCopy = Type
TypeCopy1 = TypeCopy

Basically the steps are (1) hide the detail data, (2) copy the first description of each line to a header, then (3)copy that value to the footer where the subtotal will appear. The sample database includes totals only reports for Types of Donation, Donors, and even the dreaded Totals by Month.