Report Controls

Last updated: July 9, 2026

Every report in Cloudby is the same engine wearing different clothes. Learn the four controls once, date range, filters, grouping and sort, and you can drive any report in the system, from a trial balance to a stock valuation to a payroll summary. The Reports module teaches the controls here so the rest of the product does not have to repeat them.

What you will learn

The four shared report controls
How a date range differs for a period versus a snapshot
How filters, grouping and sort shape a result

Four controls, learned once, drive every report simplified mockup

The four controls

Date range: run a report on a single date (a snapshot, like a balance sheet) or between two dates (a period, like a profit and loss), or by a named accounting period.
Filters: narrow the result by the dimensions that matter: ledger, customer, vendor, product, status, location and more, depending on the report.
Grouping: collapse rows under a dimension (by customer, by category, by month) so totals subtotal where you want them.
Sort: order the result by any column.

How it behaves

Period versus snapshot

The single most useful idea about the date range is the difference between a span and a point. A profit and loss, a sales report or a stock movement covers a period between two dates; a balance sheet, a trial balance or a stock valuation is a snapshot as at one date. Choosing the wrong one is the most common reason a report “looks wrong”, so match the date control to the question.

Compose, do not hunt

Because the controls are consistent, you build the report you need by composing them, filter to one customer, group by month, sort by value, rather than hunting for a differently-named report for every variation. The same four levers answer a great many questions.

Edge cases and good practice

Set the date control first. Decide whether you want a period or a snapshot before anything else.
Group to subtotal. Grouping is how you get the per-customer or per-month totals most questions actually want.

Saved searches

Because every report uses the same four controls, a particular combination of date range, filters, grouping and sort is worth keeping. A saved search stores a report’s current query under a name, so you reload it in one click instead of rebuilding it each time.

Per user, per organisation, per report. Your saved searches are your own; nothing is shared across users or organisations.
Star the ones you use most: they rise to the top of every list and appear as quick-load buttons on the report bar.
Share a query by link. A saved search becomes a URL that opens the report with the same filters pre-applied: handy for handing a colleague the exact view you mean.
Manage them in one place from My Saved Searches in the Workplace, across every report.
Choose your filter fields. A settings dialog lets you show, hide and reorder the filter fields on the bar.