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Beginner Certificate on pass

Reports & BI Studio Basics

Turn your operational data into dashboards and reports you can actually read and act on.

4 lessons 35 min 5-question assessment 70% to pass
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What you’ll learn

  • Explain what reporting and BI do in AWRA
  • Read a dashboard and the figures behind it
  • Build a basic report by choosing data, filters, and grouping
  • Share and schedule reports for the people who need them

Course content

4 lessons · 35 min of reading
01
Lesson 1 of 4 Reading 8 min

What reporting does in AWRA

Reporting turns the activity captured across AWRA — sales, stock movements, purchases, payments — into views that answer questions: what sold, what is low, what is owed. Because the modules record as they go, reports read live data rather than something re-keyed at month end.

A dashboard is just a set of these views arranged for a role. The value is not the chart itself but the decision it enables: reorder this, chase that, investigate the other.

Test any tile by asking what you would do if the number doubled or halved. A buyer’s dashboard should answer “what do I reorder today?”; a finance dashboard, “whose debt do I chase?” If a chart looks impressive but changes no action — a pie of sales by colour, say — it is decoration, not reporting. Build the role’s view from the three or four decisions that person actually makes, then drop everything else.

Key takeaways

  • Reporting turns captured activity into answerable views.
  • Reports read live data, not month-end re-keying.
  • A dashboard arranges views to drive decisions for a role.
  • If a tile changes no action, it is decoration — build each role’s view from the decisions that person actually makes.
02
Lesson 2 of 4 Practice 9 min

Reading a dashboard

A good dashboard shows a few important numbers and trends at a glance — today’s sales, stock at risk, overdue invoices. Reading it well means knowing what each figure counts, over what period, and for which location, before you act on it.

The figure behind a tile matters as much as the tile. "Sales: 1.2M" means little until you know it is this month, this branch, and excludes refunds — so always check the lens before drawing a conclusion.

Beware the false alarm from a part-period comparison: a tile reading “sales down 40% vs last month” on the 10th is comparing ten days against a full thirty, so of course it looks like a collapse. Compare like with like — same number of days, or month-to-date against the same point last month — before raising the alarm. Most “the numbers are wrong” panics are really the lens being wrong.

Key takeaways

  • A dashboard surfaces key numbers and trends at a glance.
  • Know what a figure counts, the period, and the location.
  • Check the lens before acting on a tile.
  • Compare like with like — a part-month against a full month manufactures false alarms.
03
Lesson 3 of 4 Practice 9 min

Building a basic report

A report is built by choosing what data you want, filtering to the slice you care about — date range, location, category — and grouping it so totals are meaningful, such as sales by product or by month. Start from the question you are trying to answer and work backwards to the data.

Most reporting mistakes are scope mistakes: the wrong date range, a missing filter, or grouping that hides the answer. Be explicit about the question and the report almost designs itself.

Sanity-check every new report against a number you already trust before you act on it. If you build “sales by product this month” but the total doesn’t match the figure on the sales dashboard, the report is filtered or grouped wrong — find the gap before circulating it. The five-minute reconciliation against a known total is what stops a quietly broken report from driving a bad reorder.

Key takeaways

  • Choose data, filter to the slice, group for meaningful totals.
  • Start from the question and work back to the data.
  • Most reporting errors are scope errors: range, filter, grouping.
  • Reconcile a new report’s total against a number you already trust before acting on it.
04
Lesson 4 of 4 Reading 9 min

Sharing and scheduling

A report only helps if it reaches the right person at the right time. AWRA lets you share reports and, where supported, schedule them to be delivered regularly — so a manager sees the weekly numbers without having to ask.

Scheduling turns reporting from a pull into a push. Instead of people remembering to check, the insight arrives, which is how reporting becomes a habit rather than a fire drill.

Schedule reports to land just before the decision they feed, not whenever is convenient: the reorder report on the morning of order day, the aged-debt statement before the weekly collections call. And mind access when sharing — a margin or payroll report scheduled to the wrong list leaks sensitive numbers. The pitfall on the other side is the daily report nobody opens; if it goes unread for a month, cut it rather than adding to the inbox noise.

Key takeaways

  • A report must reach the right person at the right time.
  • Sharing and scheduling deliver reports regularly.
  • Scheduling turns reporting from a pull into a push.
  • Time reports to the decision they feed, check who can see sensitive figures, and cut any scheduled report nobody opens.

Finished the material?

Take the 5-question assessment and earn your certificate — 70% to pass.

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