Custom Reports

Custom Reports give you a full Excel-style spreadsheet inside Assignar Pay. You can pull live data from 17 different sources, add your own sheets for calculations, write formulas that cross-reference between sheets, save the report to the cloud, and come back later to refresh the data with one click.

This guide walks you through everything a day-to-day user needs: creating a report, connecting data, working with multiple sheets, writing formulas, saving, refreshing, and sharing.

What This Feature Does

A Custom Report is a saved spreadsheet template that belongs to your account. Unlike static exports, a Custom Report stays connected to your live data. You choose which information to pull in (for example, invoices for a project over the last quarter), lay it out the way you want, and add formulas or additional sheets for summaries, reconciliations, or forecasting.

Typical uses:

• Monthly financial packs — invoices, supplier invoices, and purchase orders summarised on a single cover sheet
• Job-cost reconciliation — timesheets on one sheet, PO line items on another, a summary sheet comparing budget vs. actual per cost code
• Revenue forecasts — Schedule of Values items combined with your own projections
• Workforce utilisation — timesheets with custom pivot-style calculations
• Client-ready reports — branded layout with formulas, then exported to Excel to share externally

Who Can Use Custom Reports

Access to the Reports area requires the Reports permission (finance.reports). If you cannot see the Reports link in the sidebar, ask an account owner or admin to grant you that permission.

Anyone with the Reports permission can:

• Create new report templates
• Open and edit reports that are shared with the team
• Import from any of the 17 data sources
• Save reports to the cloud and refresh them later
• Export to Excel (.xlsx) or CSV (.csv)

The person who created a report is the only one who can change its visibility (private vs. team) — more on that below.

Getting Started

Open the Reports Area

1. From the main sidebar, click Reports.
2. The Reports landing page shows an analytics overview plus links to the reporting areas, including Templates — your Custom Reports.
3. Click Templates to see the list of Custom Reports available to you.

Create Your First Report

1. On the Templates page, click New Template (top right). If you have no templates yet, click Create First Report in the empty state.
2. A blank single-sheet workbook opens in the report editor.
3. At the top of the editor you will see:
   • A name field — click to rename the report
   • A Save button — saves the workbook to the cloud
4. Give your report a meaningful name (for example, "April 2026 Invoice Pack"), then start adding data.

Quick Tour of the Editor

The editor is a full spreadsheet that behaves like Excel:

• Ribbon toolbar at the top — formatting, formulas, borders, colours, alignment, etc.
• Formula bar directly under the ribbon — shows the content of the selected cell
• Sheet tabs at the bottom — switch between sheets, add new ones, rename, reorder, or colour them
• Status bar — shows sum/count/average of your current selection

On the left of the ribbon you will also find Custom Reports actions:

• Import menu — bring data in from a data source or a file
• Export menu — download the report as Excel or CSV
• Activity Log — view the history of changes to the report

Bringing Data Into Your Report

There are two ways to load data: from a data source (live Assignar Pay data) or from a file you upload.

Import From a Data Source

This is the primary way to build a report. It pulls live data from your account so you can refresh it later.

1. In the editor, click Import → Import from data source.
2. A side panel opens showing all 17 data sources grouped by category. Use the search bar at the top to narrow down, or browse the categories:
   • Financial — invoices, invoice line items, supplier invoices
   • Labor & Payroll — timesheets, pay rates, employee pay items
   • Procurement — purchase orders, PO line items, orders, order line items
   • Job Costing — cost codes, Schedule of Values items
   • Forms — form submissions
   • Reference Data — projects, clients, employees, suppliers
3. Click the card for the data source you want.
4. A configuration dialog opens where you can:
   • Set a date range — enter dates directly or use a preset (This Month, This Quarter, Year to Date, Last Year, or Custom Range)
   • Apply filters — the available filters depend on the source (Client, Project, Supplier, Status, Cost Code, Employee, or Form)
   • Choose columns to include — tick or untick columns to shape the output. Use Select All / Deselect All to move quickly
5. Click Import to Current Sheet.
6. Your data appears on the active sheet, starting at cell A1, with:
   • A bold, grey-backed header row
   • Auto-sized columns based on content
   • Currency columns formatted with thousands separators and two decimals
   • Date columns formatted as YYYY-MM-DD
7. The sheet tab now shows a blue colour, indicating it is connected to a data source.

A Connected Data Source status bar appears above the spreadsheet showing:

• The source name (for example, Invoices)
• The filters currently applied
• The time the data was last refreshed
• Buttons: Refresh, Edit Filters, Disconnect

For a detailed reference of every data source, its filters, and its columns, see Report Data Sources.

Import From a File

Use this to bring in data that does not live in Assignar Pay — for example, a budget from Excel, or a historical CSV from another system.

1. Click Import → Import from file.
2. Choose a file. Supported formats are:
   • .csv — Comma-separated values
   • .xlsx — Excel 2007 or later
   • .xls — Excel 97–2003 (legacy)
3. The file's contents are loaded into the currently active sheet, starting at cell A1.
4. The sheet tab stays in its default colour (file imports are not "connected" the same way data sources are — they are a one-time load).

A common pattern: put your imported file on one sheet, pull a data source into a second sheet, and use a third sheet for formulas that combine them.

Working With Multiple Sheets

A report can contain as many sheets as you need. This is where Custom Reports become powerful.

Add, Rename, Reorder, Colour, and Delete Sheets

• Add a sheet — click the + icon at the bottom of the editor, or right-click any sheet tab and choose Insert Sheet
• Rename — double-click a sheet tab, or right-click and choose Rename
• Reorder — drag tabs left or right
• Colour — right-click a sheet tab and choose a colour (data-source-connected sheets are automatically coloured blue)
• Delete — right-click a sheet tab and choose Delete. You will be asked to confirm

Typical Multi-Sheet Pattern

A common layout for a monthly financial report:

Only the data-source sheets are refreshable. The budget sheet holds your uploaded data. The summary sheet holds formulas that automatically recalculate when the connected sheets refresh.

Cross-Sheet Formulas

You can write formulas in one sheet that reference cells or ranges on another sheet. Use the syntax:

=SheetName!CellReference

If the sheet name contains spaces, wrap it in single quotes:

='Invoice Details'!C2:C100

Examples:

• Sum a column from another sheet: =SUM('Invoice Details'!G2:G500)
• Count invoices with paid status: =COUNTIF('Invoice Details'!I2:I500,"paid")
• Look up a client's total: =SUMIF('Invoice Details'!B:B,"Acme Construction",'Invoice Details'!G:G)
• Join two text columns from another sheet: =CONCATENATE(Budget!A2," – ",Budget!B2)

When you refresh a data source, any formula on another sheet that points at it updates automatically.

Formulas and Calculations

Custom Reports use the same formula syntax you know from Excel. Most mathematical, statistical, text, logical, and date functions are supported.

The following functions are guaranteed to round-trip cleanly when you export your report to Excel and open it in Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, or LibreOffice:

• Math: SUM, SUMIF, SUMPRODUCT, ROUND, MIN, MAX, ABS, INT, MOD
• Statistical: COUNT, COUNTA, COUNTIF, AVERAGE
• Logical: IF, IFERROR
• Text: CONCATENATE, LEFT, RIGHT, MID, LEN, TRIM, UPPER, LOWER
• Lookup: VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH
• Date: TODAY

You can use other Excel functions as well, but if you plan to share the exported .xlsx with other systems we recommend sticking to the list above for maximum compatibility.

Writing a Formula

1. Click the cell where you want the result to appear
2. Type = to start the formula
3. Type the function name, then arguments, for example: =SUM(A2:A20)
4. Press Enter — the cell displays the calculated result
5. Click the cell again to see or edit the formula in the formula bar

Copying Formulas

Formulas behave like Excel: drag the small square at the bottom-right of a selected cell to fill the formula down or across. Cell references adjust automatically unless you lock them with $ (for example, =$A$1 stays pointing at A1 no matter where you copy it).

Cell Formatting

The ribbon gives you the standard formatting toolbox:

• Number formats — general, number, currency, percentage, date, time, custom
• Font — family, size, bold, italic, underline
• Colour — font colour and background fill
• Alignment — left / centre / right horizontal, and top / middle / bottom vertical
• Borders — top, bottom, left, right, all borders, outside
• Merge cells
• Wrap text

You can also:

• Freeze panes — keep header rows or columns visible while scrolling the rest of the sheet
• Resize columns and rows — drag the divider between column or row headers, or double-click to auto-fit to content
• Insert / delete rows and columns — right-click on a row or column header
• Copy, paste, cut — Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V / Ctrl+X (or ⌘ on Mac)
• Undo / redo — Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y (or ⌘Z / ⌘⇧Z on Mac)

Saving, Refreshing, and Reloading

Saving

Click the Save button at the top of the editor. You will see a "Saving…" toast, followed by "Saved" when it completes. Your report — including all sheets, formulas, formatting, and data-source connections — is stored in the cloud.

There is no auto-save. If you close the browser tab without saving, your unsaved edits are lost. We recommend saving before big changes (such as re-importing a large data source or disconnecting a sheet).

Refreshing Connected Data

Once a sheet is connected to a data source, you can refresh it at any time to pull the latest data using the same filters.

1. Open the report from the Templates list.
2. Click the sheet tab that holds the connected data (it will be the blue one).
3. In the Connected Data Source status bar above the sheet, click Refresh.
4. The sheet clears and reloads with the latest data from your account.
5. Any formulas in other sheets that reference this sheet update automatically.

Editing Filters on a Connected Sheet

If you want the same sheet to show a different time period or a different client, you do not need to start over.

1. On the connected sheet, click Edit Filters in the status bar.
2. The data source configuration dialog reopens with your current filters pre-filled.
3. Change what you need and click Import to Current Sheet.
4. The sheet is rebuilt with the new filters.

Disconnecting a Sheet

If you want to "freeze" the data on a sheet so it never refreshes again, you can disconnect it.

1. Click Disconnect in the status bar.
2. Confirm the action.
3. The connection is removed. Your data stays on the sheet exactly as it was — it simply no longer has a link to the source. The sheet tab returns to its default colour.

Returning Later

When you come back to a report days or weeks later:

1. Open Reports → Templates and click the report card.
2. The report loads with all your sheets, formulas, and formatting intact.
3. Connected sheets show the data as of the last refresh or save.
4. Click Refresh on any connected sheet to bring in the latest numbers.

Exporting

When you are ready to share the report outside Assignar Pay, use the Export menu in the ribbon.

• Export → Export to XLSX downloads the entire workbook (all sheets, formulas, formatting) as an Excel file that opens cleanly in Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice.
• Export → Export to CSV downloads the first sheet only as a flat CSV. Formulas are exported as their calculated values.

Exported files are named:

{report-name}_{account}_{YYYY-MM-DD}.xlsx

For example: April_2026_Invoice_Pack_acme-construction_2026-04-20.xlsx

Sharing a Report (Private vs. Team)

Every report has a visibility setting:

• 🔒 Private — only the creator can open the report
• 🌐 Team — any teammate with the Reports permission can open and edit the report

You can see the visibility at a glance in the Templates list — a lock icon means private, a globe icon means team.

Changing Visibility

The creator of a report is the only person who can change its visibility.

1. Hover over the report card in the Templates list.
2. Click the lock or globe icon that appears next to the delete button.
3. The visibility toggles and the change is logged in the report's Activity Log.

Activity Log

Every Custom Report keeps an audit history of important events. To view it:

1. Open the report.
2. In the ribbon, click Activity Log.
3. A dialog opens listing events in reverse chronological order.

Events that are logged include:

• Report created
• Report updated (name, content, or structure)
• Visibility changed between private and team
• Report deleted

Each entry shows who performed the action and when.

Limits and Things to Know

• 10,000 rows maximum per data source import. If your date range or filters would return more, you will see a message asking you to narrow the filters. Import in smaller batches (for example, month by month) if you need larger volumes.
• One editor at a time. Custom Reports are not collaborative in real time. If two people open the same report, the last person to save wins. For team reports, coordinate with your colleagues or use private reports for your own drafts.
• Desktop-first. The editor is designed for a desktop browser. On mobile or tablet you can view and export reports, but editing is limited.
• Exports vs. refresh. Once you export to Excel, that file is a snapshot — it is not connected back to Assignar Pay. Refresh the source report in Assignar Pay and re-export when you need updated numbers.
• Charts are not yet available in the editor. If you need a chart, export to Excel and build the chart there.
• Scheduled reports are not yet available. You refresh reports manually when you need updated data.

Tips and Best Practices

• Name sheets descriptively. A sheet called "Invoice Details – Q1 2026" is easier to reference in formulas than "Sheet1".
• Keep raw data and summaries on separate sheets. Import data sources onto dedicated sheets and build your analysis on a separate "Summary" sheet. This way, when you refresh, your formulas keep working and you do not accidentally overwrite your calculations.
• Save early, save often. There is no auto-save. Save after every significant change.
• Use filters at import time rather than importing everything and filtering in formulas — it is faster and keeps you under the 10,000-row cap.
• Use Year to Date or This Quarter presets to keep reports simple. When you refresh, the date range stays the same and pulls the latest data — no manual date editing required.
• Start from a copy. If you have a reporting layout that works, save it as a team template. Next month, make a copy and simply refresh the connected sheets.
• Round-trip compatibility. If the exported Excel file will be opened by another system, stick to the formula list in the Formulas section above.

Related Guides

• Report Data Sources — full reference for the 17 data sources, their filters, and their columns
• Financial Management — invoices, cost codes, and Schedule of Values
• Project Tracking — projects and clients that feed the reporting data sources