count number of orders entered

[Former Member]

Morning all,

I have created a report which divides (calculates) number of orders in x number of days. The report is working perfectly however now I would like to add a new feature in it. For example

Number of days            Number of Orders
1                                           3
2                                           2
3                                           4
4                                           5
5                                           6

The above example shows 3 orders took 1 number of days to be shipped out. Now what I would like to show is, 5 orders (in reality) should have taken 1 number of days. So in my report it will show it like this

Number of days            Number of Orders        Actual Number of Orders
1                                           3                                   5
2                                           2                                   4
3                                           4                                   7
4                                           5                                   2
5                                           6                                   1

The above example shows that in reality in one day 5 orders should have been shipped however only 3 went out.

So in other words I would like to show orders according to when they were entered and match them with the orders which were actually shipped accordingly.

I tried using formula like this

{date_entered};
distinctcount({order_num});

and I put it under the crosstab (Number of days row) however that shows the total number of orders instead of dividing those actual orders into number of days.

Anyone knows how to go about this?

Many thanks

Kind Regards

Jehanzeb

[Former Member]

i have a couple of questions

is the number of days the date or the date difference between order date and completion date?

are there parameters to select the dates?

i believe this is what you want to do is create a group by order date, this will group all orders by the date

then use manual running totals

NUMBER OF ORDERS

1 reset on the order date header

1 calculate on the order (use the date diff formula you are using to get the value)

1 display on the order date footer- this will show you the total

ACTUAL ORDERS

for the calculation create a formula

if shipdate in {?parameter} then 1

use manual rt and this will display your values in the footer

then supress the header and footer.

[Former Member]

Sharon very informative answer. Thanks.

One question though, in automatic running total you get an option for "reset on change of group", how do you implement this on your manual running total?

Many thanks once again

Regards

Jehanzeb

[Former Member]

i wouldnt recommend using the wizard, not always 100%

use manual running totals

that consists of 3 formulas

1 reset gets placed in the group header

1 calc gets placed in the details as long as you are not duplicating values

if there are dup values create another group for the unique id you are counting and place the calc in there

1 to display the value

the reset on change of group is the group you want to reset on

order #

[Former Member]

Thanks Sharon,

I do agree that we should use manual running total, it gives us allot more control.

I have created a formula for running total as you suggested however the results produced by manual running total are totally different than the results produced by automatic running total.

I am definitely doing something wrong here.

I'll try it again today and will let you know how I get along with it.

Many thanks

Regards

Jehanzeb

[Former Member]

are your records duplicating that you are calculating against?

if so create a group for that field and place the calc there it will pick up one value per one unique id.