View Object Totals by Month for Validation Purposes (or Fallout)!

Step 1:

Create a new report by clicking on New in the Home menu.

Step 2:

Add a table to your report by clicking on Table in the Report menu.

Step 3:

Drag a column over to the Rows section - any column - you're going to remove it later.

Step 4: 

Right-click within the report's white space and select Convert to Legacy Table.

Step 5:

Right-click again and select Edit Data Path towards the bottom. 

Step 6:

Replace everything that appears in the Edit Data Path with the following and click OK.

<%=CurrentBuildPath()%>/

CostModels/

Default/

Cost/

.DateGoesHere/

.Unassigned/

!GROUPBY[{Object},{Category }]/

!NEWCOLUMN[{Network Devices}=Object]/

!NEWCOLUMN[{Object Name}="Object"]/

!NEWCOLUMN[{Name}=Object]/

Step 7:

It's going to show 'No data to display' at first.  Go to the Data menu and click on the Choose icon.

Step 8:

Select the following columns:

• Object
• Cost

Step 9:

Now add Formula Columns to show the data by month (I usually add enough for the full year).

Keep adding these so that you have Period-1 through Period-11.  If you want to view at the beginning of the fiscal year and look forward instead of backward, then you would use +1 through +11 instead.

This way you have a full fiscal year view like the one below and you can take a screenshot or export before configuration changes, and then review afterwards to see what changed.  To make it easier, you can add a Formula Column for Total that adds all the period columns together.

You can also make a copy of this report and modify it to review fallout by month as well.  For your calculated columns, instead of using {Cost}, you would use {Unassigned } (notice the space after the 'd' - not a typo, you're gonna need that).

That's all folks! 😊