Managing reporting periods | ClearPoint Strategy

Managing reporting periods

Reporting periods are the base units of time over which you are reporting. Reporting periods are the building blocks used to create your reporting frequencies. In order to track metrics over time in ClearPoint, administrators must add periods into the system.

In This Article

Adding a reporting period

From under System Settings, click on Reporting Periods.

Click the plus icon. Give the period a name. We recommend adding the period labeled with the abbreviated month and year, for example the October 2020 period would be “Oct-20”.

Select a Period Date from the calendar menu. This should correspond to the last day of the period (e.g., 10/31/20 for October 2020). We recommend that your base reporting periods be months (you can then use these to report quarterly, annually, etc.). We root the reporting period in the last day of the month because it generally would not make sense to report out on a month that has not finished yet. Unless you set a Default Period, ClearPoint will automatically pull you into the most recently completed reporting period.

To add this period to only particular scorecards, select these scorecards from the Scorecards tab. If nothing is selected, this period will be available in all scorecards. Click Save.

Note: Whenever possible, do not make reporting periods scorecard-specific.  This will make period management easier going forward.

Adding multiple reporting periods

Creating the period spreadsheet in Excel

In Excel, enter the period labels (e.g., ‘Apr-23’) in one column and the corresponding period end-dates (e.g., 4/30/23) in the next column. Keep in mind that each period must have a unique end date.

Note: It helps to set the first column of data type as Text, so that Excel does not automatically change the format from Apr-23 to 23-Apr.

 

Highlight and copy the values you have entered, or simply copy the values from the table below that includes periods for the 2023 year.

Jan-23 01/31/2023
Feb-23 02/28/2023
Mar-23 03/31/2023
Apr-23 04/30/2023
May-23 05/31/2023
Jun-23 06/30/2023
Jul-23 07/31/2023
Aug-23 08/31/2023
Sep-23 09/30/2023
Oct-23 10/31/2023
Nov-23 11/30/2023
Dec-23 12/31/2023

Adding multiple periods in ClearPoint

From under System Settings, click on Reporting Periods.

Click on Add Multiple from the dropdown menu in the upper right corner. A new window will appear. Place your cursor on the first cell of the Period Names grid, and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+V to paste the values from the Excel sheet into the grid.

To add these periods only to particular scorecards, select these scorecards from the Scorecards tab. If nothing is selected, the periods will be available in all scorecards. Finally, click Save.

Note: Unless there is a particular reason you want to restrict the periods to certain scorecards, it is simplest to leave none selected. That way, the periods will be available automatically in newly added scorecards.

Locking periods

Locking a reporting period prevents further changes from being made to the data and update fields for that period. This function allows administrators to monitor data entry and late entries after the end of a reporting period. You can lock a period globally, or you can schedule the period to lock automatically on a by-scorecard basis.

Locking periods globally

Click on Reporting Periods from under System Settings. Click the pencil icon next to the period. A new window will appear. Select Locked Period. This will lock the period in all scorecards immediately as soon as you click Save.

Schedule period to lock by scorecard

Click the Auto Period Locking tab. Under the scorecard name, specify the date when the period will be locked within that scorecard. Specify a date across all scorecards by selecting a date and clicking Copy To All Scorecards. The date can be removed by clicking Clear Dates. Click Save.

 

Note: ClearPoint locks the period at 12:00 AM ET on the date selected. In this example, the period will lock at 12:00 AM ET on 3/01/21. If you wanted the period to remain unlocked until 11:59 PM ET on 3/01/21, you would use 3/02/21 as your auto lock date.

Period options

Open System Settings in the control panel and click on Reporting Periods.

To view the period options, click the pencil icon next to a reporting period.

In the period edit window, you will see all the period options. Selecting Lock Period, further explained in the section above, prevents further changes from being made to the data and update fields for that period.

Selecting Default Period means that users will see this period when they log into the system. If no default period is selected, ClearPoint will display the most recently completed period when users log in.

Selecting Hidden Period hides the period everywhere except the Reporting Periods page in ClearPoint. That means it will be hidden from the Period Selector, hidden from all measure data tables, and will not be used in calculations. Hidden periods are helpful when you don’t want users to be able to access either historic periods or future periods.

Selecting Non-Reporting Period hides the period only from the Period Selector. You will still be able to use this period in data tables and reporting frequencies. Non-reporting periods are useful if you are doing reporting on something more frequently than monthly but do not want it to apply to the whole account. If you are reporting on a specific item in your account biweekly, for example, you may make biweekly periods and mark them as Non-Reporting Periods. In this instance, you would still see the biweekly periods in a data table in order to input your data, but it would not clutter and confuse the period selector with additional periods on top of monthly.