What is CiviReport?

Reporting helps your organisation to evaluate its impact and achieve its mission. Sometimes this is a requirement for funders or other stakeholders. CiviReport allows you to create, run and schedule reports based on the data CiviCRM has about your contacts and their interactions with your organisation.

These reports are queries on the database using criteria and fields available in a report template. Reports can be delivered on the page when you run them, as a dashlet on the dashboard or a scheduled email which can include a CSV file or PDF.

Scenario: a simple report to help with fundraising

1two3, a support organisation for street workers, has launched a capital campaign to raise money for a new shelter. Anne, the development director wanted to reach out to donors who made a large donation last year but haven't given money this year.

She created an instance of the LYBUNT report ("Last year but unfortunately not this") which filters data to show people who gave more than €500 last year, then ran the report and used the Add to Group button to put these donors into a new group so she could send an email to everyone in the group with information about the capital campaign.

Finally she added the report to her CiviCRM Dashboard so she can review progress getting this group of prior donors to contribute to the campaign. Anyone who donates will automatically drop off this list since they will no longer meet the criteria, and the list remaining in the dashlet can be used as the basis for follow up phone calls or other personalised contact.

Scenario: a regular financial report

WAM is an academic membership organisation with about 1,500 members. Their members renew their membership online and pay either online by card or by offline by direct debit. Mark, the finance officer, needs several reports to keep track of the money coming in and automation of this process was a key reason for the implementation of CiviCRM. All these reports are regular and are sent to him by email with a CSV attachement so he can import the details into either their accounting software or their online banking interface. While a couple of the key reports are outlined here, their requirements were fairly complex and some custom report templates were required alongside the standard ones.

Every Monday morning, Mark receives a list of all completed online payments for the previous week to import into Sage; this report contains the amount and time of the payment along with what it was for (membership or event) and a reference ID so it can be tracked back to the record in CiviCRM. At the end of every month, he receives a list of all members who pay by direct debit whose membership is due to expire in the following month. This allows him to set up the direct debit payments for these membership renewals by importing part of the list into their online banking interface.

These email reports save Mark several hours a month and allow him to focus on issues that contribute more to the effective management of WAM's financial resources.

Scenario: determining total contributions for a household

A non-profit organisation in Ohio keeps records of individuals organised by households. A common situation is that the husband in the household has attended a number of paid events, while his wife has also registered for other events and made separate donations.

Staff at the organisation want to see the total contributions received from everyone in a household so that when someone calls the office to enquire about a donation or event payment made by someone else in the family, all the relevant information is at hand. Staff can run the Donation Summary Report (Household) as required, using the name of the household to find all contributions and relevant information to answer the caller's questions.