Using Wildcards for Reports

Wildcards are used to further define search criteria when building reports. If you want to include many records in a report rather than marking each one individually, you may want to use wildcards. Wildcards are special characters that give you more flexibility in selecting various records, such as account numbers and invoice numbers, to print on reports that use that type of information.

You can use two wildcard characters, the Asterisk (*) and the Question mark (?), in the Report Customization window.

Use the asterisk in the Report Customization window if you want to print a report for a specific group of records. For example, if you want to print an Account Transactions report for all accounts whose account numbers begin with 1, you can use the asterisk wildcard to do so.

To select only accounts whose numbers begin with 1, enter 1* in the selected field in the Report Customization window for the Account Transactions report. When you print the report, only accounts whose numbers begin with 1 will be included on the report.

You can use the asterisk in other locations in an account, item or job number in the Selected field, as well. For example, if you have several items whose numbers end in SVC (to indicate the items are service items), you can enter *SVC in the selected field to print a report that includes only the items whose numbers end in SVC.

The question mark wildcard allows you to restrict a report even further than the asterisk. Use the question mark to limit your report to elements that contain only a specific number of characters.

For example, say you want to print a Job Transactions report for the Cadwell Corporation. All Cadwell job numbers are three characters long and begin with the letter C. However, you have other jobs that start with the letter C and you don't want those jobs to appear on the report. In the Selected field of the Job Transactions report's Report Customization window, enter C?? to limit the report to three-character jobs that begin with C.

Like the asterisk wildcard, the question mark also can be used in other locations in account, item, purchase, sale and card name.

Note: wildcards are used for report generation, only. You cannot use wildcards when selecting from lists to display –– such as your card list or your items list.