Lab 4: Your first report#

What you are doing. Building your first report. Finance wants the Financial Statements (income statement, balance sheet and cash flow) sent to every market as its own pack, in Excel and PDF, by email, with the market's name on the file, the subject line and the message. You are going to build that from the workbook Timberline already uses.

What this shows you. The shape every Reportworq report shares: a source file, the parameters that change it, and the distribution that sends it. Everything in the later labs is a variation on the steps you walk here, so this lab takes each one slowly and says what the controls you skip are for.

How long. About 45 minutes.

What you need. The instance from Lab 3: running, licensed, signed in as admin@rw.com, with the Timberline demo content in the workspace. Excel, or anything else that opens an .xlsx, to look at the source workbook.

Before you start#

The finished version of this report already exists: Timberline ▸ Financial Reports ▸ Financial Statements. Leave it alone. You are going to build your own copy beside it, in a folder of your own, from your own copy of the source files, so nothing you do in this course can break the answer key. When your version does not behave the way you expect, open Timberline's and compare.

This lab writes to the store. It creates a folder, copies files into it and saves a report. None of it touches the Timberline folder.

Part A: A place to work, and the source file#

1. Make a folder for the course#

At the workspace root, select the arrow on the right-hand side of the New report button, then New Folder.

Name it Hands on Lab and select OK.

Every lab from here on works in this folder.

2. Copy the source files into it#

Open Timberline, then Financial Reports. At the end of the Source Files row, select the ⋮ menu, then Copy.

Use the breadcrumb to go back to Workspace, open Hands on Lab, and select Paste in the toolbar.

The folder and all eight files in it are copied in.

These copies are the source reports for this lab and the ones after it. Because they are copies, you are free to change them.

3. Create the report#

Still in Hands on Lab, select New report, name it Lab Financial Statements and select OK.

The report appears as a row. Select the pencil icon at the end of it to open the report editor.

Notice two things. The report now sits under Open Items in the rail, as Lab 3 described. And the editor is a set of steps down the left: Reports, Parameters, Bursting, Distribution, AI Profile and Test. This lab walks them in that order. Bursting is grayed out, and stays that way until you enable a parameter for burst sets, which this lab does not do.

4. Add the source workbook#

The Reports step is where you tell Reportworq which files the report is built from. Select Add a Report.

The picker opens on the workspace's own files. Expand Hands on Lab ▸ Source Files, select Financial_Board_Book.xlsx, and select OK.

The picker only offers files a report can use, which is why the list here is Excel workbooks and PowerPoint files and nothing else:

The last three matter only when PDF is one of the report's output formats, not only when it is the only one, and they are ignored for every other format. They go in whole: there is no way to take a single page out of one. A PowerPoint file added here is also not how you make PowerPoint output; Lab 7 does that with a template chosen on the Distribution step. CSV and text files cannot be added as sources.

A report can take several source files, from one location or several. The workspace's own files, which this course uses, are always there; an administrator can also connect network shares, SharePoint, OneDrive, Box, Google Drive and Planning Analytics application folders as places to pick from.

Back in the editor, the Report Selection panel now lists the workbook and every worksheet in it, including the hidden ones, which say (hidden).

5. Look at the workbook before you touch it#

Before you set any parameter, understand how the workbook works, because every parameter decision follows from it. At the end of the Financial_Board_Book.xlsx row, select the ⋮ menu, then Download. (Open does the same thing for a workspace file: it only opens the file in place when the file lives on a network path.) Open what you downloaded.

You will see three tabs: Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow.

The four hidden tabs hold the data the statements read from. The statements themselves are driven by a handful of control cells in hidden rows at the top of each tab. On each of the three tabs, unhide rows 1 to 6.

The two shaded cells are the ones that matter. B5 is a named range called Market and B6 is a named range called Year. Change either and the whole Income Statement recalculates for that market and that year. The rows above them are worked out from those two: row 1 decides whether the year is Actual or Forecast, and rows 2 to 4 look up the people responsible for the market you chose.

Now look at the same rows on Balance Sheet and Cash Flow. Their control cells are not typed in; they point back at Market and Year on the Income Statement. That one fact decides how you set this report up:

• You only need to tell Reportworq about the Income Statement. Write a market into its Market cell and the other two tabs follow it, through the workbook's own formulas.
• That stops being true the moment a tab has to repeat on its own. If you wanted a separate Balance Sheet for each of several years, you would map both Market and Year onto the Balance Sheet's own control cells. Reportworq writes a different value into each copy, and a copy cannot take its values from the Income Statement, so every parameter that tab depends on has to be mapped on the tab itself.

Why named ranges, and not cell addresses. A named range stays attached to its cell when someone inserts a row above it. A parameter pointed at B6 would quietly start writing into the wrong cell after that edit; a parameter pointed at Year keeps working. Naming your control cells is the single best habit to bring to a workbook you want Reportworq to drive.

Part B: The report, step by step#

6. Tell the worksheet where its parameters go#

Back in the editor, still on Reports, select Income Statement in the Report Selection panel. The right-hand side now reads Income Statement Output Options and Income Statement Parameters.

Check which worksheet is highlighted before you add a parameter. A parameter mapped here is written into this worksheet and nowhere else. Mapping Market onto the wrong tab is the most common reason a first report produces the same numbers for every market.

Select Add a parameter. A row appears with two boxes:

1. The parameter's name, on the left. Type Market.
2. Where in this worksheet the value goes, on the right: a named range, a cell such as A1, or a pivot field. Start typing Market and pick it from the list.

The picker lists the workbook's named ranges. Those scoped to this one sheet would be listed first, under Sheet ranges; this workbook's names belong to the whole workbook, so they are under Workbook ranges.

If the named range you want is not in the list, refresh. Reportworq reads the workbook's structure when you add it and remembers it. If you then add a named range or a tab in Excel and save the file back, the editor still shows what it read the first time. Select the refresh icon, Reload Reports, at the top of the Report Selection panel and it reads every source file again. Forgetting this is the classic first-week mistake.

Select Add a parameter again, name it Year, and pick the Year named range. Then select Save Changes at the top right.

You have said where each value goes. You have not yet said what the values are. That is the Parameters step, in a moment.

7. Give the output sheet a name#

Still on the Income Statement, under Income Statement Output Options, select Add output option, then Sheet Name.

A panel opens on the right. It starts in Text mode, where you type the name and can mix in parameter values. (Switching it to Cell takes the name from a cell or named range in the workbook instead.) The panel shows only the sheet name because you have not chosen PDF yet; once PDF is an output format, it also offers two PDF bookmark levels, which Lab 5 uses. Select the </> button beside the box and choose Market, which inserts %param:Market%, or type that yourself.

After it, type - Financial Statements, so the box reads %param:Market% - Financial Statements, and select Done.

In the Canada pack, the first tab is now called Canada - Financial Statements rather than Income Statement. Select Save Changes again.

Excel allows at most 31 characters in a sheet name, and Reportworq honors that limit by cutting anything longer. It does so without a warning, at the 31st character. Canada - Financial Statements is 29 characters and fits. Total Company - Financial Statements is 36, so the Total Company pack's tab comes out as Total Company - Financial State, and the same happens to eight other markets, United Kingdom and Southeast Asia among them. You will see it in the Test step. When you build a sheet name from a parameter, count the longest value the parameter can take, not the one in front of you.

Strictly, this report does not need it: each market gets its own file, so there is only ever one Income Statement in a file. It is here for practice, because the day a parameter makes a sheet repeat inside one file, a sheet name is not optional, and it has to include the value that changes from copy to copy. Without that, every copy has the same name, and Reportworq falls back to numbering them, which nobody can read. You will see that in Lab 5.

8. Say what the values are#

Select the Parameters step.

Both parameters are here, each saying where it is mapped. Both are set to One page per item, which is what a parameter created from a worksheet starts as. (One created here with Add Parameter starts as No replication instead.) This screen is where you give each parameter its values and decide what having several values does.

Market. Select the pencil on the Market row, or its not specified… link. In the panel that opens:

1. Set Parameter Type to Text List.

2. Paste these into Items, one per line:

   Total Company
   North America
   USA - East
   USA - Central
   USA - West
   Canada
   Mexico
   EMEA
   United Kingdom
   France
   Germany
   Nordics
   Middle East
   APAC
   Japan
   Australia
   Southeast Asia
   

3. Under Parameter Options, select One report per item.

4. The Security section below stops being grayed out. Tick Secured parameter, and in Secured by choose MarketControl.

5. Select Save & Close.

You have told Reportworq: here are the markets, and I want one separate report for each. Seventeen values, seventeen packs.

Securing the parameter ties each pack to the people allowed to see that market: MarketControl is a secured list, already in the Timberline store, that maps each market to the groups entitled to it. Only a One report per item parameter can be secured, because only then does each output belong to exactly one value. A later lab covers what securing does for the people who read the output; for now it is enough that the pack for Canada is marked as Canada's.

Year. Select the pencil on the Year row. This time:

1. Set Parameter Type to Global Parameter.
2. In Global Parameter, choose Current Year. The read-only Definition box shows what is behind it: a text list holding 2026.
3. Leave One page per item selected.
4. Select Save & Close.

This is the Current Year you met on the Global Parameters screen in Lab 3. Using it, rather than typing 2026, means that when the year rolls over, one edit on that screen moves this report along with the others that use it.

With a single value, One page per item produces one page, so for now it behaves exactly like No replication. It is set this way deliberately: in Lab 5 you give Year more than one value and watch the statements repeat.

Select Save Changes.

The options you left alone. Each is worth knowing before you need it:

• No replication is for a parameter that holds a single value and must never multiply the output: a year that only feeds the calculation, say. It asks what to do if the value turns out not to be single: Fail the job (a single value is required), or Use the first value, and omit the pages if there are none. Choose fail when a wrong or missing value would produce a misleading report; choose use the first value when a best effort is acceptable.
• Group & collate pages that use this parameter is available only for One page per item. When a parameter repeats several worksheets, Reportworq normally keeps the copies of each worksheet together: every Income Statement, then every Balance Sheet. Turn this on and the pages are arranged by value instead: all the worksheets for the first value in their normal order, then all the worksheets for the next value, and so on. Only the worksheets that use the parameter are rearranged.
• Enable this parameter to be used in burst sets is how you take finer control of how parameters combine, for example when one parameter needs its own custom list for each value of another. Ticking it on any parameter switches on the Bursting step. Lab 6 covers it.

9. Name the file and choose what to send#

Select the Distribution step.

This step decides three things: what each output file is called, which formats are produced, and where they go. The Destination(s) you see depend on the distributors your administrator has set up; the Timberline instance has Email and Network Folder.

The file name. Each of the seventeen packs needs a different name, so the name is built from the parameter values. Select the </> button (Insert Variable) at the end of the File Name box, then Parameter.

A red Select Parameter pill appears in the box. Select it and choose Year.

Type -, insert a second parameter pill and choose Market, then type a space and Financial Statements.

The Canada pack will be called 2026-Canada Financial Statements.

Formats and destination. Under File Format(s) select Excel and PDF. Under Destination(s) select Email. Each choice adds its own options further down the page: Format Options for the two formats and Email Options for the destination.

10. Set the format options#

Select the pencil on the Excel card. Formula Options decides what happens to the workbook's formulas in the file people receive:

File Format is the kind of workbook produced: Excel Workbook (.xlsx), Excel Binary Workbook (.xlsb) or Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook (.xlsm).

Choose Remove Provider Formulas and leave Excel Workbook (.xlsx).

This workbook has no data source of its own, so here the option removes nothing. It is the right habit all the same: on a workbook connected to a planning system, it hands people a clean file whose Excel formulas still work, without the live connections they cannot use.

Now select the pencil on the PDF card and tick all three: Include Table of Contents (a contents page built from the worksheets), Include Page Numbers, and Low-quality PDF (smaller size), which trades image quality for a smaller attachment.

11. Write the email#

Scroll down to Email Options. The email is built the same way as the file name: text, with values dropped into it.

Attachments. All Formats is ticked, so each email carries both the Excel and the PDF file. Leave it. You could instead attach only one format, or untick All Formats to send no attachment at all, which is how you send a newsletter-style email, a dashboard in the body, or a link to where the file was saved instead.

To. The recipient comes from the workbook. Select the </> button at the end of the To box, then Cell Value.

Select the red Select Value pill. In Source, expand the workbook and Income Statement and tick EmailTo, then select Save & Close. (Source asks for the workbook as well as the cell because a report can have several source files.)

EmailTo is cell B3, one of the rows you unhid in step 5. It is a formula that assembles the right recipients for whichever market is in Market: the market's manager, its director and the VP for an individual market, the director and the VP for a region, and the VP alone for Total Company. Because Reportworq writes the market in before it reads the cell, each pack goes to that market's people.

Why not ManagerEmail? It looks like the obvious choice, but it is blank for Total Company, North America, EMEA and APAC, which have no single manager, so four of your seventeen emails would have no recipient.

The double chevron at the end of the To box, Show More Fields, opens Cc, Bcc and Priority (Low, Normal, High), and From if your administrator allows the sender to be overridden. Leave them all empty: a blank From sends from the instance's default address. Select the chevron again to close them.

Subject. Build it the same way as the file name: insert a Parameter pill and choose Year, type -, insert another and choose Market, then type a space and Financial Statements.

Message. In the body, type:

Hi Team,

Attached is your Year financial statements for Market. Please let us know if there are any questions or concerns.

Thanks,

Finance

For Year and Market, use the <> menu at the left of the editor's toolbar, choose Parameter, then select the red pill and choose the parameter.

Recipient, subject and message now all change with every pack. Select Save Changes.

12. Skip the AI Profile, for now#

The AI Profile step describes what is in the report so that the Reportworq MCP tools can tell which report answers a question someone asks an AI assistant. Nothing in this report needs it yet. A later lab comes back to it.

Part C: What you got#

13. Test it before anything is sent#

Select the Test step, then Generate Preview.

This is the most important habit in the course. The preview lists one row per output the report will produce, before anything runs.

Seventeen rows: one per market, exactly what One report per item promised. Select a row and the General panel shows the values it will run with, Market and Year, which is 2026 from Current Year. If the count or the values are not what you expect, the parameters are wrong, and you have found out without sending anything.

Now select the Run button (the play icon) on the Total Company row.

Read the notice first: this is a dry run. Reportworq calculates that pack in full and produces the real files, but in a temporary location, with all sending suppressed. When it finishes, the panel shows the files and the email exactly as they would go out. Open the files: check that the Income Statement tab is named for the market (and notice that for Total Company the name stops at Total Company - Financial State, the 31-character limit from step 7), that the figures are the market's, and that the Balance Sheet and Cash Flow followed it. Check the email's recipient, subject and message. Send and Test… on the finished run are there to deliver it for real; you do not need them now.

14. Describe the report#

Select Save Changes if you have not already, then use the breadcrumb to go back to Hands on Lab. Select the ⓘ icon, Properties, at the end of the Lab Financial Statements row.

On the Overview tab, select the pencil beside Description and enter Income, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statements, or a description of your own. Leave Visibility on Visible to readers and Job output history on Inherit.

The same panel tells you the report's path, its parameters and when it was created and last changed, without opening the editor. Save and close it. The description now shows in the folder, which is what the people browsing it will read.

That is your first report.

Why it works this way#

The worksheet says where; the Parameters step says what. They are separate on purpose. The same Market parameter could be mapped into three worksheets, or into three workbooks, and its values are still defined once. That is also why a parameter mapped into the wrong worksheet goes wrong so quietly: the values are right, and they are being written somewhere nothing reads them.

Reportworq writes, Excel calculates. Reportworq does not know what an income statement is. It writes Canada into Market, lets the workbook recalculate, and captures the result. Everything clever in this report, the Balance Sheet following the Income Statement and the recipient list assembling itself, is the workbook's own formulas. The better your workbook is built, the less the report has to do.

Replication is the one real decision. One report per item means a separate file, and a separate email, for each value. One page per item means the sheet repeats inside one file. Almost every report you will ever build is some combination of those two choices, and the next few labs are about exactly that.

Try this#

1. Prove the preview counts before anything runs. On the Parameters step, take Germany out of Market's list, save, and generate the preview again. Sixteen rows. The preview is the cheapest place to catch a list that is wrong. Put Germany back.
2. Rename the tab from a cell. Open the Income Statement's Sheet Name option and switch it from Text to Cell, then point it at the Market named range. Run a pack and compare the tab name with the one you had.
3. Compare with the answer key. Open Timberline ▸ Financial Reports ▸ Financial Statements in the editor and walk the same steps. The parameters, formats, file name and email should match yours. Three differences are expected and are not mistakes on your part: it lists only the three visible worksheets rather than all seven, its Income Statement carries a PDF bookmark title rather than a sheet name, and its message wording differs slightly. Anything else that differs is worth going back to look at.

Notes and limits#

• This report does not send anything yet. A dry run suppresses all sending. Running the report for real, from the folder or on a schedule, delivers to the Email Inbox while no email provider is configured, and to real people once one is. Lab 11 covers running on a schedule.
• Parameters can come from somewhere other than a list you type. A text list is the simplest source, not the usual one: in production, the list normally comes from the planning model or a database, so adding a market there adds a pack here without anyone editing the report. This course types its lists because the demo content has no data source connected.
• Open and Download do the same thing for a workspace file. Open only opens a file in place when it is stored on a network path the browser can reach.

Going deeper. For source files and worksheets in full, see Source files and worksheets. For every parameter type and option, see the parameters reference and Global parameters. For the worksheet options, including sheet names, see Worksheet output options. For file names, formats and the email, see Name and organize output, Output formats and Destinations. For how the finished Timberline version is built, see the Timberline report catalog.

Next#

Lab 5: A sheet per value. You have built one file per market. Next you take a copy of the same report, give Year more than one value, and watch every statement repeat inside each market's pack: One page per item doing real work, and the sheet name you set here gaining the year it needs to tell the copies apart.