After-sales and settlement reports

After a sale: what was paid, what was refunded, which commission, which document. After a period: operator statement, amount mismatch, arrears. A report has an owner, a period and a number definition — the same amount in payments and in the statement. Dedicated means fields and filters from the company process, not a generic boxed dashboard.

ActiveReports or open source

ActiveReports when layout, preview, print and template upkeep by the team should move fast. Open source or our own PDF/Excel assembly when code control and no per-seat licence matter. The decision follows the number of layouts, who changes them and whether the document goes to a customer. We do not mix two engines in the same report.

PDF, XLS and Excel — a stream, not a manual export

A user or a service calls the report. The engine assembles pages and returns a stream: PDF for download, archive or mail; XLS/Excel for further work in a sheet. A large range goes on a queue — month-end does not stall the application. The same template, a repeatable result. A fixture comparison on test before production.

Access through an API

Contract: parameter (period, counterparty, currency), template id, output format. The same authorisation as the rest of the system. Another system can fetch the finished file or receive an async job with a link. A night schedule is a later stage. The data source is the company API or SQL — no spreadsheet pasted in beside it.

Rights and template upkeep

Who sees, who generates, who sends outward. Logo, legal footer and tax year are versioned. A layout change goes through sign-off before production.

First stage

One settlement or after-sales report, one data source, PDF or Excel, a fixture comparison. After sign-off: further layouts, a second format, an API for another system or a schedule — a separate quote.

Reporting system — after-sales, settlement, PDF, Excel and API