Custom Reporting - Using Filters
One important part of generating custom reports is using filters to slice and dice your data in a way that provides the greatest insights. Let's walk through a few different ways you can use filters.
Remember that you will find your custom reports by hovering your mouse on the Insights tab, and then select Reporting from the drop down menu. When you create a new report, or edit one of your existing, you will find the filters near the top of the page.
You may sometimes find it useful to make a broad report that contains few or no filters. This is often used for reports where you are wanting to view an overview, perhaps with many different fields or columns included. A marketing source report showing an overview of your sources for all matters is a good example of this type of report.
A more filtered report might filter using the Status field, to only show your Hired matters in the report, as shown below.
A more broad report might not filter based on Status, rather this report could use Status as a column, so that you can see the status of each matter in the report since none of the statuses have been filtered out.
You can also add multiple filters to a report. So let's say we want to create a report showing only Hired matters of a certain practice area. To accomplish this, we would use the AND condition for our additional filters, as shown below:
When you are using multiple filters, you can also choose to give them an OR relationship instead of AND. To change the filters to OR, simply click on the word AND, shown in blue above, and it will change to OR.This could be useful if you want to create a filtered report containing just a few of your practice areas.
The report above will show matters that belong to either of those 3 practice areas.
When building reports you also have the option to use Advanced Conditional Logic to mix "and" and "or" conditions. Learn all about that here.
You can also filter your report by date. In the top right corner, you will see the options for Date Range filters. Note that there are two different components to filtering based on date:
- The date range itself
- Which date field will be used for the filter
Click in the box underneath the words DATE RANGE, shown below, to select which date field should be used to set the range:
You will have the option to select from any date fields in your CRM, this could be standard fields like Created At, Converted Date, or any of your custom date fields, such as Arrest Date, shown in the image above.
It is important to make sure you are selecting the proper date based on how you wish to filter. For example, if I want to create a report of clients who have hired this year, this is different than clients who have been created this year. The former will include any matters that converted this year, regardless of when their matter was created. Whereas the latter will only show matters that were created this year.
Once you have determined which field should set the date range, you will then select the range. Note that you can select from dynamic options like "this week" or "last month", or you can set a static date range by selecting Custom.
After you have created a report in Lawmatics, it will dynamically update each time view it, which can be very useful for creating a current snapshot view using a date filter.
For example, one of your attorneys may wish to view a report once a week showing only their matters that hired within that specific week. That report would be built like so:
Notice that in addition to the date filter, the report is also filtered to show only hired matters that are owned by Matt. Whenever Matt views this reports, he will see only his matters that have converted in that current week.
Here are some other ideas for filtered reports that may provide insights to you and your team:
- PNCs by matter owner
- Hired matters by source
- Matters by practice area
- Conversions in a filtered date range
- Matters by lost reason (sub-status)
- Or any combination of these things!
FAQ's
As the firm owner, I would like to be the only one who can view custom reports. Is that possible?
Yes, you can limit the permission levels of your firm's users. You will find this option in settings > manage users > manage roles. Here you can create a role that does not have access to Reports. If you wish to keep all sensitive firm financial data private, you may also want to remove users' access to Firm Financials, Analytics, and ROI Tracker.
Why should I use custom reports?
Lawmatics is a treasure trove of data on your leads and clients alike. The custom reporting feature gives you complete control to put this data to use providing insights for your firm. This data can help you see areas for improvement, and areas of strength. All of these things can help you convert more leads and grow your business in the long run.
Can I view one of my reports in Excel?
Yes, when you view a report you will see a button at the bottom to export your report. This will download the report as a .csv file which can be opened using Excel, Google Sheets, and others.