Nine reports, and one email that does not wait to be opened.
Nine standard reports over the records already kept, any of them saved as a view to return to, and a Monday morning email that goes out whether or not anybody opens a screen that week.
A report nobody opens is a report nobody has. Most weeks in a twelve-person office nobody opens one, which is why the number that matters arrives by itself on a Monday instead of waiting behind a menu.
It sends the week to four people at seven on Monday.
No login, and no dashboard that anyone has to remember to visit. The same figures the reports would show arrive in an email, on a morning when somebody is going to read their email anyway.
A saved view is a report that was changed and kept.
One of the nine is given its own filters — one customer, one lane, one month, one owner — and saved under a name. It is on the menu the next morning with the same filters, so the person who built it does not have to rebuild it, and the person who did not build it can still open it.
Then it leaves as a file
Every list exports to CSV or Excel, and shipments export in five shapes. The last of the five is described in AMC’s own code as every field held, for migration or backup. That is the shape needed when the question being asked is not one of the nine.
The export was widened; no report builder was built.
This is the feature request AMC declines most often, and the reasoning is worth putting on the page rather than repeating on calls.
What a builder is
A report builder is a small programming language with a drag handle on it. Every field needs a label a stranger can understand, a type, a permission, and a decision about what it means when it is empty. The builder becomes the product, it is the part that breaks on release day, and most offices still build three reports and export the rest to Excel.
What the effort went into instead
Nine reports that are already the questions people ask, saved views so a report can be personalised without being built, and an export wide enough that the tenth question is answered in the tool already used for it. The same door used to leave is the one used to report — which is also why AMC can state with confidence that it is unlocked.
Four things, and the first one is on purpose.
The number the office asks for every Monday.
Whatever it is that somebody in the office works out by hand at the start of the week, the demonstration shows which of the nine it comes from, saves it as a view with the office’s filters on it, and puts it in the Monday email. If it is not one of the nine, the export it falls out of is shown instead.