Entering information into your database is the hard part. The easy part comes from running a report so that you can better analyze that data.
The only thing you'll want to do before heading for the Reports view is to create a Lookup of contacts specific to your reports. For example, if you want to run the Source of Referrals report to find out how all your top customers found out about you in the first place, you'll want to create a Lookup for Top Customers.
1. Navigate to the ACT! Reports view.
2. Select the report you wish to run from either the Favorite Reports or Report List.
3. Click the Run Report button on the Report view toolbar. Alternatively you can double-click the name of the report you want to run. Depending on the report you choose, you'll see a Define Filters dialog box similar to the one shown previously.
4. Click OK to run the report.
5. Click the red X to close the report when you're finished viewing it.
The ACT! Report will include only those contacts that are included as part of your current lookup. In addition, as you run a report you can filter the contents of that report. For example, you might create a lookup of all of your customers, and then filter your report to include only notes that you've added about those customers in the last 30 days.
You can learn about the various filtering options in the next chapter. You can permanently alter the filtering options in a report from the Report Designer, which we'll discuss later in this book. For example, you may always want to run one of the Opportunity reports for the prior month, or save your pipeline as a PDF file.
Rightfully so, many ACT! users worry about the security of their data. As a business owner you might be concerned that one of your ACT! users could run a report and then run off with your data. All of the ACT! Reports are automatically added to the database and appear in the Report view. Any users who can access the database can run the report. However, if you are using ACT! Premium and have limited the access rights at the contact level, those access rights cascade down to the report level.
For example, you may be worried that one of your sales people could run the Contact Report and consequently have a nice listing of all of your customers. However, if you have limited the access to those customers so that your sales person can't access them, the sales person can still run the report, but it will not contain any of the contacts to which he has no access.