Controlling reporting dates with beginning and ending periods

Dynamics GP provides a number of features to improve and simplify reporting. One of the most overlooked features is the ability to automatically control dates when running reports. That functionality is the juicy goodness covered in this recipe.

Dynamics GP contains a large number of built-in reports which were created with the included Report Writer tool. They are often referred to as Report Writer reports to distinguish them from other report types such as SmartLists or SQL Server Reporting Services reports.

Report Writer reports have several common elements, one of which is an option name. A report option is simply a named collection of settings for a particular report. For example, Historical Aged Trial Balance is the name of a report. Prior to running it, a user might name an option for that report 072016 North to indicate that the report settings have been limited to information from July 2016 and the North region.

Since many...