Missed Part 1? Get caught up here: Roundtable Reports Tips & Tricks (March 3, 2021)

During this roundtable, customers shared the types of reports and groups they are using at their associations, as well as some tips, tricks, and best practices!

The Florida Municipal Electric Association (FMEA) publishes a weekly electronic newsletter, and they use the Novi Group functionality to sync their contact list into their email platform for those marketing messages.

Tip: Use Custom Fields with Groups to keep your Special Interest Groups and Committees up-to-date.

FMEA utilizes groups to keep track of their special interest groups and committees, such as a recently launched Diversity in Public Power group, Communicators group, and more. First, they created a set of options custom field with the various Committees. Then they created Novi Groups using the custom field as a condition:
"Committee - Interest Group + Contains + committee name"

They display the Committee Interest Group custom field on the member's profile and ask their members to indicate their interests by updating that field. When a member logs into their profile and updates their interests, they are automatically added to the corresponding special interest group!

In addition, FMEA publishes a printed directory on an annual basis. Since the information is being exported, and it needs to contain a lot of detailed information about their members, they utilize Custom Reports to pull and export that to provide to their publisher.

In reports, they also utilize naming conventions in the Report Categories to categorize the reports their staff regularly reference.

Tips:

When searching for a field in Custom reports, use the Section Headers to your advantage: Pay special attention to the section headers when you're typing in a field in the Columns to Display - they can help you narrow down the field you're trying to find.

For example, if you need to pull a report based on a certain member type, your section header is Member Type Info, and your specific field is the Name.

Instead of typing a vague term like "Name" and searching for the member type section, type in "Member Type Name" and your selection for a column or condition will appear:

Member Status as a Condition: If you've been a customer for a long time, you may have some reports or groups that contain the conditions "Active in QuickBooks Online = Yes" combined with a member expiration date condition, to find current members. Simplify those conditions by using Member Status = Current!

Additional Resources: