Vizlib Finance Report Best Practice and Troubleshooting

When you're working with Vizlib Finance Report it's important to be clear about what you can and can't do. We've collected together tips for best practice and any known issues and limitations and listed them here for you. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Best Practice 
• Limitations
• Recommended versions

Best Practice 

• Let's introduce you - If you're new to Vizlib Finance Report, or looking to find some information, the Introduction page has links to the product resources and knowledge base articles.
• Watch and learn - We always recommend that you watch the setup tutorial (in the Introduction page or on our Youtube channel) before starting to work with Vizlib Finance Report. And while it's designed to be easy to use, it's also designed to be used within a company finance department, so you'll also need knowledge of both Qlik Sense and finance solutions.
• Go for Enterprise - If you upgrade to the Enterprise version of Vizlib Finance Report, you'll be able to use the full range of features for the extension, including full comments functionality and an integration with Vizlib Server. 
• Use Templates - Templates in Vizlib Finance Report help you apply a look and feel instantly, speed up development and make maintaining your solutions much easier. You can even design your own and save them.  
• There is an alternative - Vizlib Finance Report can be used with alternative dimensions and measures. If you add alternatives, you'll be able to choose the measure you prefer when you're using analysis mode, changing the outcome of the finance report for a much more adaptable and varied used experience. If you'd like to add more focus to your chart, look at adding reference lines to help users analyze the chart data.
  
• Bookmark it - You can use the Bookmark function in Qlik Sense to keep track of any selected data you need to view regularly, which can save you time and effort. 
• Calculations - If you're looking to use data from specific rows in your finance report, follow these instructions. 
  • Create a calculated row with a unique calculation (Field PnL_calculation in the template file and column Calculation in the Excel)
  • Ensure the row is connected to all the data needed for the calculation. (If you aren't getting the result you think you should. check by selecting the row and the associated data in standard Qlik filters/tables.)
  • Create your calculation in the expression using any logic you want. (A set expression is fastest.)
• Viztips - Viztips is a very powerful tool to add to any extension, but you can only start using it with some preparation. Make sure the visualization using Viztips is set up with the dimensions and measures to give you the result you want, and has the set analysis you need. You can watch our guide on using Viztips with Vizlib Finance Report here. 
• Performance - Vizlib Finance Report uses using the Qlik Sense Hub engine, and each individual value will be processed separately, so working with large amounts of data may affect the engine processing time. You can find more information on performance issues in our article on Best Practice and Performance Optimization in Qlik Sense, and we've added some performance tips specific to Vizlib Finance Report here. 
• Use Top Dimension - If your top dimension has a large number of values this will impact on performance, so consider carefully if you need to enable the setting. If the last dimension also has a large number of values calculations could take a lot longer to complete. 
• Open Table Expanded to Level - Only use this setting in tables with a small number of values on the sub-dimensions to avoid a negative impact on performance. For dimensions with many values it is much more efficient for the user to expand only data that is needed.

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Limitations

Dimensions - Maximum of 5 simultaneous dimensions. (Unlimited alternative dimensions and drill-down dimensions are possible).

Export - Indicator icons and data bars do not export to Excel yet.

Legacy PnL - Any older PnL objects need to be recreated with version 2.0 and higher! 

Trial Version - The trial/free version of the finance report has limitations (maximum of 5 user licences, the Vizlib watermark is displayed in the report background of the report and there's no form of commentary available on the report.

Zero Values and Pivot Tables - To accommodate inconsistencies in behaviour when a pivot table uses zero values, we've introduced a fix to make Vizlib Finance Report consistent with other Qlik Sense tables. Figure 1 shows examples from 

1. Vizlib Finance Report
2. Qlik Native Pivot Table
3. Vizlib Pivot Table
4. Qlik Native Table

The red box in the Qlik Native Table shows the total value for Value 2 is 0 as 2 + (-2) = 0. In all pivot tables (including Vizlib Finance Report pivot tables) this leads to the first dimension being hidden. However, when the table is expanded these values are still shown. The green arrows indicate in examples 1 and 2 indicate a slightly thicker line, which indicates that another dimension (Value 2) is being used. 

Figure 1: Zero Values Pivot Tables

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Recommended versions

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