If I understand correctly, it's the AND, OR and NOT that you're on about. It took me a while to figure this out too. RMS seems to have its own logic regarding AND and OR statements for reports.
Obviously, a query for a report:
Supplier = x AND Supplier = y
will return all items which have both Supplier x and Supplier y as a supplier, while a query for a report:
Supplier = x OR Supplier = y
will return all items with either supplier x or y as a supplier (or both)
Where it gets awkward is with queries combining And and OR statements. I would expect the query
OnHand > 0 AND Supplier = x OR Supplier = y
to give me items with a stock level greater than 0 which had suppliers x or y, but, in fact you get items with stock greater than 0 with supplier x and all items (whatever their stock levels) with supplier y.
The OR resets the query so the statement after the OR must also contain all the parameters you want to check. To get a report with items with stock levels greater than 0 from suppliers x and y, the query should be:
OnHand > 0 AND Supplier = x OR OnHand > 0 AND Supplier = y
Regarding the NOT statement, I think that it simply negates the part of the query it is attached to: ie:
NOT Supplier = x
will return all items apart from those with supplier x. I think these are not affected by the AND and OR statements. So,
OnHand > 0 AND NOT Supplier = x OR NOT Department = z
should return items with stock greater than 0 and suppliers other than x, as well as all items which are not in department z. I'm not so sure about the NOT parts since I only rarely use them in reports.
H I am a single, small retail wine & cheese shop that has been in business just
4 months. Among other RMS issues that I find challenging, I am particularly mystified by the methodology with which Operations Manager reports are generated. I know very little about Boolean Logic (or whatever it is that this function uses), and my attemps to use what I would call 'normal' logic often result in frustration. Most of the reports I try to generate are related to sales of or on hand positions of items within certain parameters. I often put in a few criteria, that would seem to make sense, and get nothing at all.
Is there a good place to go to understand how this report function really works? Something that would de-mystify it? One that is understadable by the un-sophisticated?
On a slightly more advanced level...... is there a report function that would tell me how many of an item were added to inventory in a given time frame (as a means of judging momentum of sales as related to total available to sell over a specific time period)? This is basic retail turnover math, but I haven't seen anything like it in the report generator.
Thanks for any and all help. I'm sure this is just the beginning of many rudimentary questions I'll have, so thanks for being understanding.
WineGuy