In all Report Conditioning options that require a date, instead of entering an actual date, you can enter a date formula. A date formula is a calculation based on the current date. If you have a standard set of reports that are run every month, using this feature will save you a lot of time, because you can reuse the report conditioning without modifying it for the current period.
The current accounting period is substituted in any report conditioning criteria when you enter =<CURRENT>, based on your system date or the date you enter in Tools » Set Current Date. To substitute other dates, modify the date formula by adding or subtracting d)ays, m)onths, p)eriods, or y)ears.
In conditioning options that require a date (for example, 17-JUL-07), you can use d)ays or y)ears in your formula. For example, if today is July 17th, 2005:
=<CURRENT> + 3y - 1d would
be calculated as July 17th, 2008
=<CURRENT> + 60d would be calculated as Sept 15th, 2005
In conditioning options that require a period (for example, JUL-07), you can use m)onths or p)eriods in your formula. For example, if the current period is JUL-07:
=<CURRENT> + 3p would be calculated
as OCT-07
=<CURRENT> - 2m would be calculated as MAY-07
Once you enter a formulated date and move to another field on the Report Conditioning window, the date is calculated based on the current date and displayed in brackets next to the formula in the Criteria box.
Using formulated dates is extremely valuable when you save report conditioning for later batch processing, especially when a Batch Report file contains multiple reports. Each time you run the same report(s), the dates will be recalculated based on the current date without you having to re-enter the new dates.
Always be sure that the Current Date is set correctly before running the report, either in the system date or by using Set Current Date, so that your formulated dates are calculated correctly.