Organisation-level templates are the most efficient way to deliver consistent reporting across your client base. Build a template once, publish it to the relevant farm types, and it becomes available across all the farms in your practice.
This article walks you through building a template from scratch or from a starting point, and publishing it to your clients.
1. Getting Started: Build Your Report Template for your Organisation
Under Your Organisation menu, Navigate to Reporting Studio from the side bar on the left. Please note if you don't have access to this it will be because of your Organisation Permissions.
Select Custom Reports.
Click the + Build a Report button in the top-right corner.
The Build a Template window will open. Here, you have three choices for getting started:
Use a Figured Template: Select a layout from the Template dropdown. These are pre-built for specific markets and provide a great foundation, so you don't have to start from a blank slate.
Start from Scratch: Leave the Template dropdown empty to build your report from a blank canvas.
Benchmarking - A report for Dairy NZ benchmarking.
Complete the report's basic details:
Report Name: Give your template a clear, descriptive name (e.g., "Monthly Advisory Report," "Livestock Performance Summary").
Description: (Optional) Add a note for your team about what this report is used for.
Product Type: Select the relevant Figured Subscription for this report. This determines which files this custom report will show on.
2. Setting Report Availability (Additional Options)
In the Additional Options section of the "Build a Template" window, you can restrict the template's availability based on:
Farm Types
Organisation Types
Setting these options ensures that the right reports are available for the right clients. Once you're ready, click Confirm to create your report draft. This will open the Report Builder.
3. Using the Report Builder
The Report Builder is where you design the layout and content of your report. The interface is split into two main sections: the Sections panel on the left and the Customisation panel on the right.
Cover pages are not fully customisable at this stage. You have access to 6 cover page templates, where you can edit the image and text. If you'd like additional customisation options, we'd love to hear from you, please leave a request.
Sections Panel
The Report Builder follows a Section based model. With the section-based model, you no longer need to worry about fitting things on the page or content bouncing around. Figured automatically splits into pages when you print or export. This panel lists all the sections in your report. It allows you to structure your document. From here, you can:
Rename sections: Click on a section name (e.g., "Untitled Section") to give it a meaningful title, like "Summary" or "Profit & Loss."
Reorder sections: Click and drag sections into any order you like.
Duplicate section: You can copy an existing section.
Add new section: Click the + Add section button at the bottom of the list.
Customisation Panel
This panel on the right is where you add content. When you click on a blank area of a report section the Report Builder tab becomes active, showing the components you can add.
You can drag and drop these components onto each section:
Chart: Add high visual impact charts, similar to the ones you see in the dashboard
KPI: Display specific Key Performance Indicators. You can pull any calculation from your Formula Library to display as a KPI.
Custom Table: Build a table from scratch with exactly the rows you want — Figured values from the Value Library, individual accounts, account categories, and heading or note rows to structure it.
Farm Summary: Add a pre-built farm summary block, you can select between the different enterprise types.
Financial Report: Embed a standard Figured financial report into your layout, with full control over the columns. See Building a report with Flexible Columns.
Gross Margin: Enterprise Gross Margin reports for your Trackers.
Textbox: Add custom text, such as an executive summary, notes, or commentary.
Image: Insert images, like your firm's logo, to brand the report.
Auto Analyst (Beta): Auto-generates commentary based on the components you select to be analysed.
Note: Farm Summary and Gross Margin aren't available on Commercial Manager reports. If you've set the template's Product Type to Commercial Manager, you won't see those two in the picker.
Reading your columns at org level
When you're building a template you're not looking at one farm's numbers, so it's easy to lose track of what a column will actually return once the template runs. A few things help:
Each column carries a colour-coded tag showing its type, and Metric columns also show the metric they're using — so you can rename columns to whatever suits the report and still tell what each one is.
Date pills roll the date offset and the compare-with-previous setting into a single number, so you can see at a glance which year the column will land on.
Derived column dropdowns use the same names as the pills, so what you pick matches what you see on the report.
4. Textboxes and Adding Dynamic Fields
You can edit any text on the section by clicking on it. A formatting toolbar will appear, allowing you to change fonts, alignment, and styles.
To make your template truly reusable, you should use Dynamic Fields. These are placeholders that automatically pull in the correct information (like the farm's name or planning year) every time you run the report for a different farm.
To add a dynamic field:
Click inside a Textbox or a title.
In the formatting toolbar, click the dynamic field icon, it looks like this "{}"
Select the field you want to insert from the available list, such as <Farm Name> or <This Season Year>.
5. Saving and Using Your Report
Once you've finished designing your template, simply navigate back to the main Custom Reports list. Your new report will be saved as a draft.
From the main list, you can now:
View/Edit the report further.
Edit Details change any of the templates settings - farm type, organisation type etc
Copy the template at the organisation level to create another variation.
Publish/Unpublish Publishing the report template will make it available on the specified Farm types/subscriptions where you practice has access to that farm.
Here is a link to a step-by-step of the above details.