Reporting using the "Equal to" filter

The "custom reporting tool" is a great way of building report templates according to your own needs. But sometimes when adding the filters to only get the data you desire, the results may not be what you expected.

In the first column, you will select from a drop-down the information about the data-set you want to filter, easy-peasy! However, on the second column (the one marked in red) you have to select a "boolean" data type.

The boolean data type is data that has only one of two possible values which are often described as true or false. For example, "greater than" "less than" "does not contain", etc.

So the question here is what type of boolean you should use for filtering dates, names, etc...?

We recommend you don't use the "Equal to" filter for dates on a custom report. This is because every date has a timestamp hiding in the background. So this means:

• Equal to 07/29/2021 is actually saying Equal to 07/29/2021 12:00:00 AM

People aren't usually creating or completing jobs at this time, so what are the chances that the report shows anything equal to that day at Midnight? So, we have to always use "Greater than" or "Less than" for date filters or in other words create a range. This way, it includes everything on that date after 12:00:00 AM or before 11:59:00 PM.

And if you want to filter something other than dates, using "equal to" may be an acceptable option for you. For example,

• filter all the customers named James,

• filter all the customers whose service city is Denver.

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