Custom 1C Reports and Dashboards

When standard 1C reports are not enough

The sign is simple: before every meeting someone pulls numbers from five reports into Excel.

Standard 1C has hundreds of reports, yet management often cannot see what matters most. Not because the data is missing, but because it sits in different reports with different breakdowns. Margin by manager including discounts and returns, receivables with overdue amounts by contract, inventory turnover by warehouse: it is all in the database, just not in one place.

Another common situation: the standard report exists but has an awkward layout. You have to pick the right numbers out of a long table and compare with last year separately. A custom report shows the same thing directly in the form you need.

Usually the task falls to an employee with Excel. Once a week they export several reports, combine them with formulas and send them to management. That means hours of work, copy errors and numbers that are already out of date by the time of the meeting.

Manual summaries have a hidden cost too: dependence on one person. When the employee who knows which reports to export and how the formulas work goes on vacation, management is left without numbers. A report in 1C does not depend on that.

The opposite also happens: there are too many reports and nobody remembers which one is correct. Then we start with a review: which reports are actually opened, which duplicate each other, which can be replaced by a single SKD report with variants.

A custom 1C report brings everything into one form, calculates on current data and opens in seconds. The employee is freed up, and management looks at numbers when they need them, not when someone has prepared them.

SKD reports: why we build them this way

The data composition system gives users flexibility without a developer.

SKD, the data composition system, is the standard reporting mechanism of the 1C:Enterprise 8.3 platform. An SKD report is written once, and after that users change groupings, filters, sorting and formatting in the settings themselves, without asking a developer.

What this gives you in practice:

• one report replaces several similar ones: a manager views it by client, a director by manager;
• setting variants are saved, so everyone opens their own view of the report;
• drill-down: clicking a number opens the documents it is made of;
• export to Excel and PDF with standard tools;
• 1C access rights apply inside the report too: a manager sees only their own clients.

1C SKD can also output charts: sales dynamics by month, revenue structure by channel, manager comparisons. For a meeting this is often clearer than any table, and it comes from the same report with no separate development.

An SKD report is easy to hand over: another 1C developer opens the composition schema and immediately understands where the numbers come from, without digging through hundreds of lines of code.

We build SKD reports by default. We write custom reports without SKD only where non-standard output is required, and we warn you about it in advance.

Analytics and dashboards on 1C data

When a report is needed on a phone, in a browser or together with data from other systems.

Analytics on 1C data is especially useful for companies with several databases or legal entities. A dashboard brings them into one picture, and the owner sees the whole group instead of switching between databases.

Not every executive wants to open 1C to check revenue. For that we build dashboards outside 1C: a page in the browser or on the phone with the key numbers, charts and a comparison with the previous period.

Data leaves 1C on a schedule through the 1C API or the standard OData interface. A dashboard can combine 1C with other sources: ad accounts, CRM, Kaspi. That way you see not only revenue but also what it cost to earn it.

Dashboard access can be role-based: the owner sees everything, a department head only their department, a manager only their own sales. The mobile version is designed so the key numbers read on a phone screen without zooming.

An important rule: we calculate metrics in 1C or from its data, never by copying numbers by hand. Otherwise within a month the dashboard and the accounting report start to diverge, and trust in both disappears. More in dashboards on 1C data (in Russian).

How we build a report

We start with the decision management will make based on the report.

1. The question. Which decision will be made from this report. Nobody needs a report "about everything"; a report built for a specific decision gets used every day.
2. Mockup. An Excel table with metrics and breakdowns, often based on the file currently assembled by hand. Agreed before development.
3. Data check. We check whether the database has everything needed and how carefully it is filled in. If not, we suggest an accounting customization.
4. Development on a copy. An SKD report, as an external file or in an extension.
5. Number reconciliation. We compare with standard reports and accounting until it matches to the tenge.
6. Trial period. For a week the report runs alongside the old summary to confirm the numbers match.
7. Go-live and delivery. We install it in the live database and set up variants and the schedule.

Why report numbers do not match, and how we fix it

The main risk of any report: people stop trusting it.

• Different definitions. Revenue with or without VAT, by shipment or by payment. We fix the definitions in the report description before development.
• Returns and adjustments. A typical mistake of home-made reports: sales are counted but returns are not. We check against real cases.
• Cost of goods. We use the cost 1C calculates at month-end closing, and flag it if the month is not yet closed.
• Marketplace commissions. For Kaspi sales, margin without commission is overstated. We account for it when sales are recorded through the 1C Kaspi integration.
• Dates. A report by document date and a report by shipment date give different numbers at month boundaries. We pick one rule and write it in the description.

We hand over a report description with metric definitions together with the report, so a year later nobody has to guess what each column means.

If a discrepancy is still found after launch, fixing it is covered by the two weeks of free fixes.

We reconcile every report with standard reports and accounting. A discrepancy we cannot explain is treated as a report error, not a data error.