Are reporting periods a stressful time for you? When deadlines are looming and you’re struggling to organize your environmental data into something resembling a professional document, you may want to pull out your hair. Time is not an abundant resource for most of us, but an efficient workflow can maximize your productivity. Thoughtful planning of report templates within Locus Environmental Information Management (EIM) Formatted Report Module can get you ahead in the reporting cycle so that by the time data have been finalized, reports can be completed easily.
Locus EIM report templates provide consistency in reporting, can be made available to users across your organization, and can even be pinned to your EIM “home page” to save menu navigation time. Conditional formatting is available within templates to adjust the data output according to the conditions set up. For example, you may want to highlight cells containing the result in the spreadsheet when certain analytes are detected, or if a regulatory limit is exceeded. If your reports often feature the same types of conditional formatting, you can save these “rules” in a rule template and apply them to new reports with a quick selection.
Figure 1 – Formatting rules in a Locus EIM Formatted Report. Tools for saving and reloading rules are circled in red.
Formatted Reports not only enable the creation of professional report templates, but if your reports will need to cover the same date ranges, they can be compiled into a group of reports within a workbook. Workbooks use the filters set up in the original report template, so users can “set it and forget it.” When it’s time to run the reports again, simply navigate to the workbook, adjust the date range, and run it, which will run all of the reports within the workbook with one click. The workbook option can fit easily into a quarterly or yearly reporting schedule, condensing the time normally needed for reporting into a small, tidy window.
Figure 2 – Formatted report output using conditional formatting. Other report outputs within the workbook are circled in red.
Locus is the only self-funded water, air, soil, biological, energy, and waste EHS software company that is still owned and managed by its founder. The brightest minds in environmental science, embodied carbon, CO2 emissions, refrigerants, and PFAS hang their hats at Locus, and they’ve helped us to become a market leader in EHS software. Every client-facing employee at Locus has an advanced degree in science or professional EHS experience, and they incubate new ideas every day – such as how machine learning, AI, blockchain, and the Internet of Things will up the ante for EHS software, ESG, and sustainability.
