On this form, you control the order in which information appears on a report or on-screen list. For example, you could ask that members appear ordered alphabetically by name, or that members appear in order by S.I.N., or that employers appear in order by employer code. To select the field on which to order information, you click the dropdown arrow under Field Name and then click on the field to use to order the information. The field that you select for ordering is called the “sort field”.
Example 1
For a member report, if you click on Member Name under Field Name, members on the report will be ordered alphabetically by last name and then first name, like a phone book.
Example 2
For a remittance report, if you click on Remittance Reference Number under Field Name, then the remittances will be listed in order by their reference number. Note that reference numbers are sorted as codes and not as true numbers; this means that they may not sort as you expect unless they are all the same length.
Multiple Fields for Ordering
You can also specify more than one field to use for ordering. An example would be a member report with the first sort field as Employer Name and the second sort field as Member Name. In this case, members would first be grouped by employer, and then within each of these employers, members would be ordered alphabetically by member name.
Other Ordering Options
There are two more options for controlling a report’s order: the New Page option and the Break option. You use these options by clicking under their respective columns beside the sort field. These options control what happens at the beginning and end of a “sort group”. A sort group is a group of information with the same sort key. For example, if members are being sorted by employer, then all of the members for a particular employer are a sort group.
If you want the system to print a title at the beginning of a sort group and totals at the end of each sort group, then you click the box under the Break column. If you want a sort group to start on a new page, you click the box under the New Page section. Note that totals are printed both for the New Page option and the Break option.
Example 3
To sort a member report by employer then member name and start a new page for each employer: