Sometimes I need to make a temporary change to a report. For instance I want to might want to skip invoicing one or two customers for a week or two. So I will put a rule in the selection formula that eliminates them from the report. However, I have a tendency to lose track of these changes. Several months later I will realize that these customers have not been getting invoices.

So I have started putting in changes that are time limited. That way, I don’t need to remember to reverse the changes. For example, if I want to hold off on invoicing two customers for the next few days I could add something like this to the selection formula:

. . . and (if DataDate < Date (2018, 8, 31) then not ( {Cust.ID} in [‘ABCD’ , ‘EFGH’] ) else True )

In English this says, ‘if this report is refreshed before 8/31 then don’t include these two customers, otherwise ignore this rule’.

Eventually I will notice the rule and take it out but I don’t have to worry about when, because the rule turns itself off automatically. You can put a similar time limit on any change that can be driven by a formula.