HomeManage 2024 - Many Reports Are Blank

[David99]

 

I have what I hope is a simple issue to resolve. If I click "Reporting" from the top menu, then select "List of items", then select "Preview" in the "Print Options" dialog, the report generates and shows as expected:

 

However, when I select the next report in the list, "Cost by Location / Room" and "Preview", the report screen appears and I see percentages changing on the generation of the report, but when it's complete only this single, blank page is displayed:

 

There are several (actually most) of the reports that behave exactly the same way, where the result is a single page with a title (as above) but nothing else. 

A few of the reports display the expected data as with the "List of Items" report above. 

I must be overlooking something or some setting somewhere, but I don't know what it is. 

I have done the "Check for Updates", and it says I already have the latest version. 

Any help to steer me in the correct direction will be appreciated!

 

[David99]

 

It's hard to believe that no one else is having problems creating reports in HomeManage. Maybe no one else has even tried?

I purchased HomeManage 2024 in February 2024. I started with HomeManage 2024, so there was no upgrading to a new version.

HomeManage 2024 is running on an i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz, 3401 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s) with 32G RAM and a 1 TB SSD

I have approximately 750 inventory items entered with pictures. 

For me, reporting in HomeManage doesn't work properly.  It works (or fails) like this (selecting Reporting from the menu across the top):

Reporting -> List of Items...........................................Works as expected
Reporting -> Cost by Location / Room......................Returns a single blank page "All Assets" on the top.
Reporting -> List of Items Multi Line .........................It runs, but so slow it would take hours if it ever would finish. Nothing else is running on the PC. 
Reporting -> Item Detail (1 Item per Page)................This runs, but after 10 minutes it had produced 33% of the report, then it hung (stopped responding). I had to use Task                                                                                             Manager to kill it. 

Reporting -> Item Detail with Images........................This fails immediately with this: (note: I haven't changed any fields, etc. so I don't know what it's referring to):

Reporting -> Item Detail - Images and Captions...........This also fails immediately with the same error as above. 
Reporting -> Item Warranty Information.........................Returns a single blank page with "Asset Warranty Info All Assets" at the top of it. 
Reporting -> Insurance Report........................................Works as expected
:
:
Reporting -> Items Photo Album View............................It starts, but it is so slow that I can't sit for hours to see if it will ever finish or hang. It took minutes to produce 1 page.

I could go on, but I'm tired of this exercise and have spent too much time screwing around with this application. 

Paul, if you're reading this, am I the only person that has purchased HomeManage to actually try to use it? I can't understand how or what is going on. We entered the items, they went in with no issues, they display on the screen with no issues, a couple of the reports work with no issues, but most of the other reports just simply do not work.

Either I'm not using the reporting function correctly or others are having problems and aren't reporting them. We haven't changed anything like field names or anything else. We have one "location", our home. The only customization we did was make the room names match our rooms, everything else is vanilla out of the box unchanged (fields etc.). 

 

Any other folks out there - please respond - are your reports working as you expect and how many items do you have?

 

 

 

[David99]

 

To test, I renamed the "HomeManage" directory, then restored the directory from an external backup just after I installed HomeManage 2024. 

The database is empty (no items) and right after installation of HomeManage 2024. 

Selecting "Reporting", then "Item Detail with Images" returns the following error:

 

This means that HomeManage 2024, with no data and no modified fields at all (new), returns errors when attempting some reports. In other words, some reports don't work right from the start. 

I looked at "itemdetail1Image.crd" referenced in the error message in notepad. It's hundreds of lines of report code that whatever report engine this uses expects, and there's no way to easily figure out what it doesn't like because the error message doesn't include a line number or variable reference, just a "something's wrong" in a file with hundreds of lines. 

All this effort has caused me to rethink the entire topic of Home Inventory. I mean, if no one else is complaining, then obviously no one else is using these reports and reporting system. That indicates to me that few people have completed a home inventory. It is a pain in the ass to do for sure. 

Since no one is responding to these reporting issues (including anyone at Liberty Street Software), my plan going forward is to attempt to extract the data by writing my own SQL to run against the MS access database (name: assets.mdb in the HomeManage\data directory). 

In case it helps anyone (and use at your own risk), here is some sql to get started that produces a simple report. If you choose to access the HomeManage 2024 database outside of the product, I strongly urge a backup of your data first. You can use Microsoft Access or any other SQL engine that allows connections with MS Access dbs. 

SELECT
FORMAT(R.DeptName, 'Narrow') AS DeptName,
FORMAT(C.CategoryName, 'Narrow') AS CategoryName,
FORMAT(A.DescriptiveName, 'Narrow') AS ItemName,
A.[Amount Paid] AS Cost,
A.[Current Value] AS Value,
A.ReplacementCost AS ReplCost
FROM Assets A
INNER JOIN
Categories C ON A.CategoryID = C.CategoryID
INNER JOIN
Rooms R ON A.RoomID = R.RoomID ORDER BY R.[DeptName], C.CategoryName;

 

If I had it to do over, I'd not purchase HomeManage 2024. In fact, now that I consider the effort and trouble it has caused me, I might not even bother with a home inventory at all.

Good luck to everyone.