Quick Start Guide for Users

Quick Start Guide for Users

Thank you for installing Mercury!

Here you’ll find a quick introduction – what you see when you launch Mercury, and a few examples of how to run reports.

When You Launch Mercury

Depending on whether your organization already has Mercury, you’ll experience one of the following situations.


  1. Demos and Samples

If your company is not yet using Mercury (or has not authorized your Windows login), then you’ll be using a demonstration set of reports.  (You are free to add, modify, or delete reports as you wish.)


    The example reports in this document are taken from demonstration


  1. Company-licensed Mercury - recognized Windows Login

If your company is using Mercury and has authorized your Windows login, then:

  1. If your company has only a single Mercury site, you’ll be taken directly there, and you’ll see the reports that are available to you.
  2. If your company has multiple Mercury sites available, you’ll see a list and you can choose the one you need.  (One reason for this could be that your company acquired another company who was also using Mercury, and your company hasn’t consolidated everything yet.)  


  1. Company-licensed Mercury - unrecognized Windows Login

If your company is using Mercury but has not yet authorized access for your Windows login, then you’ll be in situation #1 above – using the demos and samples.  Please ask your Mercury admin-user to add your login to the list of authorized users.


Demos and Samples

When you’re using the demonstration set of Mercury reports, you’ll see a form similar to the following.  


You don’t have to provide any of the requested information; it’s all optional.  The form has a “Skip” button at the bottom. If you choose to Skip, you’ll see this form again next time you launch (and you can Skip as often as you like).

You can switch to your Company’s Mercury by choosing “RUN LICENSED” in the upper right corner.  Skip or Next will continue to use the Demo.

Company-licensed Mercury

  1. If your company has a single Mercury database of reports, you’ll use the reports that your company has created, based on its own data sources.


  1. If you have access to more than one Mercury installation:


You’ll see a choice of your company’s Mercury installations; click the one that you need.  Or you can choose to use the Local Demo instead (via RUN LOCAL DEMO in the upper right of the window), and switch back to your company Mercury database(s) later.




Running and Analyzing Reports

The following examples are based on the Demo set of reports. These reports may change from time to time, so your demo set may be different – but the concepts still apply.

If you are using a Company-licensed Mercury, your set of reports will differ. If you want to follow these examples, you’ll need to switch to the Local Demo database as described above.

Your set of demo reports, shown on the main Mercury screen, will look similar to this – the specific set of reports may vary.  You’ll know you’re in the Demo based on the “DEMO” indicator in the upper right of the main window, as shown.



There are two types of reports: Table-reports, which are simple row-and-column arrangements similar to Excel worksheets, and Pivot-reports, which are similar to Excel pivot tables.

Running a report is easy

  1. Select the report you want to run.
  2. Enter parameter values (if any - some reports don’t have them, and for some reports the parameter values are optional). Some parameters have lookup-lists associated with them.
  3. Click the big Run button.  

Example Pivot Report

  1. Select the GL Transactions Report.

  1. Leave the parameters (a list of companies and TRXDATE) blank.
  2. Click the Run button.


Example Table Report

  1. Select the Northwind Employees report.
  2. Leave the parameter(s) blank. (The exact parameters you see may depend on the version of Mercury you’re running.)
  3. Click the Run button.



Analyzing a report is easy

When your report is available you can analyze the results directly. A variety of tools are available.

In most cases you can manipulate your report simply by dragging and dropping fields where you want them to be.


Work With a Pivot Report - Rearranging and Grouping

  1. Select the “GL Transactions” report from the above example – click its result-tab to make it active.
  2. Find the CategoryName field icon in the “filter area” above the report results.  Drag it into the report and drop it to the left of the AccountName field icon in the row-area.

– Your report is now organized first by Category, and then by Name.

  1. Don’t need to see the Account-name detail?  Drag the Account Name field icon out of the row area and drop it among the fields in the “filter area” above the report.



  1. Change the transaction-date grouping as follows:
  1. Right-click the “TranDate” field icon in the column-area

  1. Choose Group Interval, and then
  2. Quarter Year




Work With a Table Report - Rearranging and Sorting

  1. Select the “Northwind Employees” report from the above example – click its result-tab to make it active.


  1. Drag the Department field and drop it into the 4th column of the table report.


  1. Don’t need to see the EmpClass column?  Drag the EmpClass field icon out of the column area and drop it off the report.


  1. To filter the report based on the particular value in a column, click on the little filter icon that appears above the column and select the appropriate values listed in the filter form.


Favorites: Re-using your analysis

All reports can have associated Favorites.  A Favorite is simply a report layout that has been “saved” after it was run and modified. This does not mean saving the *data* – it means saving the layout and/or parameters and re-using them when you run the report again.  


A favorite saves everything you did: rearrangements, calculated fields, sorting and grouping, conditional formatting, and more.


If a report has favorites, a fly-out window appears when you click on the report in the main list.  You can click the favorite’s Run icon to execute a favorite immediately, or you can single-click the favorite if you want to change parameter values before running it.



For more information on Favorites, see Favorites.



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