Schedule Reports

Ad Hoc Reporting Guide
Version
R2025.2.1
ft:lastPublication
2025-11-10T19:54:31.807000
Schedule Reports

Before You Begin: You can schedule only custom reports. To schedule a standard report, first save a copy of it, and then use the copy to create the schedule.

To schedule a report to run at a specific time:

  1. Go to Reporting and Analytics > Reporting > Classic Reports
  2. Select a custom report from the list and then click Set Schedule. The Schedule Report dialog box opens.
  3. In the General tab, complete the following fields:
    • Schedule Name
    • Description
    • Start Date: The first date on which you want to generate the report.
    • End Date: The last date on which you want to generate the report. You can leave this field blank to continue running the report schedule indefinitely.
    • Task Recurrence: The time intervals (monthly, weekly, or daily) at which the report will be generated.
    • Recurrence: (Not displayed for daily report schedules) The frequency at which the report will be generated. The options in this drop-down list depend on the option you selected for Task Recurrence. For example, if you select Monthly, the options are Every month, Every 2 months, and so on. If you select Weekly, the options are Every week, Every 2 weeks, and so on.
    • Day: (Not displayed for daily report schedules) Select the day of the month for monthly schedules, or the day of the week for weekly schedules. Dayforce will generate the report on this day at the frequency you selected.
    • Start Time: The time the report should run.
    • Note: Dayforce runs reports at the selected time in the time zone that is displayed next to the Start Time field. An administrator can configure your organization’s preferred time zone in the General section of the Properties tab in System Admin > Client Properties.
    • Enabled: Make sure that the Enabled switch is set to on. You can click the switch to toggle between enabled and not enabled. By default, a new report schedule is enabled when you create it. When the switch is blue with a white checkmark, the schedule is enabled. When it’s grayed out, it isn’t enabled and the report won’t generate.
    • Schedule Report dialog box.
  4. In the Distribution tab, select user roles and individual employees that you want to send the report to. See Distribute Reports.
  5. Note: Information isn’t displayed in the Distribution tab when Pivot table is selected in the Report Type drop-down list in the Options tab.
  6. In the Filters tab, enter the filter values that you want to use when generating the report. For date filters, you can use a specific date, or you can select the Use current date checkbox and Dayforce uses the current date each time it generates the report. If the Pivot table option is selected in the Report Type drop-down list in the Options tab, Dayforce displays details about the pivot table. You can't edit pivot table details from this tab.
  7. In the Options tab, configure the following display and notification options:
    • Report Header Display Name: (Optional) Enter an alternate title that will be displayed in the report header instead of the report name.
    • Include filter criteria: Select the checkbox and the filter values that you specify when you run the report are displayed in the report header.
    • Only include unique records: Select the checkbox and Dayforce includes only distinct records in the report output.
    • Note: Dayforce clears this option if you have it enabled and then add totals on the report. This option can't be used together with totals because all records (not just unique ones) must be included to generate an accurate total. Consider an example with a SUM function where there are three records that all have the value of 40. With Only include unique records selected, only one of these records is included in the sum and the total would be 40. With the checkbox cleared, the total is correct at 120.
    • Max Number of Records: Enter a number in this field to limit the maximum number of rows that are included in the report. You can include a maximum of 900,000 rows in a report.
    • Send a notification if the report is empty: This checkbox applies only to report distribution. If a scheduled report doesn't return any results, the empty report is delivered to your inbox in Message Center.
    • Report Type: Select either the Base report or Pivot table option in the drop-down list. If the report that you selected doesn't contain a pivot table, Dayforce automatically sets the Report Type to Base report and disables the drop-down list. If the report that you selected contains a pivot table, you can select Pivot table in the drop-down list to schedule the report.
    • Output Format: Select the file format that you require for the report output.
    • Suppress Formatting in Excel output: (Available if you select Excel for the output format) Select this checkbox and Dayforce removes all formatting from the report output, including headers, grouping information, and totals.
    • Suppress formatting - Include Totals in Output: (Available if you select Excel for the output format) Select this checkbox and Dayforce removes all formatting in the output, but it still displays totals.
    • PDF Orientation: (Available if you select PDF for the output format) Specify whether the PDF output uses landscape or portrait orientation. Dayforce fits PDF report output to one horizontal page, so landscape can be the better option for reports with a large number of columns.
    • PDF Paper Size: (Available if you select PDF for the output format) Select a paper size in the drop-down list.
    • Repeat column headers on each page: Select this checkbox and Dayforce includes the column headers on each page of the PDF output. By default, this checkbox is cleared, and the headers appear just once at the top of the report.
  8. Click OK.

You can view your generated scheduled reports in Message Center.

At the scheduled times, Dayforce generates the report and sends it to your Message Center inbox. If you selected other recipients in the Distribution tab, they will also receive a copy of the report in Message Center a notification email if they have an email address in their profile.

Note: If a scheduled report fails to run, Dayforce will make a second attempt to generate it. If this second attempt is successful, you might see two copies of the report in Message Center.