Filtering on fiscal period

[Cognoscat]

I have written a number of finance reports using the operating ledger package.  When I use the cumulative amount fields, it returns year to date information.  I would like to be able to add some coding to allow myself and other users to run the report for a month (i.e. September) and get July through September data.  I have determined I need to do some filtering on fiscal period, but am having problems doing so.  If I hard code a filter such as fiscal_period in ('01', '02') I can get summarized data for July plus August.  This type of coding would not allow an end user to select a value from a value prompt and then have that prompt value being used to determine the period of time to include in the summarized financial data showing in the report.  I have tried doing if then else expressions.  I can write the expression without any errors, but when I try and run the report, I get a number of parsing errors.

Has someone written a financial report using the Ellucian Banner data in the operating ledger package of Cognos that extracts summarized year-to-date information by filtering on fiscal periods.  I am interested in finding out how I need to do the coding for this.  Since staff in my IT department are not that familiar with the Cognos tool from a report writer standpoint, they have not been able to help me out.  I am not an expert on SQL, but the limited knowledge I do have has allowed me to write numerous Cognos reports using multiple packages and level of complexity so I am not a rooky either.

[New_Guy]

Hi,
Does the fiscal period have month and year and also a fiscal year? Post sample data and we can help. Will the user be selecting month and year in one prompt or are you planning to have a month prompt and an year prompt?
Good luck
New guy.