A monthly series to help you grow your expertise, use the platform to its utmost potential, and ultimately improve your programs.

This post was originally published in July 2024

Back by popular demand, we are discussing reporting for this month’s Best Practices theme. Read on to review examples of when you might want to leverage each of Submittable’s reporting tools, grab links to some of our favorite on-demand trainings, and catch a few ‘hot tips’ that you’ll want to keep in mind as you report on your impact.

Reporting tools to ‘fit the bill’

Submittable makes it easy to analyze data so you can measure results against objectives, answer stakeholder questions, and prepare to do better. Using a few of the most common reporting needs as examples, read on to learn when you should use each of Submittable’s reporting tools to efficiently measure your good work.

Standard Reporting

Use Standard Reporting to create, save, and download Excel files with your chosen data from submissions on a single Project. Free of visuals, this reporting tool gives users a clear view of the raw data collected throughout a single program. Most often, we see customers using Standard Reporting when they say:

• I want to export the raw data from my program. Standard reports are the easiest way for you to capture the raw data from a single program. Here, use the filters to determine which data you would like to Download, and choose whether you would like to save the template’s filters as a ‘Saved Report’. You can revisit a Saved Report at any time, and refresh it to capture any newly collected data.
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• I want to extract all submission data, including files.As you gear up to export the raw data from a given Project or Submission, you can choose to ‘Include Files’ or ‘Include Pdfs’ in your download. These files will be available for review in a single folder.
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• I want to analyze a subset of form responses.In Standard Reports, you can choose exactly the form fields you’d like to export, making it simple to focus on only the data set you are interested in.

Impact Reporting

Submittable’s Impact Reports are a convenient way to generate quick and simple aggregate views of your form data from any Initial or Additional Form. Pre-formatted visuals and calculations help you understand the impact of your program in mid-flight. Most often, we see customers using Impact Reporting when they say:

• I want to see where applicants are experiencing bottlenecks in my application process. Impact Reports readily provide you with an overview of a Form’s ‘Completion Rate’ and the ‘Most skipped question’. Use this information to proactively analyze where you may need to revise your form questions to ensure that applicants can put their best foot forward.
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• I want to easily review the long-form qualitative responses per question in a single view. Impact Reports uniquely feature the qualitative data from your programs, so you can put the stories of the people you serve front and center. If storytelling is a main component of your reporting strategy, you’ll love this capability!
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• I’m mid-application cycle, and I want to make sure that I’m reaching my intended demographic groups. Impact Reports’ data tables and visuals show you the number and percentage of applicant responses without having to crunch numbers. Proactively use Impact Reports to keep a pulse on applicant responses to ensure that you’re achieving your DEI goals, serving your desired target community, and more!

Advanced Reporting

Visualization formatting, data consolidation, and in-report calculations are just a few of the powerful capabilities that Advanced Reporting offers administrators. Here you can manage your data, exactly how you want it, without the need for Excel spreadsheets and a calculator. Most often, we see customers using Advanced Reporting when they say:

• I want to do a complete year over year program analysis, and uniquely format my data. Advanced Reporting is the only Submittable reporting tool that allows you to comprehensively review data from multiple programs at a time, with the ability to merge data cells, apply equations, and analyze multiple programs at once. Every data point collected throughout your program is available for review within Advanced Reporting.

• I want to review how much of an award is left to be paid to a grantee. Advanced Reporting is the best Submittable tool to analyze the Funds associated with each of your programs. Since you can apply equations and conditional logic to these reports, you can easily track the movement of Funding across your program’s lifecycle (and beyond!). Learn more about reporting on Funds, here.

• I want to review the scores that my team of reviewers has submitted per each round of reviews that they have been assigned to. Advanced Reporting is the best reporting tool for analyzing your review team’s submitted scores. Reporting on your review workflows can give you the insights to proactively streamline the time it takes to identify grantees, while managing operational questions like which reviewers score more harshly than others, what a reviewer’s accumulative score was given per application, and more! Learn more about reporting on Multi-Stage Reviews, here.

💡Keep in mind: Data in Advanced Reporting is backfilled every 24 hours, which means that any data entered in forms won’t appear in an advanced report until ~24 hours later.

Hot tips 🌶️

• Start with the end in mind: As you anticipate launching a program, or any form, consider how the data that you’re collecting now will dictate how you’re able to report on it in the future. Set yourself up for reporting success by outlining your program’s reporting goals while you build your Program’s forms and supporting resources.
• Storytelling at its best: Your mission’s good work goes beyond the hard numbers. Remember that qualitative reporting plays an important role too! Consider how using open-response form fields and options to upload files gives your applicants and grantees a greater opportunity to build a lasting connection with your organization, and show the impact of their work in their own ways.
• Sharing is caring: Data sharing, that is! If you need to enrich your Submittable Data with other sources or pull it into business intelligence tools to uncover actionable insights, Submittable Data Sharing services make it easy to keep stakeholders aligned with clean and accountable data. Contact Customer Success to learn more about this capability!

On-demand training resources

Still looking for some additional support with Advanced Reporting? Have no fear! Jump in to either of these on-demand training webinars for a step-by-step overview on how to tackle some of your most common Advanced Reporting questions.

• Advanced Reporting Deep Dive Workshop: See Advanced Reporting in action! Using common grantmaking reporting initiatives as the base of this workshop, a Submittable Solutions Engineer will walk you through how to best navigate Advanced Reporting with ease.

• Reporting on Tables + Advanced Reporting: In this on-demand training, join the Submittable Product Marketing team for a review on how to ‘start with the end in mind’. Learn how to set up your application’s Tables for reporting success, followed by a step-by-step overview on how to report on those tables within Advanced Reporting.

Don’t have Advanced Reporting in your account, but think that it might help to solve your reporting woes? Contact Customer Success to learn more about the feature and to see how it may support your reporting goals.

We’re here to help

If diving into reporting resources is something you simply don’t have capacity for at the moment, we have good news: Submittable offers professional report building services configured to your goals. To get started, check out which of these options better suits your reporting needs:

• Help me build a template, please! Choose to work with our Professional Services team if you would like help building complex reporting templates. By working with you to outline your reporting goals, the Professional Services team will do the heavy lifting and produce a reporting template to fit your needs.
• Help me ‘start with the end in mind’. If you’re gearing up to start a new program, it may be in your best interest to re-invest in Implementation Support! They’ll make sure that you efficiently get all the data you need from the very start, so that come time for reporting, you’ll have a collection of clean data to work with. Not to mention, they’ll offer amazing best practices for ongoing program management and reporting templates that fulfill your (and your board’s) wildest dreams.

To scope out what avenue is best for you, contact your Customer Success team for additional information.

Sam Ellsworth

Sam is Submittable's Product Marketer focused on Foundations, Non-Profits, and organizations that distribute grants or awards. She is passionate about helping organizations of any size to measure their impact and scale their programs with the platform. When not at work you can catch her in the mountains of Montana with her golden retrievers.