Struggling to audit your Applied system for the benefit of your agency or brokerage? Reports are the backbone of any insurance business and the start of a new year is a great time to be addressing inconsistencies and processes from the year before.

Reports will also tell you if your data is correct and how your staff is doing. With these tips from Applied TAM expert Wendy Mills, of Medical Society of Virginia Insurance Agency, you’ll hopefully discover a few new ways that reports can help you audit your system and kick 2022 off right.

Tip: Start With Classic Reports

Whether you’re auditing your system monthly, weekly, quarterly, etc., “Classic Reports” is where Wendy recommends beginning. Not only can you use the classic, canned reports to manage various parts of your business — everything from staff productivity to financial ledgers — but it also provides a perfect jumping off point if you’re new to TAM.

Pro Tip: The “Billing Screen” is one of the most important screens in TAM and will not show up on a the Book of Business report if an account has been zeroed out.

Once there, choose “Searches” (a sneaky favorite spot for well-versed TAM users) and you’ll have a handful of report options to choose from. Some that Wendy recommends include:

• “Policies – Current” (under “Search – Customers”) – This report offers a very comprehensive look at just about every field you might want to check, a one-stop shop, if you will.
• “Activity File” (under “Search – Customers”) – Yet another comprehensive report, albeit with some higher-level detail.
• “Contacts” (under “Search – Customers” or “Search – Prospects”) – If your agency or brokerage uses this function in TAM, here is a great space to audit contacts in your systems and see what information might be missing.

Tip: Set Up Saved & Load Criteria

For anyone working in reports, this is a must! Ensuring that you have saved criteria set up (via the “Save Criteria” function) goes a long way in ensuring accidental changes are easily reversible. If you’re running certain reports on a regular basis — again monthly, quarterly, weekly, etc. — save. the. criteria. for. every. regular. report.

Pro Tip: For the “Load Criteria” function, if you do not have a report set up that says “Reset to all”, then make sure you do that. This is critical as it can help prevent errors for those scenarios where you may have changed criteria on a report one week and need to revert it back down the line. Basically, it gives you a clean slate to restart from.

Tip: In Auditing, Excel Is Your Friend

According to Wendy, the key to accurate (and easy) auditing starts and ends with exporting reports to Excel. And, especially, using the “Policies – Current” report mentioned earlier, whether for customers, policies or another area.

To do this, choose “Excel – Raw Data” as your output destination, and select the “temporary file” option. This will generate a very large spreadsheet (example pictured below). Before you do anything, choose Excel’s “Data” tab and click the button that reads “Filter”. This function can help you sort each individual field in order to identify missing information for customers or policies.

For example, you can filter for those customers who do not have email addresses or those who do not have premiums. Then, you can save that data and work with your staff to correct this.

Want event more tips and tricks on how to use Applied software to better your business (and related audits)? Catch Wendy’s full session on “Applied TAM - Using Reports To Audit Your System” here, or check out upcoming and on-demand webinars from Applied Client Network.