“Create Expense Report: Creates a sheet summarizing custom metadata dates and currencies of selected files. Totals for the amounts will also be included.”
Can someone please provide a specific example of how this works and what the use case is for this?
E.g. your database contains (scanned) receipts or bills and the custom metadata of these items includes price, tax, date etc. then you can create such a report, use it in other apps or convert it to another format for publishing/sharing.
An example where I have tried to use it would be to summarize a set of invoices where each completed case has an invoice to the client and I want to summarize and add the amounts for each invoice.
I do have a question/suggestion however - it appears to me that this new feature only works on files, not on groups. But in my case I put the invoice total in the metadata for the group that contains the whole case. I could also put the metadata on the invoice file in the group but that would not help me create an expense sheet totalling all the invoices which span multiple groups.
Would it be possible for this to allow for selecting a set of groups and prepare the report based on the metadata on a group rather than file level?
If no, then probably I need to create a Smart Rule to duplicate all invoices to an Invoice group and then I could create the expense report from there.
I have several invoices of different sellers. Every invoice includes some amounts and a final amount. Of course only the final amounts are important to create an addition of all invoices. But how does Devonthink recognize the correct amounts? I marked 4 invoices und chose the new tool. Nothing happened. There was no report created. No surprise, how should Devonthink “know” which amounts had to be added. Is “Total” a metadata? How can a metadata be marked? Odd thing…
The new feature just creates a report of the existing (!) custom metadata. Therefore the custom metadata has to be either entered in Tools > Inspectors > Info > Custom first for these invoices. Or you could try to use the new “Assign Document Date & Amount” script in smart rules to automatically assign this.
The next release will support this.
Am I correct that it appears to create the report using any numerical field marked as currency?
This is very helpful and the planned tweak at the group level will be even moreso (thank you!). At the risk of pushing my luck - any chance of including in the report all metadata fields which are populated in at least one of the selected items? You may wish to only give a Total for the currency fields - but having the ability to list other metadata fields will allow for more descriptive information in the event it is used for an actual expense report. And it would allow for many other custom reporting uses as well beyond just an expense report.
That’s correct.
There’s always a chance 
However, there are no such plans yet, maybe this will change after more feedback.