A program is only as good as its output. It doesn't really matter how many stupid programmer tricks you pack into a piece of code, if the output is incorrect or unreadable. The bank manager just wants his General Ledger balanced and all the numbers printed in pretty columns. This is something that drives programmers crazy, because creating reports ranks up there on most programmers' Things I Hate To Do list — usually a step or two below debugging.

Say what you want about COBOL and RPG, but those languages included very broad support for reporting. Modern programming languages with all their OOPness and reusability have many positive features, but support for reporting is not among them. For reporting, you have to build or buy a tool that includes a layout engine and a printing engine.

Most reporting packages provide their own layout engine. Sometimes, these are integrated with the development environment, that allows the user to place reporting elements — headers, footers, text fields, pictures, graphs, charts, etc. — on a template. Programmers then write code to pass that report template and a data source to the report engine, which formats the data and prints the report.

The developers of Windward Reports decided to forego creating yet another layout engine, opting to use Microsoft Word instead. Any user who is familiar with Microsoft Word can create a Windward Reports template in a matter of minutes, after learning to place a few special commands in the document. Using Word as the layout tool prevents the user from having to learn yet another special purpose program. It also allowed the developers to concentrate on putting features into the reporting engine.