Once you know how to build a report, the next step is shaping it — filtering to the right contracts, grouping them so patterns stand out, and adding custom properties that capture exactly the data you care about.

This guide covers the techniques that make reports accurate and easy to work with at scale. If you're new to reports, start with Building AI Reports in Aline first.

In this article you'll:

The single most important habit: add every data column (property) you need before you apply filters. If you filter first and add columns later, the AI may not run across the full set of documents, and you can end up with missing or blank values.

💡 Best Practice: Build the report in this order — add your columns, let the AI extract across the whole document set, then filter and sort. This guarantees every contract in view has complete data.

⚠️ If no documents are selected, running a property runs it on every document in the report. On a large repository that is a significant token spend. To run on a subset, select those documents first, then run. See Understanding Token Usage in Aline.

Use labels and metadata filters to narrow your report to the contracts you actually want to analyze — for example, a single contract type, a status (Signed, Expired), or a date range.

Filtering by label is the fastest and most reliable way to isolate a group, which is why consistent labeling pays off — see Organizing Documents with Labels & Bulk Labeling.

When you're excluding several contract types at once, you don't need a separate filter for each. Collapse them into a single "is none of" filter listing everything you want to leave out. This keeps complex reports readable and easier to adjust later.

Beyond the built-in prompts, you can create custom properties to extract or store exactly the field you need. Each property has an output type, and Aline offers six: text, number, date, Boolean (yes/no), single-select and multi-select — so the data comes back in a usable, sortable format. For guidance on which to choose, see Choosing the Right Output Type for Report Properties.

Common examples from real portfolios:

⚠️ Give date and amount fields the correct output type (date, number) rather than leaving them as text — it's what lets you sort, filter by range, and feed the value into reminders.

⚠️ The number output does not accept currency symbols or thousands separators. If you need the figure to read exactly as it appears in the contract, extract it as text and add a second number column holding the bare figure for sorting and range filters.

A property reads the file by default, but you can change its input so it reads a column you have already extracted instead. A reliable pattern is to pull the clause out verbatim in one column, then classify or score it in a second column that reads the first.

⚠️ A manual-entry column cannot currently be used as the input to an AI column — only AI-extracted properties can feed another property.

Grouping arranges your report by a shared value — most often contract type — so you can see your portfolio broken out into meaningful segments and spot outliers quickly.

Combine grouping with filters to answer questions like "show me all vendor agreements expiring next year, grouped by renewal type."

Once a report is filtered and grouped the way you like, save the view so you (and your team) can return to it without rebuilding the filters each time. Saved views are the backbone of recurring processes like quarterly renewal reviews.

When you need the data outside Aline, export to CSV or Excel. This is also handy as an intermediate step — for example, exporting a report to build a Playbook from its outputs.

Building a report that has to answer a very specific question? Click the Support button in Aline — we can help you structure the columns, filters, and property types before you run it at scale.