What Metrics Can I Use in Custom Reports?

Understanding metrics

A metric is a number or calculation Coming Home uses to measure information in your report.

Metrics help answer questions such as:

How many clients do we have?
How many assignments have been completed?
What is the average length of stay?
How many Assistances were provided?

For example, selecting Total Enrolled Clients tells Coming Home to count the number of clients enrolled in a program.

If you group those clients by County, the report calculates the Total Clients metric for each county.

What metrics are available?

The available metrics depend on your selected dataset.

Clients dataset

Metric	What it measures
Total Clients	Number of matching client records
Total Enrolled Programs	Total program enrollments across matching clients
Average Enrolled Programs per Client	Average number of program enrollments per matching client
Average Age	Average age of matching clients with a recorded age
% of total clients	Percentage of matching clients belonging to each group selected in “Group By”
Total Assignments	Number of matching assignment records
Completed Assignments	Number of assignments marked Completed
Active Assignments	Number of assignments marked Active
Late Assignments	Number of assignments past their recorded end date
Average Time to Complete Assignments	Average (mean) number of days between assignment and completion for eligible completed assignments
Median Time to Complete Assignments	Middle (median) completion time in days for eligible completed assignments
Completion Rate	Completed assignments as a percentage of total assignments across matching clients

Important: Assignment metrics count assignment records, not unique clients. For example, if Client A and Client B have each completed Assignment X and Assignment Y, then the number of Completed Assignments will be 4.

Programs dataset

Metric	What it measures
Program Count	Number of matching program records
Total Enrolled Clients	Sum of recorded enrolled-client totals across matching programs
Average Length of Stay	Average (mean) recorded enrollment duration in days
Median Length of Stay (days)	Middle (median) recorded enrollment duration in days

Important: Total Enrolled Clients is not necessarily a count of unique people across all programs. A client enrolled in more than one program may contribute to multiple enrollment totals. For example, if Client A is enrolled in Program X and Program Y, then Total Enrolled Clients will be 2.

Assistances dataset

Metric	What it measures
Total Assistance Records	Number of matching Assistance records
Total Distinct Clients	Number of unique clients who received matching Assistance (see Assistance Records vs. Distinct Clients for more details)
Total Amount	Sum of recorded monetary Assistance amounts
Average Assistance per Client	Average number of Assistances per distinct client
Average Amount	Average recorded monetary amount per Assistance record, excluding records without amounts
Total Quantity	Total recorded units or items provided
Total Duration (Minutes)	Total recorded Assistance duration in minutes
Total Bed Nights	Total recorded bed nights
Total Hotline Interactions	Total recorded hotline interactions
Total Group Participants	Total recorded group participants
Number of Assistances with Outcomes Collected	Number of matching Assistance records containing outcome information

Understanding Assistance Records vs. Distinct Clients

These two metrics answer different questions: how many services were recorded, and how many different people received them.

Imagine your organization recorded five Assistances:

Client A received Assistance three times.
Client B received Assistance twice.

Your report would show:

Metric	Result
Total Assistance Records	5
Total Distinct Clients	2

Total Assistance Records counts the individual Assistance records.

Total Distinct Clients counts how many different clients received those Assistances.

Both numbers are useful, but they measure different things.

Now imagine your organization has recorded only three Assistances:

Client A received Assistance X once.
Client A received Assistance Y once.
Client B received Assistance Y once.

If your results are grouped by Assistance Type, your report would show:

Assistance Type	Total Distinct Clients
Assistance X	1
Assistance Y	2

As shown above, the same client can be counted in more than one Assistance type, so be careful not to add the counts from different types together and assume that gives the total number of different people served.

How to create a report using metrics

Let's create a report comparing the number of Assistance records with the number of distinct clients receiving each type of Assistance.

Step 1: Open Reports Home

Select Reports from the left-hand navigation menu to open the place where reports are created and saved.
Click Create report.
Choose Custom Summary Report.

Step 2: Complete General Setup

Fill in the required fields.

Dataset: Select Assistances.

We're choosing Assistances because we want to measure recorded services and support.

Report name: Enter a name that best describes your report (Example: Assistance Records by Distinct Client Type).

Group by: Select Assistance Type.

This organizes the results according to the type of Assistance provided.

Metric(s): Select both:

Total Assistance Records
Total Distinct Clients

These metrics allow you to compare the number of recorded Assistances with the number of different clients receiving each type.

Once all four fields are complete, click Next.

Step 3: Configure Filters Applied

The next screen is Filters Applied.

For this example, we want our report to include all of our Assistances, so we'll leave the Filters section empty.

Click Next.

Step 4: Review Report Details

Confirm your report settings.

If everything is correct, continue.

Step 5: Save & Run

Click Save & Run.

Coming Home saves the report and automatically generates the results.

Step 6: Download your report

Hover your mouse cursor over your custom report to see the options menu for that report. Select Download to retrieve the generated CSV file. The file will be downloaded to the Downloads folder on your computer, or wherever your browser downloads files by default.

Your report will contain:

Each Assistance Type represented in the matching records.
The total number of Assistance records for each type.
The number of distinct clients receiving each type.

What does this mean for your reporting?

Choosing the correct metric helps ensure your report answers the intended question.

For example:

"How many Assistances did we provide?" and "How many people received Assistance?" are different questions.

Use Total Assistance Records for the first and Total Distinct Clients for the second.

What does “Group By” mean in Custom Reports?
What filters can I use in Custom Reports?
What datasets are available in Custom Reports?