Help Desk software should provide reporting tools to make sense of all the information recorded.  This enables the manager to assign resources to a particular application or section of the Help Desk.  McGarahan (2000) says, “if you don’t measure it, you can’t improve upon it!”  Help Desks collect a huge amount of data from  call handling databases and this need to be collated and presented in a useful format.  This information is very useful to planning the future of a Help Desk.   They show the changes over time in the Help Desk.

These reports can be produced on a standard basis to measure the performance on a weekly or monthly basis or at Ad-hoc depending on the wishes of the manager.

Reporting tools will typically show the performance of the Help Desk, the about extended and overall volume of call and this help show how productive Support Analysts.  How costly the Help Desk operation and what reports could be the amount of calls that week, percentage resolved within SLA, Call open etc.  There is a host of different types of reports available. Microsoft Help Desk Sourcebook (1997)

Bruton (1995) raises an interesting point saying that Help Desk software should record all incidents, for example simple problems solved over the phone by first line support should be recorded to show a more accurate account of the call levels.   The reason for the Help Desk being there has to be justified therefore the true level of use should be reflected in management reports.