The natural gas industry is currently racing to update its downstream data handling capabilities to keep up with the technological advances of field automation. One area of concentration is electronic gas measurement (EGM) editing, recalculation, and reporting programs. Fundamental to all measurement systems is the ability to accurately measure, review, correct, and report the data. Any weakness in this chain undermines the speed and accuracy of the system, the primary reasons for automation. In this paper, I attempt to identify the ideal attributes necessary to streamline this process. One common thread among all successful programs is a good basic design that is easy to understand and use