@ChrisHemedinger, it isn't a question of coding. I was hoping to make it easier for people to have a date range default to the start and end of the previous month but give them the option of choosing a different range.
@tomrvincent if a whole bunch of people aren't understanding your problem or suggestions maybe consider that how you're communicating with others is unclear. Or you can stick with your assumption that for everyone else "Maybe running reports isn't something you do or can picture others doing. If that's the case, perhaps you should opt out of the discussion of something that isn't relevant to you."
There are many ways to implement what you want, and I agree that having previous month in the drop down would be nice, but as feature requests go, since there are so minimal workarounds, it would be pretty far down my list. You'll notice that these are partially prioritized by votes. How many people will look at your suggestion, understand it and vote on it?