Need help creating two reports

Content

I'm having trouble creating my own custom reports.  Could you guys tell me what fields/filters i need to use for these?

I need the following:

A report that shows the status of each employee's review  during a given time frame especially if they have one assigned or not.  ie  is it new, pending approval, final, or they dont even have one. This is so I can show upper management if their managers are doing reviews, and how far along in the process they are.  The issue I'm running into is if they haven't assigned a review they dont show on the report.