QuickBooks Training Materials – Part 5

An Introduction to Reports

QuickBooks Enterprise offers a variety of reports, but it also offers other ways of looking at your company’s finances. So, before we look at reports, let’s examine one of the informative dashboards QuickBooks offers.

Insights into Your Company

We already have talked about the Home Page, but on the same screen there's a second tab called Insights, which is full of informative widgets. These widgets can be selected from many informative sources and can be rearranged to fit your specific requirements.

We will examine more at Insights and other informative graphical displays in the Reporting session of our training.

Reporting on Your Data

Everything you enter in QuickBooks Enterprise can be found and generated into a report. QuickBooks Enterprise comes with dozens of prepared reports you can run:

You can use the Report Center to learn about reports and locate ones that contain the information you need. After you have found a report, you can change its date range, customize the way it looks, print a copy of it, export it to Microsoft Excel or display it on your screen.

To find and display the right report:

1. Click Reports on the QuickBooks Enterprise Navigation Bar:

2. Click a report category from the list on the left. Reports for the selected category are displayed on the right:

3. From the report list, you can view a thumbnail picture of the report by moving your mouse over the thumbnail icon. To learn more about a specific report, click the More... link to learn about the data and specific ways to customize the report:

4. When you find the report you need, click its name to view the report:

5. In addition to the powerful reports available in the Report Center, you also can use the QuickBooks Centers to get a quick snapshot of how your business is doing and the status of your relationships with your customers, vendors and employees:

For example, from the Centers you can see all your unpaid bills, the invoices your customers have not paid, and the detailed history of each of your customers and vendors.

Customizing a Report

QuickBooks Enterprise provides many preset reports that focus on all aspects of your business finance; however, you might want to change the way the data displays or filter a report for specific information. To get the most out or your reports, you can:

  • Change the data range of a report:
  • Change the scope of a report using filters:
  • Add or subtract content from the report using columns:
  • Modify the appearance of a report (changing fonts or column widths):

Memorizing Reports

Whenever you change the settings for a report (modify it), you can memorize the report with the new settings and save it in the Memorized Report List.

When you want to create a similar report, you can click the Memorized Report List to find it. (Note: QuickBooks Enterprise memorizes the report settings, not the data in the report.)

When you display a memorized report, QuickBooks applies the settings you memorized, but displays the most current data.

For example, if the report date is set for the period Last Month and you memorize the report in September, but run the report again in December, the recalled report will have data for November, not August.

To memorize a report:

  1. Open the Report Center from the QuickBooks Enterprise Navigation Bar
  2. Open the report you want to modify and memorize
  3. After you have customized the report, click Memorize at the top of the report
  4. If you have changed an existing memorized report, indicate whether you want to replace the earlier report (under the same name) or create a new memorized report (under a new name)
  5. In the Memorize Report window, enter a title for the report
  6. If you want to assign the report to a memorized report group, choose Save in Memorized Report Group and choose the group from the drop-down list (you must already have the group set up on your Memorized Report List; you cannot create a new group here)
  7. Click OK

Account versus Item Based Reports

QuickBooks Enterprise makes use of both accounts and items when it comes to reporting. For example, let's look at just a couple of reports related to income and sales. 

Income Report are driven from data captured within the various "income accounts" set up in your QuickBooks file. Sales reports are based upon the "sale of items."

In other words, Income is "account" driven reporting, while Sales is "item" driven reporting. To get the most out of QuickBooks, all sales should be recorded using sales-type transaction forms that make use of items.

Item-based Reports

Sales don't appear on reports unless they're entered using Items. That means the sale must be entered via an Invoice, Sales Receipt or Statement Charge (or a Credit Memo if the item is being returned).

If you enter sales directly into the Make Deposits window, Check Register or with Journal Entries, then QuickBooks Sales Reports will not be accurate.

All the reports found under Reports > Sales are Item-based reports:

The Sales by Customer Detail report will let you know exactly what each customer bought. This report shows the details of every line of every income transaction attributed to each Customer:Job.

The Filter screen below in the Sales by Customer Detail report produces just a small portion of the original report, filtered for the text in one or more custom fields (with a modified header to describe what is being displayed):

When the filter for the custom field is applied, the Sales by Customer Detail report becomes much more specific:

Account-based Reports

There are many reports to help your clients better understand their sales and income, but there are too many to review them all in this simple Reporting introduction.

For example, look under Company & Financial reports you'll find the Income by Customer Summary report that tells you how much you're earning from each customer. It shows the NET Income for each customer – sales less any expenses attributed to that customer.

This report is based upon the applicable accounts from the chart of accounts, and not QuickBooks items. There also is a detailed version of Income by Customer.

This is just a taste of QuickBooks Reporting capabilities. We will learn how to get the most out of your reports in our training session on Reporting. But in the meantime, you can go to the Report Center and click the Learning link in the top-left corner of the window.