{"id":1139,"date":"2022-03-23T02:13:46","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T02:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/?p=1139"},"modified":"2022-04-23T02:14:42","modified_gmt":"2022-04-23T02:14:42","slug":"getting-started-with-reports-in-quickbooks-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/03\/23\/getting-started-with-reports-in-quickbooks-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Started with Reports in QuickBooks Online"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/pros-cons-paperless.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1140 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/pros-cons-paperless-300x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/pros-cons-paperless-300x150.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/pros-cons-paperless-768x384.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/pros-cons-paperless-1024x512.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/pros-cons-paperless.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 85vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>You should be running reports in QuickBooks Online on a weekly\u2014if not daily\u2014basis. Here\u2019s what you need to know.<\/p>\n<p>You can do a lot of your accounting work in QuickBooks Online by generating reports. You can maintain your customer and vendor profiles. Create and send transactions like invoices and sales receipts, and record payments. Enter and pay bills. Create time records and coordinate projects. Track your mileage and, if you have employees, process payroll.<\/p>\n<p>These activities help you document your daily financial workflow. But if you\u2019re not using QuickBooks Online\u2019s reports, you can\u2019t know how individual elements of your business like sales and purchases are doing. And you don\u2019t know how all of those individual pieces fit together to create a comprehensive picture of how your business is performing.<\/p>\n<p>QuickBooks Online\u2019s reports are plentiful. They\u2019re customizable. They\u2019re easy to create. And they\u2019re critical to your understanding of your company\u2019s financial state. They answer the small questions, like, How many widgets do I need to order?, and the larger, all-encompassing questions like, Will my business make a profit this year?<\/p>\n<h2>Getting the Lay of the Land<\/h2>\n<p>Let\u2019s look at how reports are organized in QuickBooks Online. Click <strong>Reports<\/strong> in the toolbar. You\u2019ll see they are divided into three areas that you can access by clicking the labeled tabs. <strong>Standard<\/strong> refers to the comprehensive list of reports that QuickBooks Online offers, displayed in related groups. <strong>Custom reports<\/strong> are reports that you\u2019ve customized and saved so you can use the same format later. And <strong>Management reports<\/strong> are very flexible, specialized reports that can be used by company owners and managers.<\/p>\n<h2>Standard Reports<\/h2>\n<p><strong>The Standard Reports<\/strong> area is where you\u2019ll do most\u2014if not all\u2014of your reporting work. The list of available reports is divided into 10 categories. You\u2019re most likely to spend most of your time in just a few of them, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Favorites.<\/strong> You\u2019ll be able to designate reports that you run often as <strong>Favorites<\/strong> and access them here, at the top of the list.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Who owes you.<\/strong> These are your receivables reports. You\u2019ll come here when you need to know, for example, who is behind on making payments to you, how much individual customers owe you, and what billable charges and time haven\u2019t been billed.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sales and customers.<\/strong> What\u2019s selling and what\u2019s not? What have individual customers been buying? Which customers have accumulated billable time?<\/li>\n<li><strong>What you owe.<\/strong> These are your payables reports. They tell you, for example, which bills you haven\u2019t paid, the total amount of your unpaid bills (grouped by days past due), and your balances with individual vendors.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Expenses and vendors.<\/strong> What have I purchased (grouped by vendor, product, or class)? What expenses have individual vendors incurred? Do I have any open purchase orders?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The <strong>Business Overview<\/strong> contains advanced financial reports that we can run and analyze for you. The same goes for the F<strong>or my accountant<\/strong> reports. <strong>Sales tax<\/strong>, <strong>Employees<\/strong>, and <strong>Payroll<\/strong> will be important to you if they\u2019re applicable for your company.<\/p>\n<h2>Working with Individual Reports<\/h2>\n<p>To open any report, you just click its title. If you want more information before you do that, just hover your cursor over the label. Click the question mark to see a brief description of the report. If you want to make the report a <strong>Favorite<\/strong>, click the star so it turns green. And clicking the three vertical dots opens the <strong>Customize<\/strong> link.<\/p>\n<p>When you click the <strong>Customize<\/strong> link, a vertical panel slides out from the right, and the actual report is behind it, grayed out. Customization options vary from report to report. Some are quite complex, and others offer fewer options. The <strong>Sales by Customer Detail report<\/strong>, for example, provides a number of ways for you to modify the content of your report so it represents exactly the \u201cslice\u201d of data you want. So you can indicate your preferences in areas like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Report period<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Accounting method<\/strong> (cash or accrual)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Rows\/columns<\/strong> (you can select which columns should appear and in what order, and group them by <strong>Account<\/strong>, <strong>Customer<\/strong>, <strong>Day<\/strong>, etc.)<\/li>\n<li>Filter (choose the data group you want represented from several options, including <strong>Transaction Type<\/strong>, <strong>Product\/Service<\/strong>, <strong>Payment Method<\/strong>, and <strong>Sales Rep<\/strong>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Once you\u2019ve run the report, you can click <strong>Save customization<\/strong> in the upper right corner and complete the fields in the window that opens. Your modification options will then be available when you click <strong>Custom reports<\/strong>, so you can run it again anytime with fresh data.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"images\/image_library\/articles\/QBO-April2022-image-3.jpg\" alt=\"QBO tips\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">You can customize QuickBooks Online\u2019s reports in a variety of ways.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll go into more depth about report customization in a future issue. For now, we encourage you to explore QuickBooks Online\u2019s reports and their modification options so that you\u2019re familiar with them and can put them to use anytime. Let us know if you have any questions about the site\u2019s reports, or if you need help making your use of QuickBooks Online more effective and productive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You should be running reports in QuickBooks Online on a weekly\u2014if not daily\u2014basis. Here\u2019s what you need to know. You can do a lot of your accounting work in QuickBooks Online by generating reports. You can maintain your customer and vendor profiles. Create and send transactions like invoices and sales receipts, and record payments. Enter &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/03\/23\/getting-started-with-reports-in-quickbooks-online\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Getting Started with Reports in QuickBooks Online&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[258],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quickbooks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1141,"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions\/1141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}