customization options

Accounting Business Quickbooks

Modifying Reports: Better Insight Into Past, Future

If you make one resolution about improving your accounting procedures in 2012, it should be this: Make extensive use of the tools that QuickBooks offers for report modification. Comprehensive, meticulously-shaped reports that flow out of your carefully-constructed records and transactions are your reward for pounding on the keys every day, conscientiously recording income and expenses.

QuickBooks supplies you with a wide variety of pre-formatted reports whose modification options can help you do focused, critical analysis of your financial data. The right set of numbers will help you understand your history and plan for the future more effectively.

Note: The reports discussed and pictured here shows only one possible set of customization options. There are many variations. We can answer your questions.

Check your preferences

When you created your company file in QuickBooks, you chose between reporting on a cash (income and expenses are recorded when money changes hands) or accrual (recorded when you invoice or receive a bill) basis. This affects summary reports, but not those that break out individual transactions or are simply lists.

If you want to change this, click Edit | Preferences | Reports & Graphs | Company Preferences and click the desired button:


Figure 1: You can establish a preference for your summary reports’ basis here.

You can set other preferences in this window that will affect your report output here, too, as you can see.

Altering the display

Open the Income by Customer Summary report (Reports | Company & Financial). Change the dates to reflect a range you’d like to see. Want the data displayed by different time increments — like week or quarter — instead of just the total? Click the arrow next to Columns and select Four week.


Figure 2: You can do some report display alterations from this toolbar; the options it offers vary by report.

By default, your report rows display alphabetically. If you want to view a column by total in ascending or descending order, select the column by hovering over the top number until the magnifying glass appears, and click on it. Click the arrow next to Sort by and choose Total, then click the AZ [down arrow] icon (in some reports, there will be other options here).

Additional options in this toolbar let you:

  • Memorize the report
  • Print, email or export it to Excel
  • Hide or Show the Header
  • Collapse or Expand the columns
  • Refresh the report if you’ve made changes that will alter data

More display options

Click Customize Report to open this window:


Figure 3: This window outlines your report’s content options.

Some of the options here duplicate what you saw in the toolbar. In addition, you can switch between Accrual and Cash for just this report, and add subcolumns in some. The latter is a complicated operation, one that you must understand well in order to glean any insight from it. We can help you with this.

Sometimes the subcolumns are generic, as shown in the screen above. In other reports, they’re very specific to that group of data.

Clicking on Revert takes you back to the default format, and Advancedopens additional options specific to the current report.

More customization = more insightful results = more informed financial choices

Transaction reports have many similarities and two major differences: You can change the column order by hovering your cursor over the column label until a hand appears. Click, hold and drag the column to the desired spot and let go. You can also add or delete columns by clicking Customize Report and checking or unchecking labels.


Figure 4: In transaction — or detail — reports, you can alter the column structure.

Learn the mechanics of report display modification well, and your company’s finances will come into much sharper focus, improving the wisdom of future choices. Up next month: filtering your reports for additional clarity.

If you have questions on this or any other QuickBooks feature, call or email us. We’re your partner and we’re here to make your business better.

Accounting Business Quickbooks

QuickBooks Helps You Make a Statement

How do you let customers know they owe you money? Probably by sending invoices. And how’s that working for you? If your customers are all conscientious and pay on time, maybe that’s all you need to do.

But perhaps you need to consider doing at least part of your billing by dispatching statements. These forms have their drawbacks. For example, you can’t include sales tax or discounts on them. You can’t group related charges and subtotal them. And your customization options are weaker than in invoices.

Statements lay out the customer’s current financial obligation to you, including any statement charges, invoices, payments, unpaid bills and finance charges that have accrued during a specified period. Unlike invoices, they do not create new charges; they simply report on what’s already been entered. Billing statements that outline historical transactions can be sent as reminders of past due accounts, or you can use them for customers who order frequently, to keep track of items until you’re ready to bill and ship. They’re also useful when you request payment in advance.

You should not invoice for any products or services that have already been entered as statement charges or the customer will be double-billed. Statement charges show up under Recent Transactions in the window adjacent to invoice forms; they also appear in the Customer Center and your Accounts Receivable account in the Chart of Accounts. And you can find them in the Customer Register (Customers | Enter Statement Charges).

Outlining the charges

If you want to enter new statement charges instead of an invoice for, say, a monthly billing or a customer who is ordering frequently but is not ready to be billed, click on the Statement Charges icon on the desktop. (If there’s no icon and you want one, click Edit | Preferences, then Desktop View | Company Preferences, then click in the box next to Statements and Statement Charges.) Or you can just click Customers | Enter Statement Charges.

Click on Edit | Preferences to add Statement Charges and Statements icons to your desktop.

The customer register opens. Select the customer you want to create a charge for by clicking the down arrow next to Customer:Job. If you are in the middle of more than one job for the customer, make sure you make the correct one active.

Go down to the first blank line and change the date if necessary. Tab to the Item field, and drop the list to select the relevant product or service. Tab and enter the Quantity. The Rate and Amt Chrg should be filled in (if not, go back to Lists | Item List and edit the record). QuickBooks will have entered STMTCHG in the Type field. Tab to the Description field and complete it if it’s blank, and select a Class if you’d like. Your window will look something like this:

It’s very easy to enter statement charges in QuickBooks.

If you have another charge for that job or customer, go ahead and enter it. When you’re done with charges for that job/customer, click Record.

Build a statement

You can create statements at any time from data already entered in QuickBooks. The process is the same whether you’ve just entered a series of charges, as outlined above, or you want to remind a customer of outstanding invoices. You’re simply capturing all activity within a given time period. To do so, click the Statements icon on the home page. This window opens:

You’ll select options from this window when you’re building a statement run.

If the window contains an A/R field, that means that you have more than one receivables account. Be sure to select the appropriate one. Verify, too, that the date is correct. This will appear in the customer’s register as the Billed Date.

Here, too, you can choose a range of transaction dates for your statement(s), or simply opt to create forms for all customers with open transactions (in the latter case, you can limit it to transactions that are more than 30 days past due). You must also indicate whether you want statements sent to all customers or a subset. You can manually choose one or many customers, or select by Type (commercial, residential) or Preferred Send Method (E-mail or Mail).

QuickBooks gives you some control over your statements’ layout; click Customize if you want to explore this. Next, you can indicate whether you want to create one statement per customer or per job. The other options here are self-explanatory, but be sure to go through them every time you create statements.

Another decision

Will you be wanting to assess finance charges on the past due charges? This is a decision you should talk over with your ProAdvisor. It’s a complex issue. Should you want to do so, though, clicking on Assess Finance Charges will open the Assess Finance Charges window.

When you’re satisfied with all of your statement choices, you can Preview them. Here’s an example:

Statements lay out all transaction activity within a given period. Statement charges appear as “Due.” In this case, you’re reminding the customer that there’s a large past due balance as well as additional new charges.

Statements can be an effective way to let your customers—and you—get a comprehensive view of their financial interaction with you. They can be used instead of invoices, but there are limitations. If you’re still unclear on how these forms can fit into your accounting workflow, your ProAdvisor can help.

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