reports

Navigating the Reports center

Making sense of data

QuickBooks Online makes it easy for your clients to manage their invoices, pay their bills, and track their cash
flows. However, to be able to make sense of all the transactions and identify the business’s strengths and areas
for improvement, clients will need to be able to create reports.

How can QuickBooks Online help?

The Reports center in QuickBooks Online offers ready-made report templates on a range of data points. Clients
can easily run and customize these templates to gain insight into what matters to them.

The QuickBooks Online ecosystem is constantly evolving to meet your needs.

Your current experience may differ from what you see here.

The benefits of reporting

Without financial reports, it’s difficult to understand how well a company is performing from a financial
standpoint. Not only are such reports crucial for your clients to be able to understand their financial stability, but
they’re required by law for tax and standard accounting practices.
The variety of report options in QuickBooks Online provides your clients with objective and real-time data on
how their business is performing, including:

 Key information about customers, vendors, and employees

 A snapshot of the company’s assets, liabilities, and equity at a single point in time
 How much the company earned or lost over a specific period of time

The valuable insight clients gain from reports allows them to:

 Keep accurate records to comply with mandatory accounting regulations

 Assess the financial health of the company to make business decisions
 Identify trends and roadblocks to make strategic decisions when necessary
 Ensure that they pay the right amount of tax and mitigate any errors

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Overview of the Reports center

The Reports center in QuickBooks Online gives access to a range of report options.
To access the Reports center, select Reports from the left-hand navigation.
Select the highlighted areas to find out more about the different areas of the Reports center.
The Reports tab is where clients can access all their reports.

The Performance center tab is where clients can create charts to visualize their company’s financial data.

The Standard section within the Reports menu shows reports QuickBooks Online automatically created using the data from
lists, transactions, and other functions. These customizable reports are grouped into categories for ease of use.

The Custom reports tab includes a list of reports that your clients have customized and saved for future use. This tab also
includes any reports that other users within their company have customized and shared with the client.

The Management reports tab offers customizable professional-style report packages that include a cover page, table of
contents, varying reports, and annotation.

The search bar makes it easy to find specific reports quickly.

The Favourites section allows easy access to the reports that clients have favorited using the Star icon

The Business overview category includes summary and detail reports that cover the performance and position of the client’s
business.

The Who owes you category includes reports about the customers who owe your client money. Reports in this category include
A/R Aging Summary, Collections, Open Invoices, and others designed to help your client manage their accounts receivable.

The Sales and customers category reports in detail about sales of products and services, and details about the customers who
purchase them.

The What you owe category includes reports detailing information about what money your client owes and the suppliers they
owe money to.
The Expenses and vendors category includes reports about your client’s expenses and purchases.

The Expenses and vendors category includes reports about your client’s expenses and purchases.

The For my accountant category is dedicated to accountant reports that are used to help prepare year-end reports and taxes.

Reporting methods
Clients select different methods of accounting for different reasons. Understanding these methods will help you
gain a better picture of how the report selections you make for your client affect the information they receive.
Cash-basis accounting means that income and expenses are recorded as payments are received or are paid. This
works best for simple service-based businesses that don’t require the management of their accounts receivable
or accounts payable, and that have no inventory.
For tax-basis purposes, cash-basis reporting can be used to report taxable income or loss if the following
requirements are met:

 Average annual gross receipts for the preceding three tax years were $25 million or less
 The client meets the regulations for complying with the exceptions for inventories in cash-basis reporting

Accrual-basis accounting is the preferred accounting method for most companies. It means that income and
expenses are recorded as bills in the time period there were incurred or invoices are recorded as revenue is
earned, regardless of when the payment was received.
Given that reports can be run on a cash or accrual basis, switching between the two accounting methods may
result in different data in reports. That is because when Cash is selected, the report will display only the cash
payments and cash receipts received for the specified accounting period, whereas an Accrual report will display
the transactions that were incurred and earned during that date range.
For that reason, make sure clients adjust the accounting method if necessary when running reports. We’ll cover
how to do this later in the lesson.

Report types
There are several different types of reports available in QuickBooks Online.
Select the dropdowns to find out more.
Transaction reports

Transaction reports make up the greatest proportion of the reports in QuickBooks Online. They provide
transaction data in various formats to help clients find important information about their business. Examples of
transaction reports include:

 Profit & Loss: reports on the financial performance of the business

 Balance Sheet: reports on the financial position of the business
 General Ledger: reports on the transactions by account

List reports
List reports provide clients with information on the various lists available in QuickBooks Online. Examples of
list reports include:

 Account List: the chart of accounts

 Product and Services List: a list of the items the client sells or buys and the services they provide
 Customer Contact List: a list of customers and their contact details
 Vendor Contact List: a list of vendors and their contact details
Summary reports

Summary reports give clients an easy view of their customers, sales, expenses, and more. Examples of summary
reports are:

 Accounts Receivable (or A/R) Aging Summary: summarizes the status of unpaid invoices
 Accounts Payable (or A/P) Aging Summary: summarizes the status of unpaid bills and unapplied vendor credits

Detail reports

Detail reports include summary transactions as well as individual transactions that provide a second layer of
detailed information about customers, vendors, expenses, and more. Examples of detail reports are:

 Accounts Receivable (or A/R) Aging Detail: displays detailed information on customer accounts, such
as a list of all open customer invoices
 Accounts Payable (or A/P) Aging Detail: displays detailed information on vendor accounts, such as a list
of all open vendor bills

Running a report
Now let’s look at how to run a report.
Watch the video to see how it’s done. The individual steps are below for you to follow.

1. Select Reports from the left-hand navigation

2. Use the search bar to find the report or select the report from the groups in the Standard tab

Scroll up to see the report detail and customization options.

3. Make sure that the Report period is correct and adjust it if necessary
4. Next, make sure that the right Accounting method is selected
5. To refresh the data in the report, select Run report
6. When done, select the Print icon to print, email, or save the report as a PDF
7. In this case, we want to download it, so we select Save as PDF

That’s it. The report now appears in the tray.