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Run a Balance Sheet report in QuickBooks Online

by Intuit•20• Updated 4 days ago

Learn how to run a Balance Sheet report in QuickBooks Online.

A Balance Sheet report gives you a financial snapshot of your company as of a specific date. It calculates how much your business is worth (your business's equity) by subtracting all the money your company owes (liabilities) from everything it owns (assets):

Assets - Liabilities = Equity

Note: The total for equity includes your company's net income for the financial year to date.

Some of your reports will look different depending on whether they're in the classic view or new enhanced experience. Learn more about the new enhanced experience.

Run a Balance Sheet report

  1. Go to Reports (Take me there).
  2. From the Business overview section, select Balance Sheet.

Tip: To see a higher-level summary, run the Balance Sheet Summary report instead.

Differences between a Balance Sheet report and other reports

You may notice that your Balance Sheet report doesn't match your other reports even after making sure that all the filters are the same. There are a few reasons why this occurs, such as:

  • Your Balance Sheet report is a cumulative report that carries a beginning balance.
  • In other reports, the date range you set only applies to net income/profit for the year and the specific account you select within the report. (Example: If you have GBP £ 50 of VAT in March and GBP £ 60 in April, the Balance sheet will show GBP £110 for the VAT liability account).
  • If the date range for the report is April, it will still show a cumulative total of GBP £110. However, if you select GBP £ 110, its transaction detail report shows a beginning balance of GBP £ 50 and then a GBP £ 60 transaction for April.
  • In addition, the Sales by Product/Service Detail report is limited to the date range you set. If you set the report date for April, then it will truly reflect only April and show the GBP £ 60 only.

Compare your Balance Sheet report and Accounts Receivable Ageing Summary or Accounts Receivable Ageing Detail reports

When comparing your Balance Sheet report (Last Year/Accrual) and your Accounts receivable ageing summary or Accounts receivable ageing detail reports, there are some things you should know, such as:

  • When you compare these two reports, you must specify the correct Ageing method in the Accounts receivable ageing report.
  • If you're running the Balance Sheet report for any date in the past, you must select Report period for the Ageing method on your Accounts receivable ageing reports in order for the Total Accounts Receivable to match on both the Balance Sheet and Accounts receivable ageing report.

You can customise your Balance Sheet report to show Year-over-Year columns.

  1. Go to Reports (Take me there).
  2. In the search bar, search for and open Balance Sheet Comparison.
  3. Select Switch to modern view, if you see it.
  4. Select Custom dates from the Report period ▼ dropdown.
  5. Select From and To to set the start and end date.
  6. Select Refresh icon. Refresh report.

The value of the assets should always equal the combined value of the liabilities and equity (Equity = Assets - Liabilities). If your balance sheet isn't balancing correctly, you can troubleshoot the issue:

  1. Select each account in the report to see the transactions related to the balance of each account.
  2. You can start running the date range down by starting from year to date (YTD), and narrowing it down each month, until you have the date range narrowed to the day that the balance sheet goes off.
  3. From there, you can start to figure out what transaction is causing the balance sheet to be off and resolve the issue.

If your company's financial year is different from the calendar year, the amounts on both the report and the account history may not match because the balance sheet is run on a calendar year. You can resolve this issue by doing one of the following:

Option 1: Change the date of the report to match your financial year

  1. Go to Reports (Take me there).
  2. In the search bar, search for and open the Balance Sheet report.
  3. Select Switch to modern view, if you see it.
  4. Select the appropriate period from the Report period ▼ dropdown.
  5. Select Refresh icon. Refresh report.

Option 2: Change your financial year on the company file

  1. Go to Settings Settings gear icon. and select Account and settings.
  2. Select Advanced.
  3. In the Accounting section, select the edit ✏️ icon.
  4. From the First month of tax year dropdown, select January.
  5. Select Save, then Done.
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