P&L for company with 3 businesses

Hi there, Nssbeca33.

I'm glad to see you here posting in QuickBooks Community. I'll provide steps on how to pull up a P&L report with each of the 3 bank accounts you have. To start with, I'd suggest going to the Reports menu and choose the P&L report. Then, customize this to show all bank accounts under the one company file.

Here's how:

1. Click the Reports menu.
2. Choose Company & Financial and select Profit and loss.
3. Click the Customize Report button.
4. Go to the Filters tab. Then, type Account in the Search Filters bar.
5. Go to the Account drop-down arrow and click Multiple accounts.
6. Checkmark the 3 accounts you want to view in the report.
7. Click OK and OK.

For additional information on how to customize any report to personalize the data you want to see, you can click this article: Customize reports in QuickBooks Desktop.

On the other hand, to take care of expenses that have to do with other businesses, you'll need to know about the Accounts Payable workflows you can use in QuickBooks Desktop. With this, when you enter a bill, QuickBooks will add an entry for payables that you will pay at a future date, including expenses incurred, materials purchased, or services provided by a vendor. Then, when you enter or pay a bill, QuickBooks records the transaction to your Accounts Payable to settle your payables. That's how expenses work in QuickBooks. For additional details, you can check this article: Accounts Payable workflows in QuickBooks Desktop.

Please refer to this link to look for some information on how to organize your QuickBooks Desktop account and how to manage your transactions in the system and to run different reports: Help articles.

You're always welcome to post in the Community anytime you have other concerns or questions. I'm always here to assist you. Take care!

This is fantastic, thank you.

It does pull the report however when I click on multiple accounts and choose both income and expense 

accounts in order to get a correct profit and loss. It does not give me it?

If I just pick expense, it gives me a total but not P&L.

My income accounts are separated for each business, this way I can pull for him what was made in each 

business. My account type is Income and my account name, the name of the business.

Is this incorrect? Again when choosing multiple accounts I choose the income and the expense

Hi @Nssbeca33,

Thank you for getting back and sharing additional information on your situation. 

This option you're looking for with running a selective number of accounts on a Profit and Loss report is unavailable. As you've stated in your initial post, it's best to create a different company file in QuickBooks Desktop. This way, your reports will show accurate information. 

I suggest you view this article: Customize customer, job, and sales reports in QuickBooks Desktop. It has the steps on how you can create specific custom reports such as Taxable customers.

In case you need further clarification on this matter, tag me in the comments below, and I'll get back to you. 

First, you only need 1 QuickBook license to set up three company files.  If that is not an option, you need to use class tracking.  You can run a P&L by class.  That is not going to help you with the balance sheet and unless every balance sheet account is classified, it will not balance.  

You are better off setting up three company files and setting up a due to/from account in each.