Report Group sharing

Hi there, @ bgoon.

When you share a report in QuickBooks, it will be sent out one at a time on a shared group. You can use the management report to send the report as a group.

Here’s how:

1. Go to the Reports menu.
2. Choose the Management reports section.
3. Click the View drop-down and choose Send.
4. On the Email Management Report window, enter the email address of the clients or users you wanted to send the report.
5. Hit Send email.

I've also added this article that can guide you in customizing reports in QBO. That way, you'll learn how to generate reports to show the data you need: Customize reports in QuickBooks Online.

You're always welcome to post here anytime you have other questions or concerns. 

I don't want to send the reports. I want other users to be able to run them. I setup a report group called monthly financials. It has several reports grouped under it (balance sheet, profit and loss, etc) . When others login they don't see the group. They just see the individual reports. I tried making a report group in the management report section but other users cannot see these reports at all.

Good evening, @bgoon. 

Thanks for following up on this thread. 

Before going into detail, this sounds like it may be a user restriction that was set up when you first set up the user on your account. QuickBooks allows you to give users specific assess to features. 

You can manage your users in QuickBooks Online and here's how:

1. Select the Gear icon in the left corner. 
2. Under Your Company section, choose Manage Users. 
3. Click the Edit button next to the user's name. 
4. Once you're on the Edit user settings window, pick the Role drop-down. 

For more information about the different types of roles in QuickBooks Online, you can refer back to this article: User types in QuickBooks Online. 

Feel free to comment below if you have any more questions. Have a good rest of your day!

They are all setup as "Standard users" with "All" on the access question. I just made the reports yesterday so I know it was not a timing issue where they were not users before I created the custom reports.

Hello there, @bgoon!

You'll have to select All under the Share with function so that the other users can view the report as a group. You can read through this article to learn more: Memorize reports in QuickBooks Online.

Lastly, here's a few articles you can read for ideas about managing your company data: Reports and Accounting for QuickBooks Online.

If there's anything else that I can help you with, let me know in the comments. I'll be happy to help.

I have shared with "All." They can see the reports just not as a group. Is there a way to share a group of reports so that they stay grouped?

Hello, @bgoon.

Yes, you'd want to let your authorized users view the reports in the Custom Reports section, not in the Standard section. This way, they can see it listed by groups.

Here's how:

1. Go to the Reports menu.
2. Choose the Reports tab.
3. Select the Custom Reports tab.

Feel free to get back to us if you have other questions about managing your reports and data in QuickBooks. I'm always here to help.

They are looking in customized reports. They see all the reports with my special names. However, they are just on a long list intermingled and not "grouped" like I see them.

Hi there, @bgoon.

I appreciate that you've followed the steps given by my colleague. I'd like you to send us a screenshot of what they can see and another screenshot on your Custom Report section. This would help me identify your concern, don't forget to cover your name in the screenshots.

Also, I have replicated your concern in sharing this to a group. This is how it looks like after saving the Customized Report:

I'll wait for your response in this thread. Stay safe.

The top one is what I see that I posted earlier. It shows the reports in a group. The second picture is what other users see. The reports are listed in alpabetical order and are not grouped at all.

I appreciate you for providing additional information and screenshots above, bgoon. This way, I can provide you the right information about sharing report groups in QuickBooks Online (QBO). 

The user's view on QuickBooks will depend on their access. The account's Master Admin will have access to every feature in QBO.

On the other hand, Standard users are allowed to create a group report in the Custom reports tab. However, the one that creates the group will have the same view as yours. Others will view them listed in alphabetical order and are not grouped. You'll identify if a report is shared. The word Shared should be indicated beside it.

Furthermore, reports are available to most users. However, some are only accessible for a certain subscription level. To learn more about it, kindly refer to this article:  Reports included in your QuickBooks Online subscription. 

Please let me know if you have other concerns. I'm just around to help.

ok, so what you are saying is because I'm the master admin and they are not they cannot see reports as groups? This is a the Plus subscription and all users are setup with full access so there should be no reports that I make that they can't see. Is there a way to share "Management Reports" between users? I'm trying to get they self sufficient in printing financial reports without me having to do it for them each month.

Thank you for getting back to us here on the Community page, @bgoon.

Yes, only the master admin can view the reports in a group. For the users, they can see the reports in lists from the Custom reports column. On the other hand, only the user who created the Management report can access the report. To share it, you have the option to send the report/s through email.

1. From the Reports page, go to the Management reports column.
2. Look for the report from the result, then click on the drop-down arrow under Action.
3. Click on the Send button.
4. Enter the necessary information, then tap Send email.

For additional reference about running and customizing reports in QuickBooks Online, check out this article.

Post again if you have any other questions. I'm always here to help. Wishing you a good one!

I have the same problem. 

Is there no way to make custom reports for the bookkeeper to use and to group those reports in a way that other users will see??

Adam

Hey there, agibbons,

For now, only the master admin of your account can access reports from a group. Other users will see them in a list.

Feel free to read through the Memorize reports in QuickBooks Online link for additional information.

Also, I recommend visiting this page: Firm of the Future to keep you updated with the latest features and improvements in QuickBooks.

Let me know if there's anything else you need. I'm always right here to help.

I'd like to add a "Me Too" to this suggestion.  I am the Master Admin and have created many custom reports which are emailed out each month. Some are individual reports but most are groups of reports.  I would like to share the ability to administer the reports with our bookkeeper but she can only see each individual report.  Since the mailing schedule is at the group level, what she can see is virtually worthless and does not allow her to help manage these reports.

Thanks for reaching out to the Community, phylwith.
 

My colleague, Rea_M, pointed out a workaround where a user can obtain the same view as yourself. Standard users are able to create report groups in the Custom reports area. Once a group is created, only the user who made it will have access to see it. You can work with your bookkeeper so they know how to set their group up identical to yours. This will enable them to see the same thing you're seeing.
 

If you'd like to submit suggestions about report groups that a Master Admin created, you can do so while signed in.
 

Here's how:
1. Use your Gear (⚙) icon.
2. Click Feedback.

3. Enter your suggestions and/or comments.
4. Hit Next.
5. Choose Skip and send message.
6. The available drop-down menu can be used to pick an appropriate category.
7. Select Send message.

Your feedback is definitely valuable. It goes directly to our Product Development team to help improve user experiences in the platform. Feature requests can be tracked through Intuit's Customer Feedback website.
 

If you have any questions, I'm just a post away. Have a great Friday!

I appreciate the reply but this is really not a solution at all. The most significant reason for sharing reports is so that multiple people can run the SAME report, so then regardless of who generates the report, everyone gets consistent views. Getting reports setup to produce the details needed is no small feat.  Suggesting that we then duplicate that setup for someone else would only create a maintenance nightmare in keeping them aligned each time something needed to change. 

We generate 18 different sets of reports each month which are then emailed to 18 different and unique teams. The date of when these reports are emailed each month can vary which requires editing the schedule for each group. Being able to send customized messages to each report recipient group is nice. However, given that only I, as the creator of the reports, can see and/or modify the schedule, it’s 100% dependent on me each month being able to ensure these reports are ready to go. We try to ensure all our processes have multiple people who can perform each task so this is a huge problem for us. 

I desperately need our staff bookkeeper (not an accounting firm) to be able to setup and generate the same reports I do. Instead, she sees the first iteration of a report I create but does not see the updates I make to that report. For various reasons, over the course of our time with QBO, I have reworked many of these reports and sometimes created new ones and deleted the old ones. When I share the new ones, those now appear in her list, however the deleted report remains as well. If I have grouped the reports together, she doesn’t see the group headers at all.  Rather, she sees a long list of reports with no context. 

On my side as the Master Admin, I can share with All or not share them at all. Once shared, I cannot un-share unless I save the report with a new name. If I un-share, our bookeeper‘s list doesn’t change. 

Another one of the attractive features touted for the Advanced version was the ability to add more users. While this is nice, it now means that all of our users have the same mess in their reports as our bookkeeper because I was forced to share my reports with “All” rather than being able to only share them with our bookkeeper. So now, since I can’t un-share and effectively delete these reports from their view, each of our users will now be plagued with manually deleting 300+ reports. 

Overall, we find the whole reporting module in QBO to be severely lacking and it’s disappointing that QBO makes so many claims as to how awesome the reporting features are. We upgraded to Advanced primarily for reports and so far, we aren’t seeing the bang for the buck in this area.  Given that the Fathom reports are summary level only, they don’t meet our detail (transaction level) requirements nor can they be emailed out on a regular basis.

The current setup for reports might make sense for a sole proprietor type business but in a non-profit where many groups are involved in the operation, the reports leave a lot to be desired.  I’ve seen similar comments such as mine expressed many times in the QBO Forums so it would be great if we could see some improvements in this area especially since QBO makes so many claims about their ability to serve the non-profit community. 

I apologize if my reply seems ill toned. It’s just that we are now faced with a lot of cleanup work to do that we were not expecting. And then, to be told our only solution is to manually create more reports so we have more duplicates which would all have to be manually synched each time a change is needed, is just not acceptable at all and it’s disappointing this was a solution presented as a  workaround. 

I appreciate the reply but this is really not a solution at all. The most significant reason for sharing reports is so that multiple people can run the SAME report, so then regardless of who generates the report, everyone gets consistent views. Getting reports setup to produce the details needed is no small feat.  Suggesting that we then duplicate that setup for someone else would only create a maintenance nightmare in keeping them aligned each time something needed to change. 

We generate 18 different sets of reports each month which are then emailed to 18 different and unique teams. The date of when these reports are emailed each month can vary which requires editing the schedule for each group. Being able to send customized messages to each report recipient group is nice. However, given that only I, as the creator of the reports, can see and/or modify the schedule, it’s 100% dependent on me each month being able to ensure these reports are ready to go. We try to ensure all our processes have multiple people who can perform each task so this is a huge problem for us. 

I desperately need our staff bookkeeper (not an accounting firm) to be able to setup and generate the same reports I do. Instead, she sees the first iteration of a report I create but does not see the updates I make to that report. For various reasons, over the course of our time with QBO, I have reworked many of these reports and sometimes created new ones and deleted the old ones. When I share the new ones, those now appear in her list, however the deleted report remains as well. If I have grouped the reports together, she doesn’t see the group headers at all.  Rather, she sees a long list of reports with no context. 

On my side as the Master Admin, I can share with All or not share them at all. Once shared, I cannot un-share unless I save the report with a new name. If I un-share, our bookeeper‘s list doesn’t change. 

Another one of the attractive features touted for the Advanced version was the ability to add more users. While this is nice, it now means that all of our users have the same mess in their reports as our bookkeeper because I was forced to share my reports with “All” rather than being able to only share them with our bookkeeper. So now, since I can’t un-share and effectively delete these reports from their view, each of our users will now be plagued with manually deleting 300+ reports. 

Overall, we find the whole reporting module in QBO to be severely lacking and it’s disappointing that QBO makes so many claims as to how awesome the reporting features are. We upgraded to Advanced primarily for reports and so far, we aren’t seeing the bang for the buck in this area.  Given that the Fathom reports are summary level only, they don’t meet our detail (transaction level) requirements nor can they be emailed out on a regular basis.

The current setup for reports might make sense for a sole proprietor type business but in a non-profit where many groups are involved in the operation, the reports leave a lot to be desired.  I’ve seen similar comments such as mine expressed many times in the QBO Forums so it would be great if we could see some improvements in this area especially since QBO makes so many claims about their ability to serve the non-profit community. 

I apologize if my reply seems ill toned. It’s just that we are now faced with a lot of cleanup work to do that we were not expecting. And then, to be told our only solution is to manually create more reports so we have more duplicates which would all have to be manually synched each time a change is needed, is just not acceptable at all and it’s disappointing this was a solution presented as a  workaround. 

I'm in the same frame of mind - not very impressed with the reporting features. The point of using this software is to "see" the data. I can share the reports but they are in a long laundry list of other reports and my bookkeepers can't see the way they are organized from my perspective. And it really irritates me that they can't run the management reports for themselves. WHY NOT? This isn't making my job, or theirs, any easier. 

This is another "me, too" message.

Thanks to bgoon, phylwith, and all the others who have so eloquently explained what my problem is. What is disturbing is that we have had so many statements of the problem, and so many responses from Intuit, and none of the responses seem to even comprehend what the issue is. The "solutions" are not solutions, because they don't seem to understand the problem. I thought that phylwith just did an especially good job of explaining the problem.

I'll offer my story to help understand the need at another level. I'm a 78-year old volunteer president of a nonprofit with a $350,000 budget, with good skills at working with Quickbooks. When the organization was smaller, 20 years ago, I did the accounting myself. Now we have a staff of five and an outside accounting firm. When it is time to create a report, I want a staff member to export the group of reports that I have previously set up, then add one manual report that we prepare. Then we use pdfill tools to add page numbers to the pdf version of the report, and then we create a table of contents from a template in Google sheets and manually add page numbers to the table of contents. I don't want to have to do all this myself.

My deputy director and program manager also are learning to use QBO, and I want them to easily study our "live" reports at any time to see how we are doing. I want them to look at the latest version of each report. But at best, they have an old group of reports to be used for quarterly reports and then a bunch of ungrouped reports at the top of their custom reports screen. They can't tell on what date each report arrived, so they don't know which is the most recent version of each report. I have labeled the reports "FR1 Profit and Loss," "FR2 Costs and Revenues, "FR3 Balance Sheet" and more - where FR stands for a financial report, so the reports in the group will appear in the order I want. But now they also have copies of FR1 and FR2 and more at the top. And if I have slightly renamed the title of the report, they definitely won't know which report is the newest one.

I urge QBO's developers to change the system, so we can say who we are sharing with, and so we can say what group each shared report should be assigned to. Then, if they are concerned about giving the recipients more control, there might be something that shows up when the recipient receives the file asking if it is OK to put the report in the assigned group, and if it is OK to replace the existing report with this new one in this group.

To be clear, we have an Advanced subscription. All our staff members and our accountants can see all the custom reports that have been shared, and all of them can create groups. The problem is that I want to create groups that will appear on their screens in the same groupings - not just in an alphabetical list of reports.

Adding a big plus 1 here.

bgoon, and all, you're spot on with your complaint (and politely so,) but the QBO team doesn't quite seem to get the questions.

Throwing in my two cents for what I think we're all asking for. QBO team, hope you might hear this and share to the dev team, or product team, or whomever needs to hear.

Image attached and below hopefully helps illustrate some of the problem.

I own a mid-sized construction firm, a heavy, Advanced subscriber/user of QBO,  and have the need to regularly create or update many custom reports, to be shared with our team of QBO users. The current shared reports feature is quite frustrating in QBO.

As outlined in other comments here, we have no ability to organize these reports for the team. Individual users can create and manage their own report groups, but that relies on each user to make this effort.

In our use what's perhaps worse still, is the way updates to shared reports currently work. When one user updates their shared report, it creates duplicates for all other users. When saving simple updates to a shared report, like a name change or revised date range, the shared report creates a new duplicate report for other users with a suffx -1,-2,3, etc.

This greatly multiplies the problem of individual users having to manage their own groupings, as any shared report with a settings update must be organized, and old reports deleted, again, and again, and again, and again...

Please, somebody out there on the QBO team, consider providing a cleaner way to share, organize, and update shared reports with other team users.

And then for anyone who's listening, would love to talk about overall limitations seemingly baked into QBO for those of us who need reporting on our Work In Process costs in balance sheet accounts...

Cheers,

Shane Roach

South Haven Builders

Atlanta, GA

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Shane Roach

I know how convenient to have those functionalities in managing your reports. To add your vote and help improve your experience in the program, I'd still encourage directly sending feedback to our Product Development. We always track the requests that we receive from our customers and take them into consideration when prioritizing feature development. Here's how:

1. Sign in to your QBO account.
2. Select the Gear icon, then choose Feedback.
3. Enter your comments or product suggestions.
4. Click Next to submit your feedback.

I'm also adding these articles that will help you speed up the reporting process in QuickBooks Online:

• Customize report
• Memorize report

Don't hesitate to add a comment below if you have any other concerns or further questions. Have a good one.