Report my charitable donations

Hello there, @gerdgoebel.

I am here to share some insights into running a report for your donations in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT).

It's important to note that when you create an invoice for your inventory item as a donation, it will be reflected in the Profit and Loss report. However, it's crucial to check the dates and filters applied to your report. In case you find that the donations are not showing up, it's recommended to review and erase any previous filters that might be obstructing the report. This will help you to obtain a clear report without any filters.

After deleting the previous filters, you can customize reports and add new filters to find the donations easily. 

Here's how:

1. After opening the Profit and Loss report, go to Customize reports.
2. Click on the Filters tab.
3. In the Account, select the account you put your donations to.
4. Click OK.

You'll be able to see all the donations on that specific account you used for your donations.

Moreover, I'm adding this helpful article as your reference in memorizing your reports in QBDT: Create, access and modify memorized reports.

Return to this post if you have other concerns about running financial reports in QBDT. I'll be here to lend a hand. Have a good one!

Thanks for your reply,

but this is not a filter problem, as I use the standard profit and loss report and I don't use a filter for this report

also, if you check the instructions I had linked, we first create an invoice for $80 (as example), posting to the expense account Charity/Donations. The balance now is $80.

But then we create the credit note for the same amount with the same line items which also posts against the same Charity/Donations account, thus, making the account 0.

Thanks for your reply, gerd.

I appreciate you following the article you shared in this thread. Let me share additional information about your concern about pulling up reports for your charitable donations. 

In QuickBooks, if you create an invoice with the amount of $80 and link it with a credit memo that also amounts to $80, it will automatically zero out the invoice balance and mark it as paid. 

Moreover, the Profit and Loss report tells you how much money you’re making and how much you’re losing. So, it's normal that the balance for the Charity/Donations account will be zero since the invoice was paid when you linked the credit memo. 

If you want to pull up a report that will only shows all the invoices that you created for your charitable donations, you can pull up the Sales by Customer Detail report and customize the accounts and transactions. 

Here's how:

1. In the Reports menu report, locate the Purchases by Item Detail.
2. Select Customize Report.
3. Click the Display tab.
4. Under the Columns section, select Paid.
5. In the Filter section, search for Account and choose Charitable Contribution or the account you use for the donations.
6. Then, hit OK.

Furthermore, you can also reach out to your accountant for another way to run reports for contributions and managing your charitable donations.

To learn more about running and customizing reports in QBDT, you may check these articles:  

• Understand reports 
• Customize reports in QuickBooks Desktop

Please feel free to post again if you have follow-up questions or additional query. I'll be around to help you.

Thanks for your reply, GebelAlainaM.

I sure would want to show my donations on the profit and loss report, as I actually would want to see the total of my donations on the report. And actually, it's just another expense.

So, invoice and credit memo does not work for me.

Further, when we send the QB DB to the accountant, he is not going through the report, but rather, just checks the profit and loss report and balance sheet, thus, they would not know about the donations, unless I show they the donation report.

I got another reply to my post, that I could either do this with an inventory adjustment, or with a zero $ invoice, but where the COGS account in the inventory item used points to the Charity/Donations expense account.This way, I don't have any open invoice, but see the total donations in the profit and loss account.

I have not made up my mind if this is the right way to do it, but it seem to be "more correct" then having an invoice with a credit memo and a specific donations sales report.