Transaction Report with Running Account Balance but NOT Total

Hi, @Stacy680. Welcome to the QuickBooks Community. 

If transactions are grouped by account, the report shows the total per account by default. I can suggest a report that's closer to your specifications.

To achieve a report that resembles a bank statement without the total of the difference between credits and debits, you can use the "Transaction Detail by Account" report in QuickBooks Accountant Online (QBAO). This report can be customized to show the transactions for the fiscal year and the running balance of each transaction. Let me show you the general steps where you can perform further customizations moving forward. 

1. Go to Reports.
2. In the search field, type "Transaction Detail by Account" and select the report. (If you're on the Modern view, select Switch to classic view for better navigation.)
3. Click on Customize. 
4. From the Report period, select This Fiscal Year.
5. In the Rows/Columns section, select None from the Group by drop-down list. 
6.  Choose the details to include from the Select and reorder columns (e.g., Date, Name, Memo/Description, Debit, Credit, Amount, and Balance).
7. In the Filter section, put a checkmark on the Cleared box, and select Cleared.
8. Select Run report.

However, for the running account balance, I suggest exporting the report to Excel and adding the data from there. You may refer to this guide for the exporting process: Export your reports to Excel from QuickBooks Online.

After making the customizations for the report, let me add this reference on how to save these settings for future use: Memorize reports in QuickBooks Online. 

You're always welcome in the Community should you have further questions about running reports in QBAO. We'll do our best to assist. Have a great day ahead!

Thank you for your reply.

Unfortunately, I don't think this solution is going to be better than my "Balance Sheet" report.  The "Transaction Report by Detail" still has the "Total" at the bottom, which is what I'm trying to avoid.  Plus, I currently have the Balance Sheet report set to run and email advisors automatically, so having to import into Excel would take a lot more of my time when it doesn't fix the Total problem.

I have been unable to find a report that gives a beginning account balance (although this part is not as important as the other two parts), an ending account balance, and the transactions that got me there, but maybe that report just doesn't exist.  Is there any way to create a custom report that would do these things?

Hello, Stacy680. 

I understand you're looking for a report in QuickBooks that doesn't show the Total. Unfortunately, this such a report is unavailable in QuickBooks. Our team is constantly working to improve our services and make more reports available to our users, so I suggest sending feedback to our Product engineering team. Your Feedback is extremely important to us as it can help us create better products and services. 

Our Product Engineering team is always looking for ways to improve and enhance our offerings, so your suggestions are very valuable. By sending your Feedback to our team, you may allow them to carefully evaluate and consider your ideas for inclusion in our future product developments. So, please don't hesitate to share your thoughts with us. We appreciate your input.

Here's how: 

1. Select the Gear icon, then Feedback.
2. Enter your comments or product suggestions. Then tap Next to submit feedback.

Your feedback is valuable to us and helps us improve QuickBooks. You can track feature requests through the QuickBooks Online Feature Requests website.

To learn more about customizing reports, kindly refer to this article: Customize reports. Then, if you want to memorize the personalized report, feel free to check out this article for the detailed steps and information: Memorizing reports. 

Your valuable feedback is important to us and will help us improve your experience in QuickBooks. So please don't hesitate to contact us again if you need further help. I'll be happy to extend another service for you. Have a great day!

I have the same issue you have, and I work for a school. I can’t believe that QBO has not fixed this issue. Did you ever find a solution?

The total at the bottom which says “total for this account” is not correct!! Anyone reading it would have incorrect info. 
I called customer service today, but she could not offer me any advice except to import to excel and fix it. That is a lot of extra work!

QBO needs to do better! I think i may be ready to go back to the desktop version. 

Do they ever listen to feedback and make the changes? This issue is a huge accounting error. It should not read “Total” if it is not the total.  Why in the world would you need the amount of activity on an account?

As far as I know, there is still no report that does a running balance with a list of transactions.  It's so frustrating.  I automatically send out reports so in the body of the message, I have to tell people NOT to look at the total. I have 40+ accounts so I am certainly not doing all those every month in Excel. 

Thank you so much for responding.  This is such a big problem for fund accounting.  It makes me think that the developers are not knowledgable in accounting practices or reporting.

If you do not mind, could you send me what you write to the recipients of the reports.  I wondered what wording you have used has helped them understand where to look for the actual balance even though the report is telling them otherwise.  For me, it is a spur of the moment thing, where someone needs a report asap. I work remotely.  Having to do any extra steps is really a problem.

I still am trying to figure out if I should just go back to their Non Profit Desktop version before I go any further with this.  Thanks again so much for your response  Just reading it was helpful as Customer Service was no help at all.

@Stacy680 @elsielo 

Try this: 

1) Reports > Transaction Detail by Account. 

2) At the top, click on 'Switch to classic view'. 

3) Click 'Customize':

4) Choose the report period.

5) Under Rows/Columns, there's a 'Group by' drop-down.  It defaults to 'Account'.  That is what is giving you the total you don't want.  Change it from 'Account' to 'None'

6) Under Filter, Choose the 'Distribution Account' (general ledger account) you want to run the report on.

7) Click Run report. 

You can customize the columns further as you see fit.  

I appreciate your help and was even hopeful.  BUT... this does not work.  It is only listing the transaction totals, which is not the BALANCE of the fund account.  For our purposes, it needs to have the beginning balance as well as the transactions.  The correct balance shows as the last amount on the Balance, but then underneath it, in BOLD letters, the report states "Total for this Account" with a totally erroneous number.  

With your instructions, it does not give you this total.  The correct total is what is on the Balance Sheet and it does not match this.  

Thanks you; I do appreciate your help and would love for someone to fix this problem.  It does not seem that Intuit is too interested in fixing it. 

@elsielo 

"The correct total is what is on the Balance Sheet and it does not match this."

It matches the balance sheet if you select 'All Dates' as the date range.  A balance sheet is a running total of an account since day one of the business so if you want it to match the balance sheet, you need to select 'All dates'.  I realize this probably makes the report too unwieldy, however. 

What report did you run in Desktop that met your needs?   

As you mentioned later, this does give what I need, but only if you choose "all dates" and since some of these accounts have been active for 10+ years with hundreds of transactions per year, it does make the report extremely unwieldy for almost all my accounts.  

I just wish there was a report that started with the starting balance for the chosen date range (instead of defaulting to starting with $0) so it gives an accurate final balance.

I use "Transaction Report" which does give the running balance on the right, but adds the "amount" column which everyone wrongly assumes is the account balance since it's bolded at the end with the word "total".

@Stacy680 

"I just wish there was a report that started with the starting balance for the chosen date range (instead of defaulting to starting with $0) so it gives an accurate final balance."

In thinking about this some more, have you tried running a Quick Report? Go to your Chart of Accounts. To the far right of the account, there's either a "Run report" option or a down arrow, then 'Run report'.  Adjust the dates and columns as needed.  

This gets you a bit closer to what you want - the beginning balance for the date range and tracks the balance through the end of the date range.  Yes, it still provides a total for the date range but if someone can't read the column headings to see the difference between a total for a period and a running balance, I'm not sure what else can be done. 

This answer helped me to find something that is quite close to what I need.  The report does not look very pretty but it gives the Running balance.

As you mentioned, you go to the Chart of Accounts.  If you RUN the report, it still gives the line with the total transactions instead of running balance.  The TOTAL in bold letters is still not correct.

BUT on the Chart of Accounts, it gives you another option of PRINTING THE REGISTER. I clicked the option of the fiscal year, and selected "running balance" on the gear tab.  This gives the accurate total of the account.  The TOTAL that is printed in bold letters is actually correct.  

Thank you.  I hope that Staci is able to get this message and maybe it will give her some help with her reports. Thank you, Rainflurry, for your research.  

So I tried clicking the "run report" button that shows up on the right of the chart of accounts screen.  It comes up with all the accounts I have and their current balance.  Although I could add columns like "account" and "total", there seemed to be no way to change dates, look at one subaccount only, see the individual transactions, see the beginning balance, etc. Almost all the report options were grayed out. It seems very different from what the two of you are experiencing when you click that button.  If I clicked on an individual account in the chart of accounts, the "run report" button doesn't appear.

Additionally, I do need to send this reports out to the subaccounts every month so if it's not a report that I can automatically run and attach to an email, I'm not sure it would work in the long run.

I think what I really want is a "bank statement" type report.

I do appreciate all the help you've given to help me/us with this problem!

@Stacy680 

"So I tried clicking the "run report" button that shows up on the right of the chart of accounts screen. It comes up with all the accounts I have and their current balance."

I think you're clicking the wrong button - not the 'Run report' button between Feedback and New at the top of your chart of accounts, the Run report button (or down arrow > Run report) under the 'Action' column for the specific account in your chart of accounts that you want the report on.