Customize reports

[0:00] Running reports is one of the most powerful things you can do in QuickBooks to see how your business is performing. Let's go over the Reports Center in QuickBooks Online and how to run reports from it. Then you'll learn how to customize your reports so you see what you need to make the best decisions possible. Select Reports in the navigation menu.

[0:19] QuickBooks divides your reports into categories to help you find what you need. The first section is for your favorite reports. These are reports you run more often than others and always want to see at the top of the list. Scroll down further to see reports that give you an overview of your business, insights into who owes you money, sales and customers, and more.

[0:43] If you find a report you'll use often, select the star to add it to your favorites, so it appears at the top of the Reports Center. You can also search for the report you want. Enter the name of a report or just any word in the name, like profit, and QuickBooks lists any report that matches what you entered. Let's run the Profit and Loss statement.

[1:07] The Profit & Loss Statement displays all of the income, cost of goods sold, and expense accounts you used within the report's date range. This Profit & Loss statement is for this year to date. The totals for each account are a summary of all the transactions you assigned to the account in that date range. Since this is such a broad date range, let's break up the data by column.

[1:31] Select the Display columns by Month. Then Run Report. Now you see the income and expenses for each month so far this year across the columns. This kind of report is helpful for seeing trends, but it doesn't show a dollar or percentage change from month to month. Let's add columns for comparison.

[1:50] First, change the report back to show Total Only, run the report to show totals for last month's transactions, then select the Compare another period drop down menu. Let's compare last month to the previous month, and select dollar change and percentage change. Run the report again. Now the report shows Last Month because it's the report's date range and compares it to the previous month.

[2:13] This also works to compare weeks, quarters, or years. This example uses a profit and loss statement, but you can do this with many other reports. If you want to see fewer details for a specific section of the statement, select the arrows to the left of the account names to collapse the subaccounts. Now you see one line with a total for that section.

[2:36] Select the arrow again to view the details once more. You can also email this report, print it, or export it to Excel or PDF Let's look at another way to change what a report shows you. Select Customize. Right now the report shows your year to date Profit & Loss, and QuickBooks uses all of your data to build that report. Let's just look at the income and expenses from only our best customer.

[3:02] Turn on the customer filter, select the customer from the list, and then run the report. Now the report only shows income and expenses related to a specific customer. This is a useful report and you want to make it easier to run in the future. Navigate to Save As. Then, name the report, then click save. Let's go back to the Reports Center, and select the Custom reports tab.

[3:29] Select the report's name to run the report again with updated data. Now you can run and customize reports to gain insight into different aspects of your business!