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QuickBooks Reporting 101 First in a series of newsletter articles, begin building your understanding of how QuickBooks reports through our newsletter article on developing QuickBooks Reports
Make sense of your Reports
using expand & collapse features in QuickBooks and Auto Outlining in excel.
Reports that contain MANY Subaccounts or Classes become very cumbersome to read.  By clicking on the collapse button at the top of your report (on the report button bar), QuickBooks will display only the totals of the subaccounts ( under the parent )  Example of Before and after
make sense of your Quickbooks Data Better reporting with QuickBoosk

If you want more control over what will get collapsed you can export into excel the expanded report by clicking on the export button on the QuickBooks Button Bar.  Next click Advanced and select "auto outline" (see screenshot below).
When you click the Export button, the QuickBooks report will open in Excel with the outlining tool in the left margin
By clicking on the Plus's and minus's excel will collapse the data into one row total. In the example below, Income,
Car/Truck Expenses, and Insurance have all been collapsed into one row totals yet we choose to leave Job labor costs and the subaccounts detailed on the report.  If when you export to Excel you DO NOT receive the auto outlining tool, you need to turn on the feature in Excel.  Tools Menu > Options > View > Check the box for Outline symbols.   In the event you still are having trouble displaying this awesome tool, simply, while the report is displayed in Excel "Click Control + 8"
Organizing your Memorized Reports: Set up your customized groups- You organize your filing cabinets for easy access of your business records.  Use the same concept to set up the reports you use frequently. Quickbooks predefines up to 7 reports group headings and each group heading contains up to 9 reports. All of these reports are also available in the reports menu. Keep the memorized reports for those which you use regularly or have customized to your needs.

The memorized reports list includes predefined group names  and reports.  The identical reports are available from the reports menu under the headings, company & financial, Customers & Receivables, Vendors & Payables, etc..  If you would prefer to see only those reports that you have modified in your memorized reports list.  Set up your own group names that  have meaning to you.  Then add to these memorized reports the customized reports you find useful to run your business.

These steps will delete all the default memorized reports, and then delete the memorized group names to be replaced with the set of folders that work best for you to manage your business.   One caveat:  if you use the QuickBooks navigators, and regularly run reports from the navigator window, do not delete the group names or reports, instead simply add the new group names with a prefix of AA so your reports and report groups appear at the top of the list.
 
1. Backup your company file and do not reuse this backup disk.
2. >(next) The Reports menu > Memorized Reports List > Memorized Reports window.
3. The group names are in bold font , non-bold names are reports. Highlight a report name that you have not used or customized to your needs. Delete this report using Control key + D All the reports provided by QuickBooks under the memorized reports menu option are also available under the reports menu. Deleting from the memorized report list does not delete it from the reports menu. Any report from the reports menu may be re-memorized.
Repeat this process for all the reports that do not fit your needs.
4. Delete group names you will not be using. To delete, highlight then Ctrl + D.
5. Add group names that have meaning to you. Whenever you spend a few minutes customizing a default report, memorize it for reuse under these new group names. From the menu bar on the lower left select "memorized report". Select "new group". Type in a new group name.  Examples: Job Cost reports, Sales reports, Vendor reports. 6. To memorize reports that have been customized, clicking on the memorize button ( on the report button bar). Select one of the new groups you have just created. Top

QuickBooks
Add ons

 
For third party report writing software that will supercharge QuickBooks  visit our third party add-on page and look under the financial reports section.
Memorized reports must be updated The report features in QuickBooks are so much easier to use than the mid-Size Accounting software packages ranging from $8,000 to $30,000. QuickBooks reports have flexibility, filtering, and formatting features. When you find the report that works for memorize the report quick access (the memorize button is found on the button bar at the top of the report) .  Beware, if you have memorized a report that has been filtered for more than one account, or name (including job names), or item, or customer/job/vendor types by using the selected feature you will need to add to the filter any new accounts or names or items that have been set-up since the report was memorized. For example: A job detail transaction report has been memorized for a construction job labeled "Smiths home". Since the job started, the business added a new account to chart of accounts labeled "permits". The memorized job detail transaction report may need to be modified to include this new account if the bookkeeper used "selected accounts" to create the report. Top
Excel Need to highlight a range of data, and find it take too much time to scroll, here is a nifty trick.
1. Select a large range of data.
  Example: if you have to select 2 columns with 1000 rows of data, highlight the top two cells and press Control + Shift +  
  Down Arrow to select all without scrolling. Instead of the down arrow you can select the right or left or up arrow to select
  in those directions.

2. Vlookup 101 -  From one novice to another - Excel Gurus can help by calling us with corrections.

Sometimes in QuickBooks you need to add a few more fields to a summary report or a detail report and excel can solve that need by exporting both reports to the same workbook  as worksheet 1 and worksheet 2  using a VLookup function. The Vlookup will extract the additional information from the report that contains the needed information (  Worksheet 2) to the report that needs that information (Worksheet 1).

This is a very NON Techy description. If you can enhance it for beginners, call 800-216-0763 and we will provide you with an email address to send us the description and we will update this page.

SETUP
Insert a column in Worksheet 1 where you would like the information from worksheet 2 to populate.
Right click on that column header and change the format of that column to General.
Excel will need a matching data column in worksheet 1 and worksheet 2
 The data column in worksheet 1 (destination worksheet) can be any column, to make this easier for a NOVICE excel user
 make sure the matching data column in worksheet 2 is in column 1 of worksheet 2 (the lookup table - the worksheet that contains data you want copied into worksheet 1)

THE FORMULA- in 5 easy steps
 Place the cursor to start the Vlookup formula in the first  row/cell in the newly inserted column on worksheet 1.  
 Click on the FX button or Insert Menu > FX (Function) > select V Lookup

 Place your cursor in Lookup_value field, then click on the spreadsheet icon> Click on a data cell in worksheet 1 that  
 contains the value you want excel to find within Column 1 of Worksheet 2. You will notice that Cell appears under function
 arguments, now click on the worksheet icon in Function arguments to return to the formula window.

 Place your cursor in Table_array > click on the worksheet icon > navigate to worksheet 2 > and click and highlight all of
 column one, dragging the mouse right to highlight the rest of the spreadsheet, or  to the column that contains the information
 you want to see in worksheet 1 >  click on the worksheet icon again to return to the Vlookup formula window

 Place your cursor in Col_Index_num > and enter the column number in worksheet 2 that
 contains the data you want to see in worksheet 1. 
 Example, if you highlighted columns a through e for the table array, and wanted the data in column C to appear in worksheet
 1, column C would be the 3rd column of the table array, so enter the Number 3 in Col_Index_number.  This field does not
  require you to click  on the worksheet icon.

 Place your cursor in the  Range_Lookup and type FALSE. False means you only want data in the newly created column if
 there is an exact match to the data column in Worksheet 1 compared to column 1 data in worksheet 2.

Thats it- easy right?  Well, lots of words, but give it a try. A good example might be to export the sales by customer summary and the customer list modified to include contact name, phone number.  Good luck!
 

Contractor Reports QuickBooks has a web page devoted to reports for contractors. If you own the Contractors premier version, you already have some of these. And if you are an expert report writer you can create some of these reports on your own.  But, take a look, there may be one or two great management reports that you have not yet used. Click on download to download to a location on your hard drive that can be found easily.  On our "C" drive we created a folder called "downloads"  to use whenever we need something from the web.

To import into your file, go to the reports menu > memorized reports> click on memorized reports list>  on the lower left of this screen is a menu button "memorized reports"- click> select import template>  from the look in box, look for the folder which houses the templates you just downloaded from the Quickbooks web page >  highlight the report> click open.   To modify these reports, click on the modify button when the report is open. These reports may be even more useful with the "paid "and "billing status" added.   Click on the customize button and from the display tab,  find the box containing column headings.  Place a check next to.  "paid" and "billing status" (use the scroll bar you will find these near the bottom of the list)  Top
QuickBooks report template gallery Can't find a report you need, try the optional reports downloadable into QB2002 or higher.  See Contractor Reports tip above for steps to download into QuickBooks.  Top
QuickBooks
Intuit Statement
Writer
Now in just 3 easy steps, you can create a complete set of financials without exporting, retyping or reformatting data. See sample reports.  Must purchase QuickBooks Premier Accountant Edition or QuickBooks Enterprise Accountant edition. Call us for more information 800-216-0763 (comes free with your software) . Data file may be from any version of QuickBooks  See Third Party Add-on software for integrated software that will facilitate the preparation of compilation, review and audit statements.

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