 QuickBooks Online 2024. Report formatting basics. Get ready and some coffee because we're diving into it within two-its. QuickBooks Online 2024. First a word from our sponsor. 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so I trimmed it down a bit okay it's an improvement if you would like a commercial free experience consider subscribing to our website at accountinginstruction.com or accountinginstruction.thinkific.com here we are online in our browser searching for QuickBooks online test drive looking for the result that has into a .com and the url into it being the owner of QuickBooks selecting the United States version of the software and verifying that we're not a robot opening up our major financial statement reports like we do every time reports on the left hand side we're in the favorites area we're going to be right clicking on the balance sheet to open in a new tab right click on the profit and loss otherwise no one is the income state to open it in a new tab middle tab up top closing the hamburger scrolling up we're going to do a range change going from 010123 tab 12 3123 january to december 2023 run it to refresh it tabbing to the right closing the hamburger changing that range in 01 oh hold on that's not a one 010123 tab 12 3123 run it to refresh it there is our profit and loss otherwise no one is the income statement let's go back to the first tab we did an overview of the balance sheet in a prior presentation now we want to think about the general formatting capacities we have we're first going to look at the formatting that we can use to adjust the reports that are on the screen here and then in a following presentation we'll go in to the customizing of the reports and talk about the saving of the changes with the save customization so let's go through each of these items up top we have first the report period now note they have the range up top but we also have the periods to the left before we dive into it any further just want to realize that we have two major types of reports in terms of the formatting of them one balance sheet type of report which reports the information as of a point in time which you can tell because there will only be one date on the report as of December 31st 2023 whereas income statement reports are going to have a range and you can tell because it's going to have a range in the title typically january through december of 2023 both of these reports have a range up top for the data input instead of just one date if i go back to here and that's partially because on the balance sheet we can drill down on each of these numbers even though it's as of a point in time and it'll then give us a report for the transaction detail which is in a range format meaning now we have a range report that we're looking at but when we do some of these adjustments to the reports when we make comparative reports and whatnot then you have to keep in mind or think about sometimes there could be differences in terms of are you looking at a report that as is as of a point in time or is a range if you see some differences in the formatting of how reports can be adjusted that might be one of the reasons for it you want to think about is this a report reporting something as of a point in time is this a report that's reporting a range okay so if i select the drop down here we have the all dates up top we can change the dates to a custom date range which is basically what we are putting in here when we put the two ranges up top we can make it today's date so we can change it today we have to make sure to run it to refresh it when we do that notice when i did that it's giving us just one day no no difference between them i can make this beginning date whatever i want on the balance sheet and it'll still be as of that this numbers will be the same but when i drill down on it i don't have any space down here to have any transactions because the date range is just one day because this is a timing report let's go back then if i select the next one we've got this week this week to date this month this month to date this quarter this quarter to date this year and this year to date so those are the default settings that we can put in place here in terms of the period i like just putting the range in and as you can see when i put the range in i think the fastest way to do it is to say o one and have two digit numbers o one two two three that's january first two thousand twenty three when i hit tab it'll put in the dashes and the full year to o one uh not o one two twelve thirty one two three and when i hit dash it'll put in the date and the year we could of course use the calendar as well if you prefer to use the calendar drop down to be selecting the dates and then down here we've got the display columns so the default is that it's going to be displaying just the total columns down below as you can see but you might want to see multiple months for example so if i was to go to months and then run the report run it to refresh it now it's showing the balances on a month by month basis quickbooks didn't put anything into the sample company for the first few months and then overhears all the data that's in there per month this is one of the things that are different on the balance sheet than the income statement because on the income statement which we'll talk about later but just note that it also is defaulted to the totals but if i then say i want to see the months and run it it's going to show me all the months and give us a total at the end of the months why because when we're thinking about the whole year we can add up all the months to give us the whole year because it's a range report whereas the balance sheet doesn't give us a total at the end because the December numbers are the total because the balance sheet is being reported as a point in time all right let's go back up top again we have the months we could do it for the days that would be a very long report but if you had a small date range up here you might do it for the days same with the weeks the quarters quarters are quite common there's 12 months in the year so we're going to be running this every three months right January through March April through June July through September October through December these once again are just reporting as of the end of the quarter because they are reporting as a point in time so then we can go down and say what about if I want years then run it obviously there's only one year here but if I increased the range to 2022 and 2023 then we can run it on a year by year basis as well and remember that if you do that on the income statement a year by year basis if I put this back to 010122 then it's going to give us the two years and then the total it doesn't give us the total over here because this is as of the end of two years that's what the balance sheet is and then we've got the customers we can break it out by customer and I'm going to bring this back to uh 23 let's say and run it so so now we've got basically our balance sheet that's going to be broken out by customer this might look a little bit unusual when you're first looking at that drop down but if you're in a job cost kind of system then it might be the case that you want to see your information by customer although it might be more likely that you would do that on an income statement type of report and then you can also do it by vendors similar scenarios now we've got everything broken out by the vendors to and then over here you can see this is not specified meaning these are all the ones that don't have a vendor are specified or tied out within it this once again probably a report that might be more useful when you're breaking that information out on the income statement and breaking out the information by customer and vendor and so on and so if I hit the drop down again we have a product and services so not really a date range but again this would be something more likely that you might use on the uh on the income statement side of things when you're trying to think about your sales perhaps and break out that information by the products and services let's bring it back to the totals for now and we'll run that one again and let's see what we have next here show non-zero or active only so if I select the drop down notice we have uh the active items all versus non-zero items now why why is this important well if I go to this first tab over here let's go down to our transactions on the left hand side go back into my chart of accounts these are all the accounts that we have set up not all of these accounts are going to have activity within them so I don't really want the zero balances to show up oftentimes on my balance sheet or and or income statement right so that's why the default here is typically the active ones now you might say well why why would I want the active ones and not the non-zero ones the active ones mean that there could be have a zero there might be like a zero here here's a zero but it had some activity within the range that we're talking about so if I go into it then we can see that there was some activity in there that's really nice to have from an internal bookkeeping standpoint so if I have my balance sheet open because I'm trying to track what happens in it then I would like to have the zeros that have activity in it to show up so I can drill down on it and see the detail we will see that very often in the undeposited funds this one's not zero right now but this is a clearing account which will go down to zero so as I do my day-to-day journal entry I would like to see the stuff that goes in and out of undeposited funds so even when this is a zero I'd like to show it there so I can drill down on it so that's why it's the default but if you if you said non-zero all non-zero accounts then we can we can scroll down and you can see this zero still showed up but did I run it back did I run it then this should take away the ones I don't think I ran it so yeah took it that one away that zero is gone so in that case if undeposited funds was zero it would disappear which is great for external reporting purposes but not as great for internal bookkeeping purposes so you want to when you do external reporting you might change it from active to non-zero if I did all of the accounts then all and I run that again I gotta double run it then all of the accounts should should show up up top that zero is back but we might have a bunch especially if you start the accounts that QuickBooks provides you you might end up with a lot of accounts that have zero balances in it especially on the income statement let's check it out on the income statement just to show you what I'm talking about let's say we do all of these all of them and I'm just gonna double run it to make sure that it runs it and see if we have what we have see how we have all of these accounts with nothing in it it doesn't even have a zero over here it's just blank accounts so that's kind of ugly we don't want that's not good for internal or external reporting typically and so we'll bring it on back to the default the show columns same thing for the columns but in our case we've only got you know the one column here so if you had a report with a column situation then you then you have a similar concept with the active all and non-zero let's bring it on back to active let's run it to refresh it I'll double run it just to make sure it's refreshed and then we have this is another way that we can do comparative type of of reports and we'll talk more about it in detail and make comparative reports in the future but right now I just kind of want to differentiate between what we did over here for example when we saw a quarter by quarter comparisons if I run the quarter by quarter it starts January and then you know it goes in chronological order from left to right but if I wanted a two month comparison and then maybe a difference between the two months I wouldn't use this method I would go back to the totals and then I could use this method I can go here and say I want the previous period so so so I could say that if this was if I put it in here let's put it in here just for one month let's go from 0 1 0 1 let's go from 12 3 1 2 3 12 let's go from 12 1 12 1 2 3 and then if I take the previous period it's going to take November so here's the previous period 11 1 to 11 30 and then I can run that one and now it has a comparison this time it's showing the most current period up front this kind of comparison is only going to show two periods not more than two periods because you can also give like a another column on the right hand side so I could go over here and say if I don't have the custom if I take off the custom just to show you the we still have you know the prior month here so okay anyways I'm going to hit the drop down we could also add the dollar change and the percent change so now if I run it it's now showing the current period the prior period and then the dot then the dollar change the difference between the two and the percent change we'll talk more about this report we'll create it again and analyze it in future presentations but for now just know that we have those two different ways that we can run these reports this one we can run more than two periods however whatever the periods would be this one we can only run two periods because the idea is that we're going to be comparing one period to the other and possibly differentiating between the two this one will result in the current month on the left this one will result in the oldest month on the left going from left to right in a chronological order and so I could change this period to whatever I want I could change it to a quarter and have the prior quarter and so on and so on and so I could also say I want the previous year so now I'm saying look I have this month and this year December if I run this now I've got December of the prior year so this one isn't comparing the entire year to the prior year generally what we're trying to do is say I want to look at just December or I want to look at just the quarter the the last quarter and compare that quarter to the last quarter of the prior year now just realize that when you start to think about all the different combinations that you can have you can do the same thing with the percentage and the change here when you think about all the combinations of prior quarters and so on that you can have then when you do your reporting on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis and yearly basis then you've got to think what do I want to give someone I can give them the total only report or I can I can give them a month by month a quarter by quarter report and I can give them comparative reports that compare any two periods month-by-month comparison in the current year quarter by quarter in the current year current year compared to the prior year and the current month compared to the prior month in the same month the current quarter compared to the prior month and so on. So it actually gets a little bit overwhelming and you could pick and choose which of these ones you have to think about it, which ones are going to be best to be able to present with. Okay, we'll talk more about them later. We also have the percentage of rows here. So if I select the percentage of rows and run that one, let's run it again. So now we have the percent of each row. Now this one isn't giving us much information right now because we only have the one row. But if you had a report with multiple rows, this 100% would be different. The other one that will give us a difference is the percentage of the column. So if I go into the percentage of the column report and run it, so now I'm getting a percent each of these numbers divided by the total, the total assets. This is a useful and common report because you can kind of compare, for example, your percentage asset allocation, kind of like you would in an investment account, to other companies that you're benchmarking or comparing to which might have a lot more cash than you. But what the question is how much cash do they have compared to their total assets that might give you some more information. So we'll talk more about that one in future presentations as well. So I'm going to take that off for now. And then we have the cash versus accrual basis up top. Now note that you basically want to be using the cash basis, I mean the accrual basis all the time, unless you have some rationale for checking over to a cash based system. Or in other words, you might be using a cash based system. But this toggle here does not necessarily is not the determining factor as to whether you're on a cash based system or not, it will be dependent upon how you're doing the data input in the system. The reason this toggle might be useful is because it might give you some cash, it might be able to give you more information about your balance sheet that will then be reported kind of like on a cash flow based system, rather than an accrual system. So in other words, this kind of confuses people a lot of times, let me dive into it a little bit more here. If I look at my flow chart over here, this is a desktop version flow chart, but we're just looking at it for the forms and the forms will be the same from any accounting system. Generally, remember that we have the cycles vendor cycle customer cycle employee cycle, you can think about whether you're on a cash based system by cycle in essence. And if you're on the vendor cycle, for example, if you're entering your transaction just with the bank feeds with a check or expense type form as they happen, then you're already on a cash based system, right? Because the fact that you're entering and paying the bills with a check form as they happen mean you're on a cash based system, you don't need to toggle the report from an accrual based system to a cash based system because your vendor section is cash based given the fact that you're paying your bills as they become due with an expense form through the bank feeds instead of with cash, you would be on an accrual system if you entered the bill form, which increases accounts payable accounts payable is an accrual form, you don't need to toggle on and off a cash versus non cash to see that now you could you could be on an accrual system and see the accounts payable and then toggle to the cash basis and see what QuickBooks does changing and removing it should basically remove the accounts payable account, right? But on the on the on the revenue side of things is the revenue on a cash based system or not? Well, if you're recording all of your revenue as it clears the bank with deposit forms in recording revenue with that, then you're basically on a cash based system because you're recording all of your revenue as they as they happen as they hit the bank if you're in gig work or something like that and and you're recording it with a deposit form. And so therefore that would be a cash based system or if you're on a cash register and you're recording all of your sales as they happen with the sales receipt, then you're on a cash based system because you're not recording anything to the accounts receivable. But if you're invoicing clients, then you're recording an accrual based system. You don't need to toggle the report on to an accrual versus you don't need to toggle it to a cash based system to remove the cash, right? If you if you did have a accounts receivable, which is a cash based account, and you want to see what would happen if you like toggle to accrual bit to a cash based, because you would be on an accrual basis, if you have a if you have accounts receivable, then you could toggle to the cash based and see what what the difference would be in the report. So in other words, if I go over here, accounts receivable, if you have to track accounts receivable, it will be there because you would have entered invoices. And therefore you have an accrual account of accounts receivable. And if you don't have invoices, you wouldn't have any accounts receivable because you just wouldn't have recorded anything, you would be on an accrual based, I mean, on a cash based system. And that sense then the accounts payable would only be there if you reported things in a bill format. And therefore you're doing an accrual thing by entering a bill. If you didn't enter any bills, you would already be on a cash based system. So what could be useful with this toggle is to say, Okay, what if I have this report on an accrual basis? Here's an accrual account. Here's an accrual account. What if I want to look at it on more of a cash flow basis, I can toggle it to the cash. And it should then remove the accounts receivable, as you can see, now it didn't record the accounts receivable. So what and it didn't record the payable. So what did it do? What's happening then? It's basically saying instead of recording, you know, revenue, when the invoice happens, it's not going to record revenue till we receive the payment, because that's what you would do on a cash based system. If you instead of recording the accounts payable when the bill happens and the expense when the bill happens, it's going to record it when you pay the bill. And therefore it's eliminating the accrual accounts, accounts receivable, and accounts payable. So that could be interesting to look at because now you're kind of looking at your books on a cash based system as opposed to a cruel based system, which could be useful. But you also also have the statement of cash flows to help you to look at it that way as well. Just don't think that if you're on a cash based system, like you could be on a cash based system by just checking the cash thing over here, because if you're running stuff through accounts receivable, you're going to need to track it. And if you're not doing that, then you are already on a cash based system. And there might not be much, there's not going to be any difference really, if you toggle back on over, if you weren't doing any accrual transactions, because the books would already be on a cash okay, I'll stop. Alright, so then up top we have the collapse button. So the collapse button is going to collapse some of the some of the line items here, these these triangles. Now you'll remember that the triangles represent the this triangle represents just a normal accounting name for the accounts assets, the current assets again, a normal accounting category, these triangles are representing the different account types within QuickBooks. So each of these have triangles, those don't collapse. What do collapse are the ones where we had a we made our own triangle with a sub account. So the sub accounts collapse. So like this truck, if I expand, the truck had a sub account, and that triangle goes away, if I collapse it, so I collapse it, and that goes away. Now, you might say, well, why don't I just collapse it? Well, when you print the report or export it, sometimes it might not, if you just do the triangle thing like that, it might not take so you might collapse the report if you want a smaller report, then you can look at a summary balance sheet. And then we have the sorting fields, you've got the default, the total in ascending order, the total in descending order. Now, how is the balance sheet formatted, it's formatted assets, liabilities, and equity accounts, that's the order that it's going to be in. So so what is this sorting thing going to do? It's already in that order. Well, if you look at inside a particular account, such as like in here, in the other current assets, it's sorting the inventory above the undeposited funds. Why? Because it's just doing alphabetical order, right? It's just saying the inventory is above that. Now, how can you change that? Well, you could use account numbers to change to reverse the order for these two accounts under this section. You could use account numbers. And if you want an undeposited funds to happen first, let's take a look at some of some of these other examples. So this one's the it's in alphabetical order, even though this one has nothing in it, it's it's above this one, it's just an alphabetical order. So if I wanted to change the sorting, it's only going to have an impact within within those categories. So let's go to total based on the balance in ascending order. So then if I go back down here and I say, okay, this one's the same because it was already in ascending order. So let's go descending order. Let's say, where was it? Let's go total in descending order, run it. And then I'm going to scroll down. And so now you've got the highest one up top. So that might be a useful thing. Because when you do external reporting, you might want the most important account up top, which you might think would be the account that has the highest dollar amount in it, that could be useful for external reporting. It could be a mess as well. However, when you're trying to give your information to your accountant, because they might try to take this information and put it into a worksheet that they had in the prior year, for example. And therefore, they don't want these numbers to be changing all the time, they would like it to be in the same order. And so therefore, the standard order might be better. Account numbers would be even better. However, if you're not good at using account numbers, then you could create a mess. So just be aware of that. And then you could add the notes. So we have the note down here that we could add to the report. And so a little footer down here on the notes. And then we can edit the title. So if I go into this, edit a section titles replaces the default titles used in all balance sheet reports for this company. So assets notice, this could be useful because remember that QuickBooks might use some terminology that is different than what you want to use for external reporting purposes. So assets is a normal name. Current assets is normal. But bank accounts is a little bit funny. So for external accounting purposes, you might call it cash and cash equivalence, or something like that, right? And then accounts receivable other current assets, fixed assets, you might call like property, plants and equipment, property, plants and E and equipment, equipment, other assets, liabilities, credit cards, long term or something and you might call the equity like owners, owners, equity or something like that. I can't spell if I spell it wrong. I'm sorry. Saving changes, this could take a minute, refresh the page in a bit. Okay, so it might take a little while to pick that up. But that that could be useful. So that for external reporting purposes, if you want to try to customize those names, you might be able to do that, which would be nice. You can also adjust the title up top so I can go into here. And I can adjust the name up top if I so choose the balance sheet. The date doesn't allow you to adjust that for some reason. I guess it's connected to the date field. And then you've got you can send it out with an email. If you have your email connected, you can print it here with your printing options. That also gives you the print preview so you can check out what it looks like. It's on portrait versus landscape. So if it was a long report that's wide, you could try to make it landscape. Notice the smart page breaks. It's trying to give you the best way to put the page breaks in there and report header on each page, meaning the second page has a header versus second page has no header. And then you can close it. You can email save as a PDF or print it. And then we've got the drop down here. We can export it to Excel. We can export to a PDF. We can add to the managed reports. And that's that's the added memorization report tool. If I go over here and we go into our reports hitting the hamburger reports manage reports. So into these reports over here. And so we'll talk more about them later. But exporting it to Excel means that we can really do some customization in Excel. We'll play with that a bit in future presentations and the cog we can have display density compact checked off or non compact. In future presentations next time we'll go into the customized areas here, which will have a lot of duplicate information in it. So they pulled out that I think they get kind of confused in terms of should we put it up top here or should we put it in this customized area so there'll be some duplicate stuff. But we'll take a look at this in detail in future presentations. And we'll also take a look at how we can save these customizations possibly so that you don't have to do them over every time which means you could just save the report. And you can put it then in your custom reports here so that when you open it up, you don't have to redo the changes.