 zero accounting software report formatting basics get ready to be an office hero with zero here we are in our custom zero homepage we set up in a prior presentation scrolling in a bit holding control scrolling up on the mouse wheel currently at 175 percent scroll in opening the demo file but doing so with the reset button resetting the data and opening the demo we're gonna be opening two tabs to put our major financial statement reports in as we do every time hiding this open right click and then we'll duplicate the tab up top we'll right-click and then duplicate the tab again go back to the tab to the left accounting drop-down we want then the balance sheet report tab to the right we're gonna open up the income statement accounting drop-down and income statement as that is thinking tab to the left and we're gonna change the date as we have been doing every time and we're gonna customize it and bring the date up to 2022 end of the period and update that information okay so last time we went over the balance sheet in general now we want to look at some of the formatting tools that zero has to adjust reports support accounting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need then can be done on a YouTube page we also include added resources such as Excel practice problems PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable so once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it although we're focused in on the balance sheet many of the tools will be looking at will be applicable to other reports as well and as we go through them remember that the balance sheet and the income statement are from a reporting standpoint in essence the end result what we're trying to create when we do the data input entering these forms which create financial transactions constructing the balance sheet income statement and related reports balance sheet represents things as of a point in time the income statement has a time frame a beginning and an end a performance report so it's also useful when you're looking at these tools to consider that framework in terms of the other reports you might apply these tools to are they more like an income statement report that are measuring performance meaning they have a time range a beginning and an end or a balance sheet type of report which are showing where we stand as of a point in time so for example the accounts receivable has other reports which are going to break out who owes us the money by customer so if that's what it's showing it's still showing who owes us stuff as of a point in time as of this date whereas if I have reports related to the income statement I might have a report that shows me the sales by customer or by item and that's going to have to have a beginning and an end what do you mean sales for like a month sales for a year and so on and so forth and that could have an impact in terms of of your dates and what not when you're using some of these tools up top okay I also just want to note when we're looking at these reports if I go to the first tab and we go to the accounting drop down and look at these reports you you might say hey look there's not as many reports in other kinds of accounting software say like a QuickBooks for example but just realize that a lot of reports that are in say other software like a QuickBooks are actually just compilations changes modifications adjustments of the main reports so many times you can make a whole lot of different reports just from a balance sheet and income statement for example by just changing the ranges you're looking at looking at am I looking at one period multiple period multiple months this year compared to last year so when you get into comparative reports there's a whole bunch of other reports zero doesn't really really flood their report center as much as like say QuickBooks does with some of these comparative reports which are really just things that have been corrupt that have been created from the major financial statement reports because you could build them yourself so I just want to kind of note that out as we go we will get into those comparative kind of reports and how to build them zero has a really nice tool that's more flexible in a lot of ways than other accounting software to do that okay so that said we're going to go over here balance sheet is as of a point in time so if you have the drop down up top you could say that you want to run it as of today so if you're running your accounting system in real time that could be useful of course end of this month so you might say hey look it's currently the 8th right now so I could run it as of the end of the month December and then end of last month so you might want to say I want to have it to the end of the last full month end of last quarter the end of the last year the end of the last year and then of course the custom date so if we're not working in real time the custom date is often useful now notice that sometimes it's useful to have like these indicator range right end of end of the last month indicates a range and although we're still reporting this if I update this as of the end of November we do have related reports when I go into the data here so if I drill down on the data then this is a report that's more like an income statement report in that it's showing us activity over a time frame so notice that that zero generally is going all the way from January through so if I go into a report then the general default will typically on the balance sheet go from from the beginning of the year your fiscal year to the end so whenever you drill down you're gonna have to change the range here so if I just want to see this detailed report for the November 1st and update it so now I've got the detail for the activity in November so you want to have an idea of what's going to happen when you drill down on the data in terms of this is kind of like a GL report checking account transactions report they're gonna call it but they give us the detail by date all right let's go back and let's go back again here we go I'm gonna change the date back to a custom date and let's put it at the end of December which has been what we've been working with mainly so there is that so then we can compare with you got your comparative items compare month so let's check that out compare month so now we've got December 2021 I mean sorry 2022 versus November 2022 so you can give us the side-by-side comparison there and this is where we get into all a whole lot of variations now note that these variations are kind of like the custom variations because they're just showing us the side-by-side with basically a default custom drop-down so these are the most common ones we can go into a lot more variations by going by building our own layout reports down here which we'll talk about later so we've got two months so if I go to the two months so now we've got December November October notice when I look at it this way it's showing the the latest month first which is quite common because that's going to be the instead of showing it from oldest to newest we're showing most recent which is going to be the most relevant data most of the time to the least relevant data so once again we've got this nice side-by-side for two months and we can go to the three months and update it and so now we've got three the three months and then of course the four months enter a different number so we could go 12 if we want to go all the way up to 12 and update that I don't know if I updated the last one with the three months and so now we've got this long report here that could be useful especially if we export it now again notice if you're looking at a balance sheet you're trying to say what reports am I going to be giving to say a client or supervisor now you've got all these reports that you can think about just with the balance sheet right do I want the balance sheet as of a point in time I might have balance sheet that compares the prior month possibly the prior three months the months to date and stuff like that starts to get a lot of different reports so then you might also consider the periods in terms of quarters so if I look at the quarters and then I say I want to have let's say two quarters here and then I'll update that so now we've got the two quarters so we've got the December September and then June so and then I can bring it down to one maybe so now we've got September and December quarters so we got some nice you know standard comparative kind of options let's bring it back to none and update we've got our filtering options so if you have your if you have things like regions set up then you can pull the data and this is this is kind of interesting because notice like sometimes you might especially it is more common on the income statement if you used something to break out your transactions by column for example often happening on the income statement to try to break out by region that's one kind of tool that can be used in accounting software but here we're gonna we could say well what if I want to filter the data that's in this current number and filter out by region so I'm just want to say I just want to have the data that are using the regions of the east side and apply that now you've got your filtering your filtering options down here let's say I just do north apply I didn't update it that's why and so so now we've got a difference in the data that's being pulled in so that's kind of an uninteresting feature that's would be a customized feature that would be used if you're if you have regions if you're sorting your data by regions which is kind of a specialty area so we might touch on that more in a little bit but we won't go into it in a lot of detail but it's kind of an interesting feature I'm gonna update it back again so now we're back into our total data and then we've got that more options we've got the good old accrual versus cash option this one a lot of accounting softwares have this kind of check between these two things and I think it's really a neat feature to have but just realized that that from a from a pragmatic standpoint it kind of confuses people sometimes because you might say hey look I want to be on a cash-based system for in other words I would not move it from accrual I would keep it on accrual unless you have a specific reason to be going to the cash-based method and the reason for that is because even if you are using a cash-based system you're not using a cash-based system just because you click this little box that says cash-based it's usually based on your flow what kind of industry you're in and how that industry works so for example if I jump over here to our to our flow chart and we think about you you also can have a difference in terms of are you on a cash-based or accrual based with regards to your two main cycles the vendor cycle or expense cycle and the customer cycle so for example on the vendor cycle you you you're gonna at the end of the day cash is going out for goods and services that we are buying in the business now the easiest way to do that a cash-based system would be that we're just gonna pay for it possibly electronically as they come up with in essence a check form or a money out type of form possibly just using bank feeds to do that in that case we're on a cash-based system because the form that we're using is just going to record the decrease in cash and expense when we enter it I don't need to click the little box to check from an accrual to cash-based system it's already on a cash-based system because of the business we are in and how we're conducting it if we're entering a bill into the system that's an accrual form increasing the accounts payable account so if you're tracking accounts payable you don't want to click to a cash-based system because you want to track the outstanding bill and if you if you switch to a cash-based system you would think what would happen then is the system's not going to record the expense until you pay the bill which could be a neat feature to have if you know what you're doing but you don't want to like think that you're on a cash-based system when you're entering bills and you're a cruel system just because you click the little cash-based base button right on the and on the revenue side you could have you could be on a cash-based system on vendors but accrual on the revenue side so for example revenue if you're in a gig economy you might be able to wait till something just like clears the bank and then record the increase with it with a with a money in form a deposit form in essence and revenue at that time but you also might be having to have a food truck kind of situation where you have a cash register or a store where you still are on a cash-based system but you're recording the the receipts at the point in time you receive them these two you methods you'd still be on a cash-based system in essence just because of the way you enter the data not because you click the button on the report to be cash-based but if you're in a system where you have to invoice the client because you have to do the work first like a bookkeeping firm a law firm landscaping then then it is what it is right you have to track the accounts receivable so that's what you want to do if you click the cash- based button and you're entering invoices what it's going to do is it's not going to record the the revenue until you receive the payment in terms of the financial reporting but that's but you but for your normal reporting if you have to track accounts receivable you're gonna want to have accounts receivable so that's the general the general thing there so be careful with it notice if I these accounts right here accounts receivable and accounts payable are basically a cruel accounts so if you were to say I'm gonna I'm gonna switch to a cash-based system and show accounting basis so I'm gonna say okay so then you would think those those accounts basically go away right there are no accounts receivable and accounts payable does that mean I didn't enter an invoice no it means that the system is now not recording the the transaction until you receive payment from it right it's it's gonna wait to record the transaction even though you entered an invoice until you get the payment because it's a cash-based system and there are no accounts receivable and accounts payable on a cash-based system okay enough with that we're gonna go back to a cruel just keep it on the cruel unless unless you have a reason to do otherwise be be careful with it so then we've got show the accounting basis so we can show those items and the account codes which are basically like the account numbers and the decimals so I'll keep all of that on for now show all that so now we've got the code numbers which could be nice because and this is a great feature in zero that for some reason other software like like QuickBooks doesn't have I don't believe which is the fact that you can turn the codes on and off right so so it's kind of nice that if you're gonna print this report you don't want to have your account numbers oftentimes in the report so you can turn them off or you can put them back on if you put the codes on then it's gonna order within each of these account sections by code I believe right because that's so that's the ordering that it's gonna be if you turn them off I believe it's gonna default to an order of alphabetical order so if I turn this off accounts payable will be above the checking account because this the checking account is a the reason the checking accounts down here is because it's a negative balance I believe instead of up top so let's go ahead and change it back and test that theory out so I'm gonna say let's take the codes off and then boom it also shows the accrual basis and the title up here that's what the accrual basis does so now the accounts payable is first right now it's an alphabetical order so that's a nice way that you can kind of organize your accounts by code if you want to do that although then the code kind of shows up which is not as nice for external reporting but in any case there's another way that you could sort your data to that we'll look at shortly and that's with the edit layout over here so then we've now we've got the account numbers on which is neat so you can turn them on I like turning them off oftentimes unless unless I want more detail in my reporting so I'll turn the decibels off and I don't need code numbers I don't need the accrual basis so I'll turn that off so those are those options then you've got the information on the left-hand side balance sheet so you've got your kind of standard comparative reports so I got my monthly comparative reports so notice again other software I'm gonna close this up so now you've got kind of your default comparative report here other software let's change the date up to here and update we'll have these kind of comparative default reports possibly in in over here in the reports area so you they've got they've got some standard comparative reports basically on this arrow on the left-hand side so it's I kind of I kind of like it that way so now so you don't have as much stuff cluttering up your your reports but you still have those default kind of comparative reports over here and of course with the option to make them in the drop-down for the default with your default reports so those are those and then you've got your custom reports which we'll get into in a little bit more detail and you have a lot of customization features down here in the edit layout so if I go into that this is where you can do a lot of more customizable things than you can do in other accounting software so we can we can make our custom reports and we can save them once we have made them so I'm gonna we'll talk about that more in the future gonna close that out for now look forward to that though that'll be good and then you've got you've got the compact view which kind of tightens things up a bit so I'm gonna go back to the standard view and then you've got the insert so add add a note so if I wanted to add a note somewhere so now I've got these little tags on the right so I can I can add a note to it so if I'm going back and forth and you know have some comments on it then I can put my comments and my in my notes to them so that's kind of neat if you're working with other people and you're doing some more like audit kind of work and then I can save this item save it as a draft save it as a custom kind of item so that when I go into my reports over here then I can save my reports here's the drop down custom drafts and I can put them into like custom reports so that I can sort them out so we'll talk more about saving the reports later and then we can export as a PDF Excel or or Google and usually the printing options within and this is this is nice because this is another one that I don't think like like some of the QuickBooks export directly to Google oftentimes you have the Excel option so that's kind of nice because a lot of people are going to the Google suite kind of products and and having the web-based stuff that might be a little bit easier sometimes and then we've got the PDF now if you're gonna print something the typical format within zero is to is to open it as a PDF and then print it right so we'll open it up and then you've got your printing options once it's opened from the PDF so those are the general formatting in future reports we'll build some comparative reports and we'll use the more the more complex edit layout which is quite flexible and impressive and and has more options than other software such as like a QuickBooks so it's a neat feature