 QuickBooks Online 2023 internal and external reports. Get ready to start moving on up with QuickBooks Online 2023. We're going to be using the free QuickBooks Online test drive searching in our online search engine for QuickBooks Online test drive, selecting the result that has Intuit.com in the URL, Intuit being the owner of QuickBooks. 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 than 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. Picking the United States version of the software and verifying that we're not a robot. So you're a robot? Zooming in a bit by holding down control up on the scroll wheel currently out the one to 5% on the zoom in, noting in the cog dropdown that we're in the accountant view as opposed to the business view. We might toggle back and forth between the two views so we can see where stuff is under each of them. Right click it on the tab up top to duplicate it as we do every time. Right click in the duplicate a tab to duplicate it again, going back to the tab to the middle, going to the reports on the left hand side and opening the balance sheet report. One of our favorites, it's one of our faves. And then tab into the right as the one to the left is thinking reports on the left, open up the P to the L, close up the hamburger otherwise known as the boogie hand boogie 010122 on the range to 123122, 123122 on the change of the range, run it to refresh it, middle tab, close the boogie, scrolling up, changing that range in again, oh one, oh one, two, two, tab, 12312122 tab and run it to refresh it. That's the setup process that we do every time. Remembering that the balance sheet and the income statement, the major two financial statement reports, most other reports giving more information about one or multiple line items within them. In prior presentations, we've looked at some of QuickBooks most useful reports, both in terms of internal usage, as well as external or presentation usages. And we wanna now focus in on the distinction between those two types of things and how we might wanna think about our reports and organize our reports from that perspective. So first definitions here, when we're talking about those reports that are used for internal usages, we're trying to use those reports to help us achieve our objective as accountants and bookkeepers, which is gonna be the creation of the financial statements from a financial reporting perspective, as well as the capacity to enter the transactions and facilitate the financial transactions as easily as possible and communicate with people that we're dealing business with. And that includes the customers, the vendors and the employees. When we're looking at the objective of presentation reporting for external usage or for presentation purposes, then from a bookkeeping perspective, that might be those types of reports that we're gonna be bundling together in order to provide to say a client on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis, on a yearly basis, the client might have the idea that they're gonna use those reports for whatever needs they have, which might be external to the business, such as taxes, such as moving on to other financial reporting purposes for whatever their needs are from that point. So now we wanna just recap our idea of our reports and think about which reports are more internal, which are gonna be external and how we might want to then group our reports to use them most efficiently. Clearly, some reports are gonna be both internal and external. Obviously, the major financial statement reports, balance sheet income statement, are reports we open every time we do data input because they're gonna be useful reports for internal purposes because that's the end goal, in essence. So we're able to drill down on these reports to help determine that we're entering the transactions properly in order to create the financial statements, the balance sheet and the income statement. But then some of the other reports we looked at might be more tilted towards, of course, internal use or external use. And so, if we think about these reports, then the major financial statement reports, obviously we're gonna use them for internal use for some to some degree. And we might then want to customize our reports, which we touched on in prior presentations, possibly making an internal report fit our internal needs. Our internal needs, to me, are usually pretty handled by the standard report. But you might prefer, for example, to have negative numbers, have brackets around it or something like that. So you might start to customize your reports and save them as a customized report with whatever formatting that you think is good for internal reports. And then for external reporting, you might have different formatting. For external reporting, I might remove the decimals and so on and so forth that we've talked about in the past. And then you might save a variant in another category for those external reporting reports as we've talked about in the past. So the variants on the balance sheet for external reporting could include things that we've dived into for the balance sheet and the income statement, which would be the comparative balance sheet, the comparative profit loss or income statement comparing one period to another. And you can dive deep into a whole bunch of different comparative reports, comparing one month to the prior month, comparing this month to the prior year, comparing one quarter to the prior quarter, comparing one quarter to the prior quarter of the prior year, and so on and so forth. So we took a look at a lot of those variant reports and all of those reports, we might want to save in whatever format we would like to put them together so that we can easily generate them on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis and or yearly basis. And just remember the formats that we have to do that. If I go to the first tab and go into the reports on the left, we could go to our customized report and save them in categories here so that we can then generate them easily. And once they're generated, we could populate them into a management report quite easily from there on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis or yearly basis, or we can export them to Excel and create our own PDF from them out of Excel or we can kind of combine those techniques together to come up to a nice customized reporting format. All right, so given that, let's go into the reports and just think about now that we've gone through all the reports, which reports are gonna be more likely to be internal use reports and which reports are gonna be more likely to be external reports or both. So we've got the business overview. We talked about the balance sheet, of course, can be internal and external. So you might save a copy of the balance sheet formatted for internal use as opposed to external use. And then we have these variants on the balance sheet. The summary balance sheet also to me is not really an internal report. It's more of an external report because it gives you more or less detail. So I wanna see the detail for internal reporting, typically when I'm trying to create the books, but for presentation purposes, that to me would be an external report. You might format and put as part of your package for external reporting. And then you've got your comparative balance sheets. These are the ones that I would create. Oftentimes those are gonna be external reports, although you might have some comparative reports that you would put together from time to time, depending on what you're thinking about for internal reporting purposes. And then you've got the profit and loss as a percentage of total. That's another variant of the income statement, which I would create myself for external reporting, typically. And then you got the profit and loss comparison. Again, external report to me for presentation purposes most of the time. Obviously, if it's your business and you're doing your own analysis, then you are the management. So you also have another kind of role that you're not just generating the financial statements, you're also analyzing them in that case. And you might use some of these comparative reports for that as well. And then you've got profit and loss by customer. These are all variants, in essence, of the profit and loss. And most of those I would construct myself and then try to decide which ones I want to give on a monthly basis, quarterly basis, and yearly basis, say, to a client. And then you've got these who-os-you. So the accounts receivable, aging detail, the accounts summary, these are typically in total reports, meaning oftentimes we might not be generating these reports if we're gonna patch them up and give them to a client because they may not want to know the receivable detail unless they have a specific need for that. It's not part of the normal financial statements. I mean, it could be if you get it to a detailed audited financial statement, but oftentimes these are gonna be more internal kind of reports, such as collection reports, internal report, customer balance detail, usually gonna be an internal report, customer balance summary. Typically that's for internal use to help us to collect and so on, the open invoices, that's usually for internal reporting purposes, not usually something we're gonna be patching together to present to a client on a monthly basis and so on for those items. So notice that we did, however, make this customer balance summary into a pie chart, right? So that is one of those things that we could make into like a pie chart and say, this is who owes us what from the customer side, but most likely the more popular pie charts are gonna be the sales related pie charts if you're gonna be adding one. So that's gonna be down here. So sales, so you got the customer contact list, typically an internal type of thing, the deposit detail, that's usually gonna be an internal report, you're not usually gonna be generating that to provide to clients on a monthly basis. Estimate and progress billing, internal, estimates by customer, internal, helping us facilitate our communication with our customers. Income by customer summary, you could do that external, but that's gonna be, but that's actually, that could be an external report, but that's a good one as we saw possibly to make a graph out of, although we made the graph and the pie charts out of the sales, the sales by customer summary. So I think that type of information you might add as an added touch over and above your normal kind of bookkeeping reports that you might be providing to somebody to give the pie charts because their sales lines are usually the ones that they're most interested in, right? And so then you got inventory, and I'm not talking about like an audited financials, then we would have notes and whatnot to them. I'm just talking as a bookkeeper, given your bundle of reports possibly on a monthly basis. So inventory valuation summary, probably not something that's more of an internal report typically, not something you're gonna be providing on a monthly basis all the time. Payment methods, internal, physical inventory worksheet, internal, product service lists, internal typically sales by customer. And again, this is one that you might make like an external pie chart or graph from because that could be a good visual. Same with the sales by product summary. You could make that into a pie chart or a graph which could be a nice external touch because sales is usually the big line item that people want more detail on. So what you owe the 10.99s are obviously internal to deal with your taxes. The accounts payable aging detail that's typically internal to help us to organize and pay our bills. The accounts payable summary, this internal bill payment internal. So these are all typically stuff that we use inside the business, although we did make this vendor balance summary report into a pie chart. You could do that. It's probably not the most popular pie chart, probably the least popular pie chart that we made because people are first interested in sales and then probably interested in who owes them money like accounts receivable and then maybe even in their expenses categorized out and then maybe their accounts payable. So then you got your expenses. 10.99s are obviously internal reports that we're gonna help us deal with our taxes. Check detail, that's part of your decrease to the checking account. Typically internal, you're not really gonna provide that to customers on a monthly basis. Expenses by vendor, but you could make a pie chart out of this, probably not the most popular one, but you could make a visual out of that possibly, probably more popular than the accounts payable pie chart. Open purchase orders internal to help us order our invoices. Purchase by product, that's usually internal. You could make a pie chart out of it though. Purchase by vendor detail. And again, you could kind of make that into a chart, but you're purchasing inventory there. So it might not be the most. And then transaction list by vendor and the vendor contact list, those are internal typically. Obviously the sales tax stuff is typically internal. You're not usually gonna be running a report on your sales tax liability detail for to give to a client on a monthly basis. Oftentimes employee ease, usually internal, because this is usually a bunch of data that you're gonna need in order to generate your quarterly reports and so on and so forth. So that's just overwhelming detail of reports. Oftentimes if you were to give that to a client, they wouldn't know what to do with it. Oftentimes, right? So then we've got the for the accountant. Most of this by definition are kind of internal because they're for accountant usage, but some of them of course are what you give the tax preparer which are the financial statements that they have the duplicate. So account list, the balance sheet, that's a replica. So those are both internal and external balance sheet. General ledger, that's not something you probably provide to like a client on a monthly basis. It's a long detailed list. It would be kind of burdensome. They wouldn't know what to do with it, but the accountant might ask for that or might use it when you give them access to your account. Same with the journal report. You're probably not gonna give that to a client every month, but you can use it. It could be quite useful for internal usage. Profit and loss, these are redundant. These are both internal and external. That's the P&L. Recent automatic transactions, that's internal typically. Recent transactions, reconciliations, typically internal. You're not usually given the bank reconciliations to the client on a monthly basis. You're just gonna do them. And then recurring template, statement of cash flows, internal and external because you might add that to your monthly reporting because that's one of the major financial statements. So then we got your transaction detail list. These are all detail lists similar to the general ledger. You're not gonna give those to a client usually on a monthly basis. Maybe if you're doing your billing based on that, you might show that as evidence of how much you build them or something like that, but typically they're internal. Trial balance, balance sheet and income statement on top of each other. Internal report, quite useful like many of these are, but not something you provide to the client because the whole point is that you don't provide something to the client that has debits and credits, even though that's more efficient than the double entry accounting system represented in an accounting equation because they don't understand debits and credits, right? But that could be a quite useful report. So that's just a quick list, you know, just to go through these to get an idea of which reports are internal, which reports are external. And then once you have that concept in place, then you can build your custom report list here possibly based on those reports that are internal, format them in the way that you want them and those which you're gonna be giving to say, a client for example, on a quarterly basis, monthly basis, yearly basis and format those in the way that you would like them and hopefully that can save some time.