Creative Financial Software

QuickBooks Reporting Overview

Generally speaking, QuickBooks reports fall into one of four broad categories:

List Reports - These reports show the information in QuickBooks lists like customers, vendors and inventory parts. You can show not only the list, but all of the detail you enter into the lists. For example, if you create a customer list report, you can add columns to show the customers' addresses, phone numbers, email addresses or custom field information contained in the customer records.
Transaction Summary Reports - These reports show financial information in totals or balances. For example, a summary report can show you how much each of your customer's owe you - the customers' balances. However, these reports do not show you a list of invoices, payments and credit memos for each of the customers.
Transaction Detail Reports - These reports show individual financial transactions. For example, a detail report can show you all of the invoices, credit memos and payments for one or more customers. You can also subtotal the report by customer to show the customer's overall balance.
Business Analysis Reports - These reports provide analysis information to help you interpret the performance and financial position of your company. For example, a budget report will show you not only your expenses, but also a comparison between your expenses and your expense projections (budgets) to help you control costs. Other examples of analysis reports include a cash flow projection report, forecast reports, and cost to complete reports.

Exporting Reports to Microsoft Excel

QuickBooks Pro, Premier and Enterprise Solutions have a built in link with Microsoft Excel. You can use this link to export any QuickBooks report to Excel and then make changes to the format of the report or to the content of the report. Even though reports in QuickBooks are highly customizable, users do sometimes need to make changes that QuickBooks does not allow. For example, QuickBooks does not allow you to change the wording of the column header on Summary Reports.

Using QuickBooks with Reporting Applications like Crystal Reports

QuickBooks versions 2006 and later use a client-serve database engine – based on a SQL database product developed by Sybase called iAnywhere. SQL stands for Structured Query Language. Innumerable software developers use SQL, making integration between their products and QuickBooks easier than ever.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 6.0 and later include an ODBC driver that allows you to query an unlimited number of QuickBooks data files stored on your computer – or in a shared network folder on your local area network. Note: The ODBC driver included with Enterprise Solutions does not allow you to transfer data into QuickBooks. You can only extract (query) data. You can purchase the recommended ODBC driver for use with QuickBooks Pro and Premier at www.qodbc.com.

Building custom reports is perhaps the most prominent advantage of QuickBooks database queries. Small businesses running QuickBooks can now use products like Crystal Reports to significantly expand their reporting capabilities.

At Creative Financial Software, we use (and recommend) a product call QReport Builder. This relatively new product is developed by Flexquarters, the same company that developed the Intuit recommend ODBC driver.

QReport Builder allows you tremendous - almost unlimited - report customization capabilities, but without the complexity of Crystal Reports. Since this tool is designed specifically for QuickBooks queries, the built in templates replicate QuickBooks standard reports (e.g. Accounts Receivable Aging Summary or Profit & Loss by Class). You can then filter and redesign the report in ways that QuickBooks does not allow. For example, you can change the column headers on summary reports and you can filter the report to include or exclude certain types of data. In QuickBooks you can only filter to include information, not to exclude information - a significant limitation.

Need Help?

The experts at Creative Financial Software can:

Design custom reports for you using customization options in QuickBooks
Train you and your employees to design custom reports within QuickBooks
Use ODBC to query QuickBooks data and to create custom reports in Excel or Access
Use QReport Builder to provide virtually unlimited report customization options for your business or organization.