November 23, 2022
QuickBooks Online is a highly efficient small to medium business accounting solution. Its cloud-based system makes it accessible from anywhere, and its many features include the ability to generate various types of financial reports. These are essential for business owners to gauge the financial health of their company and make informed decisions about where to allocate their resources.
We will now explore the different types of QuickBooks reports and how they can be used to benefit your business.
Types of QuickBooks Online Reports
QuickBooks Online categorizes financial reports into general areas of your business. These are Business Overview, Sales and Customer, Who Owes You, Expenses and Vendors, Sales Tax, For My Accountant, and Payroll.
Business Overview
Business Overview is a great starting point for a clear picture of company finances. It includes information on total income and expenses, net profit or loss, and total assets and liabilities. These reports can be customized to show data for specific periods, which helps track changes over time.
Common Reports:
- Audit Log
- Balance Sheet Comparison
- Balance Sheet Detail
- Balance Sheet
- Profit and Loss
- Profit and Loss by % of Total Income/Customer/Month
- Profit and Loss Comparison
- Profit and Loss year-to-date Comparison
- Quarterly Profit and Loss Summary
- Statement of Cash Flows
Sales and Customer
Sales and customer reports give you insights into your revenue streams and help you track payments and outstanding invoices. This data is critical for making sound decisions about where to invest your resources and identifying areas of your business that may need attention.
Common Reports:
- Customer Contact List
- Deposit Detail
- Estimates by Customer
- Products and Services List
- Sales by Customer Summary
- Sales by Product/Service Summary
Who Owes You
Under this category, you’ll find the invoice list, accounts receivable, and collections report on QuickBooks. These generally show you a list of customers who have unpaid invoices. They are helpful in two ways: first, they allow you to see which customers still need to pay you; second, they help you keep track of how much money is outstanding from each customer.
You can use this information to follow up with customers who are late in paying their invoices and gauge how much working capital your business has tied up in outstanding receivables.
Common Reports:
- Accounts Receivable Summary
- Collections Report
- Customer Balance Summary
- Invoice List
- Open Invoices
- Statement List
Expenses and Vendors
QuickBooks expense reports will show you where your money is going and which vendors you owe the most money to. You can view data such as total expenses, expenses by vendor, and expenses by account. Information from these can help negotiate better payment terms with vendors or cut costs by finding cheaper alternatives.
Common Reports:
- Check Detail
- Transaction List by Vendor
- Vendor Contact List
Sales Tax
The QuickBooks Sales Tax report is one of the most important reports for any business that deals with physical products. It shows you how much sales tax you collected from customers and how much you paid to the government in taxes.
This report is critical for businesses because it ensures they correctly remit the correct amount of taxes. It also lets companies see which products or services generate the most sales tax revenue.
Common Reports:
- Sales Tax Liability Report
- Taxable Sales Summary
For My Accountant
The For My Accountant report is a catch-all category for various financial reports that may be useful for your accountant. Here, you can find the general ledger report on QuickBooks, trial balance, detailed profit & loss, and balance sheet.
Common Reports:
- Account List
- Balance Sheet
- General Ledger
- Journal
- Profit and Loss
- Recent Transactions
- Reconciliation Reports
- Statement of Cash Flow
- Transaction List by Date
- Trial Balance
Payroll
Payroll reports provide information on your company’s payroll activity. You can view data such as total wages paid, payroll taxes withheld, and employee sick days used. You can also customize the reports to show data for a specific period, which helps track changes over time or compare against budgeted amounts.
Common Reports:
- Employee Details
- Employee Directory
- Multiple Worksites
- Paycheck List
- Payroll Billing Summary
- Payroll Deductions/Contributions
- Payroll Details
- Payroll Summary
- Payroll Tax Liability
- Payroll Tax Payments
- Payroll Tax and Wage Summary
- Retirement Plans
- Total Pay
- Total Payroll Cost
- Vacation and Sick Leave
- Workers’ Compensation
Customizing Financial Reports
Aside from the report templates, small businesses can also utilize QuickBooks’ advanced reporting tools, such as detailed customization. These features allow business owners to tailor their reports to their specific needs and goals. For example, if you want to see your sales in a certain period, you can create a report that only shows data from that particular time frame.
Powerful Reporting Made Easier
One of the major benefits of utilizing a cloud accounting solution such as QuickBooks Online is access to a native marketplace of apps. The QuickBooks apps marketplace has over 450 apps that integrate seamlessly, and many of these connect in what’s known as a two-way sync. These native integrations are extremely helpful in creating detailed, advanced reports with QuickBooks as a source-of-truth.
Numerous reputed apps help plan budgets, create revenue forecasts, get deeper understanding of inventory data points, recognize multi-channel sales attribution, and more. These metrics together help a growing business focus on what’s relevant to their core business in their industry, instead of getting stuck in the bookkeeping or accounting weeds.
With its deep partnership with Intuit, SaaS Direct understands these integrations and helps businesses take advantage of apps that connect into QuickBooks. Additionally, SaaS Direct also helps train client’s team members on these apps on-demand either as a classroom webinar or a one-to-one personalized training. One industry that has greatly benefited from SaaS Direct’s services are franchises. SaaS Direct leverages its tech partnerships to custom-build a QuickBooks-centric franchise solution powered by the right-fit tech stack most suitable for a franchise business.
To learn more about SaaS Direct’s franchise solutions – visit SaaS Direct for Franchises or contact us via chat or phone, in case you need expert guidance as you evaluate your current or next accounting software.
SaaS Direct specializes in accounting data conversions and data migrations with capabilities to convert 88+ software. With over 1500+ accounting data conversions delivered and over 25 years of cumulative ERP and accounting data migration experience, SaaS Direct helps businesses improve productivity and offers extensive training on QuickBooks.