We've been hearing change is coming – and now it is here. Redesigned reports has moved from QuickBooks Labs to a full QuickBooks Online feature. What this means is more professional looking reports with improved ability to customize them.
If you're like me, you customize desired reports all the time and save them. Don’t worry, your custom reports automatically will be updated to the new look.
As part of the Redesigned reports roll-out, you have the ability to print portrait or landscape reports. Intuit also is talking about Page loading improvements, but I call it lag time improvements.
Even though we know we shouldn't expect a 9000 line report to load instantly, we find ourselves disappointed when it seemingly takes forever. Intuit’s solution to improve report performance consists of QBO loading the first 200 rows of any report, and then displaying a link to load more.
In addition to the fresh look of reports, there are 10 new reports that have either been or are in the process of being launched. They are tricky to find, so you have to know where to look.
At this point, I have only discovered eight of the 10, so if you find the missing two, let us know what and where they are. It’s possible they are so new that not everyone has had them rolled out to them.
QBO has these reports tagged as "new," so they stand out. You should find them located under the report group header.
The eight new reports I have found are:
- Profit and Loss Comparison
- Profit and Loss by Month
- Profit and Loss % of Total Income
- Quarterly Profit and Loss Summary
- Profit and Loss YTD Comparison
- Profit and Loss by Customer
- Balance Sheet Detail
- Open Invoices
There are a couple of reports QuickBooks Online has highlighted, "Balance Sheet Detail" and "Open Invoice" report, so let’s review:
New – Balance Sheet Detail Report
I find the Balance Sheet Detail report the most useful when looking for any changes to assets and liability accounts like equipment, inventory or loan changes. While viewing the report, it is easy to collapse an account so you don’t have to look at unnecessary rows and rows of details like Accounts Receivable.
To prepare this report:
- Select Reports from the Navigation bar
- Click All Reports
- Select Business Overview
- Choose Balance Sheet Detail
QBO New Reports figure 1
If you wish to customize this report there, you can either select the quick report access in the right top corner of the report or, if you wish to customize more than the columns, open the customize tab as shown in the steps and illustration below:
QBO New Reports figure 2
- Select Quick Report Access
- Choose Full Customize Availability
- Once you have selected customized features you can collapse the edit options for more working landscape
After removing a few unwanted columns and collapsing a couple of rows, I'm very pleased with this new Balance Sheet Detail report:
The New QBO Balance Sheet Detail Report
QBO New Reports figure 3
New – Open Invoice Report
Another new report to be celebrated is the Open Invoice Report. How did we even survive without it?
The Open Invoice Report is the best report to examine aging invoices because it allows you to focus on who owes you money and how long they have owed it to you. Just as with the Balance Detail Report, it is easy to collapse unwanted rows so you pinpoint which customer invoices are open so you can view the details.
To prepare this report:
- Select Reports from the Navigation bar
- Click All Reports
- Pick Manage Accounts Receivable
- Choose Open Invoices
QBO New Reports figure 4
After running the report it’s easy to collapse unwanted rows so you can focus on the desired details. Both options discussed below are shown in the figure that follows.
- Customer and sub-customers view – I could choose to see all the sub-customers individually or display them in a collapsed fashion.
- Collapsed customer – Maybe we already know he is late paying, so we don’t need to view the invoice details.
QBO New Reports figure 5
There are several other new reports, so I plan to write at least one or two more articles covering them. In the meantime, one great place to start looking at reports on your own is under Business Overview.
By the way, if you happen to find the other two "new reports" missing from my list of eight out of the 10, be sure to drop me a comment (below) to let me know where and when you found them.