Do you ever need a little more information than the standard reports give you? If so, you can easily and quickly customize many reports to show you a little more, or a little less, information. This post will focus just on the P&L, also known as the Profit & Loss Statement or the Income Statement.
In QuickBooks desktop, run the P&L under Reports>Company & Financial>Profit & Loss Standard. You can easily customize the date with the Dates drop down or the calendar selectors at the top of the report. To see your P&L broken out by week, month, or quarter, choose the date of This Month or This Fiscal Year. Next, at the top of the report, in the Show Columns drop down, choose the period of time you want to see in each column – Week, Month, Quarter, etc. Changing the dates and the columns shown on the P&L will allow you to see data month to month, quarter to quarter, or even year to year.
Do you ever wonder what percent of your income you spend on different types of expenses? It’s easy to see by customizing the P&L. Run the P&L again and this time, click on the Customize Report button in the top left corner. The first tab that shows up is the Display tab. On the bottom half of this tab, you can click the box to show % of Income and that will put a percent next to each line of your P&L that tells you what percent of your income that line represents. So if you see 5% next to Office Supplies, it means that 5% of what you make goes to pay for office supplies. Also in the bottom half of the Display tab, you can check the box to show what your P&L looked liked in a Previous Period or Previous Year for comparison.
Maybe you really only want to see expense accounts at the moment, not the income accounts. In that case, click Customize Report again and this time go to the Filters tab. Click on Account in the filter area then in the drop down in the center of the box, choose Expense and other expense accounts (or whatever types of accounts you want to see).
When you’ve created a useful report that you think you’ll use regularly, you can click the Memorize button at the top of the report. Give it a name that briefly explains what it shows then click OK to save it. This customized report will now show under Reports>Memorized Reports for you to use again.
Just play with the display and filter choices until you find what you’re looking for. Or, if needed, you can ask a QuickBooks ProAdvisor to help you customize a report that shows exactly what you want to see. This is your accounting software so you need to be able to get the right information out of it to help you make the best business decisions. Coming next time…how to make simple customizations to the P&L in QuickBooks Online.