Your QuickBooks company file is probably the most powerful management tool available to you.  If your company is well set up, the canned reports that come with QuickBooks can answer a broad range of actionable questions that can directly affect your bottom line including:

·         Which are my most profitable goods and service?

·         Who are my best (and worst) customers?

·         How much did I spend by vendor over the past year?

·         Was the job I just did profitable?

But what if you want information out of your QuickBooks file that you can't get from the canned reports?    Intuit's QuickBooks Community  has a wide variety of resources including a Reports Library.  To explore this little known resource, select QuickBooks Library from the menu on the left and then select Reports.  The library contains memorized report templates that you can download and import into your QuickBooks file.  There are well over 100 reports including:

·         Unbilled expenses by Job

·         Uncleared bank transactions

·         Franchise Sales Detail and Summary

·         Payroll Detail Review for both Federal and State Taxes

·         Checks to be printed

·         Payment details by Customer

If you still can't find what you need, you may need to look at exporting data out of QuickBooks and manipulating it externally.  There are a number of options available most of which require an investment of time, money, or both. 

For an investment of time only, the QuickBooks Community Reports Library also includes three free tools to extract data from QuickBooks into Excel.  You will need to understand your QuickBooks data and be a strong Excel user to make these tools work for you, but they are free.

I recommend starting with the file that includes the wizard.  Save the downloaded file and open it with Excel.  You will probably need to adjust some security settings to get it working; just follow the instructions on the Security worksheet.  Then go to the Update worksheet to connect with your QuickBooks file.  It can take quite a while to extract the data if your file is large, so limit the type of transactions you request and/or the date range initially. 

If DIY reporting is over and above the call of duty for you, feel free to contact me with your specific needs.