How to Customize Reports in QuickBooks 2019

Watch the QuickBooks 2019 training tutorial video below and take a look at customizing reports. We will demonstrate how to resize and rearrange columns, apply filters, edit the header and footer, and modify fonts and numbers. We will also show you how to export a report in Excel.

Now that you know how to actually go through and look at all the reports that are in here there will be a few that you will want to tweak a little bit. That’s where the customizing comes in to play.

You’re going to be able to customize these reports so that you can show certain customers or it might be that there are certain columns you want to see.

Let me just show you all the customization options you can do when you’re working with your reports.

When you’re looking at any report you’ll see there are different columns of information available. There might be some columns that you don’t want or maybe there are some columns that aren’t here that you want to add.

So, let me show you how to work with those.

Let’s say, for example, that you want this account column but it’s not wide enough. Notice you can put your mouse on the line that separates the column headings and drag to the right a little bit and that would allow you to make that column a little bit wider.

If you decide you don’t need a column all you have to do is drag that same line all the way back the left and hide that column. Notice also if I put my mouse on top of the headings I can rearrange these.

If, for example, I wanted to put this class feature way over here all I have to do is drag it and then you’ll see it’s right next to the name in this particular case.

Let me show you how to go and add a column that’s not here that you might want. Notice in the top left it says, “Customize Report”. The first tab here is your Display tab. There are some options here for changing the dates, which you already know you can change right back here, and some sorting options. You probably want to leave it where it is by default, but I wanted to show you the columns here.

The columns that have a checkmark next to them are the ones that are currently being shown. If there’s a particular one that you’d like to add, for example, you just go down the list and find that column and put a checkmark next to it.

If there happens to be one that is checked that you don’t want then you can go ahead and uncheck it. Then, when you click OK you will see any changes you’ve made. You can see my memo column is right here now.

If I wanted to move that I could just move it wherever I wanted to rearrange the columns.

I’m going back to Customize Report again and this time let’s look at the Filter’s tab. When you tell QuickBooks you want to filter something what you’re saying is here’s what I want to see and I want you to hide everything else.

You have the ability to filter by any of these that you see here on the left. Let’s say that I’m trying to show just my one customer Tom Allen and no one else from the list. That would be a name.

I could choose Name, come to the dropdown and pick Tom Allen from the list. Then when I click OK he’s the only one on the list.

Back to Customize Report again. I can add additional filters to this if I’d like. If I decided that I wanted Tom Allen and just any payments I could go through the list and I can pick the transaction type or whatever other information it is that I would want to see here and I would click OK to add it to the list.

The next tab over is the Header/Footer. That is this information right here. You can see the company name is here. It says Customer Balance Detail and it says, “All Transactions”.

Let’s say, I want the report title to be my customer name, I’ll say Tom Allen. If you don’t want to see something you just uncheck the box like this. This is the date prepared and that’s going to be the date that you see right up here and the time prepared is right here.

You can see it’s also going to print the header on pages after the first page. You can uncheck that if you don’t want to. It will still print it on page one but it won’t print it on the other pages.

Now the footer information goes in the bottom and currently we’ll have the page number. There’s different formats you can choose for the page number if you want one of these other ones.

You can have an extra footer line. You might say something like Presented by with your name. And also it’s going to print the footer on page one. If you don’t want it on page one you just uncheck the box.

Over here is the Page Layout Alignment and they’re talking about the header portion. And you probably want to leave it on standard but you could say left and then everything is on the left and the date and time are on the right.

You might say right, which is reversed, and then you might say centered and everything is centered. Like I said, standard is probably the best way to keep it.

The last tab over is Fonts & Numbers. You have the ability for any of these options on the left here to go in and change the font. With negative numbers right now they show with a minus sign in front.

You may show them in parentheses or with a trailing minus, meaning the minus is on this side, and you might show that in bright red as well. I’ll do parentheses in bright red. And negative numbers you can show them all divided by 1,000 or without cents.

Let me click OK and see what we have so far. And you can see all of the payments or credits are now red in parentheses.

Let’s go back up here to Comment on Report. I don’t know if you saw this but what actually happened just now is it made a copy of this particular report and what’ll happen is once we finish with our comments we’ll have to save it up here. If you notice, next to each one of these items you’ll see a little bubble.

If you want to put a comment in one of these you just click that little bubble and then it’ll have a one here corresponding with the one down here, meaning it’s the first comment. And this is where you type in whatever your comment happens to be.

Let’s say I say that, “This is to clear account”, and then, I’m going to hit Save over on the right and now you’ll see there’s a one. When I’m finished I’m going to hit Save up on the top here and I can name this commented report anything I want to call it.

I’ll just leave it as Tom Allen right now and click OK. And this is telling me I’ve successfully commented on the report. What’s going to happen is now I can close this, you’ll see the original back here, notice no comments.

The way you open a commented report is you go up to Reports on the menu and you’ll see Commented Reports. Here’s a list of all of those. You just double click the one you’d like to look at and there’s the one we just did.

Okay. The next thing I want to do is let’s go ahead and talk real quick about sharing your template.

I mentioned that if you happened to be part of the Intuit community that you can actually go in and share any of these templates with other users in the community. Anything you think would be beneficial to help someone else you could certainly use. It’s good to look through those as well and see which ones might benefit you.

We’re going to talk about memorizing over in section four, but I’ll just tell you real quick that a memorized report is basically one that you’ve changed and you’ve saved. Right now, if I close this report and open it back up it’ll open right back up to the customer balance detail the way it was originally.

I can print this. You’ll notice you can print this as a report or as a PDF. I can also email it. I’ll have the same options. I can send it as a report as an Excel file or as a PDF.

Let’s talk about Excel for a minute. I’ve got two options here. I can create a new worksheet or update an existing. If you create a new worksheet you will a get choice to actually send this over to Excel, and you can put it in a new workbook, or in an existing workbook.

You can also update an existing one. That means if I’ve sent this over once and now we’ve made some changes in QuickBooks that would affect the report I would update an existing one I had saved.

I could also replace one or create a CSV file. I’ll create a new one in a new workbook and I’ll hit Export down here at the bottom. And now you’ll see that Excel has popped up and here’s my report. I’d have to do is save it if I wanted to keep it. Let me go ahead and close that.

You also have an option to hide the header or show the header. Then, Refresh just means there’s a change that’s been made that effects the report. Remember that if you click inside the report anywhere that’s another way to refresh the report.

Well, that gives you a good idea of how to customize your reports. I want to go now over into section four and show you how to actually go through and memorize those reports.

Cindy McGuckin

Cindy McGuckin is an IT trainer with over 20 years of experience. Cindy currently manages the IT Training Department at Trident Technical College, she's a Member of the Association of IT Professionals, Charleston, SC chapter and the Treasurer of the South Carolina Association of Continuing Higher Education.Cindy is a Microsoft Office and QuickBooks expert and her online courses have received hundreds of 5-star reviews. Her no-nonsense approach to teaching complicated topics makes her classes engaging and interesting.