Every QuickBooks Online edition has at least 20 different types of reports you can run for your business. Some editions have over 65 reports.
With this many reports to choose from, it can be difficult to decide which ones are the most important to look at on a regular basis and which ones you may only need to run in certain situations.
To help your business succeed, here are the ten QuickBooks Online reports you should be checking frequently.
1. Profit and Loss Summary
A Profit and Loss Summary (PLS) is a quick way to make sure your business is bringing in more money than what’s going out. Within this report, you’ll be able to see how much your company sold and how much you spent.
Be sure to look closely at your “Cost of Goods Sold” which is a direct variable cost and your “Expenses” which contain both fixed and variable indirect costs. Checking on what you’re spending on overhead can help you find ways to reduce those costs so you have a larger profit margin.
We recommend running this report every day to keep an eye on the financial health of your business. Then, once a month you’ll want to compare it to the previous month or several months to make sure your business is going in the right direction.
2. Balance Sheet Summary
Alongside the PLS, you should be running a balance sheet summary every day. This will help you get an accurate picture of where you stand financially. There are three things you need to look at while checking this report.
Accounts Receivables
The number of accounts receivable should be increasing every day in proportion to completed sales. Be sure to make sure you can still cover your variable costs if customers aren’t paying.
Accounts Payables
You also need to keep an eye on what invoices you haven’t paid yet. The number of open invoices should stay about the same as you need to make sure your vendors are getting paid.
It’s also important to make sure you don’t have too many of these open because you can face a cash flow problem.
Bank/Cash
With this parameter, you’ll want to make sure there’s a reconciliation between what QuickBooks says you should have on hand and in the bank and what the reality is. Checking this often is a great way to quickly discover “leaks.”
3. Open Sales Orders
The next few reports we’ll look at have to do with sales.
The Open Sales Orders report checks to see that customers are getting what they ordered as quickly as possible. If they don’t receive their product on time, you risk losing their business and damaging your reputation.
By checking this every day, you’ll be able to spot orders that have been sitting for longer than they should have so you can take action if needed.
4. Pending Sales
If a sale is still pending, it means the invoice hasn’t been sent out or the sale hasn’t been finalized with the customer yet. This gives you a list of items that need to be followed-up on the next morning so you don’t risk losing sales.
This is another report you’ll want to run at the end of every day to make sure your salesforce is closing sales and invoicing customers.
5. A/R Aging Summary and A/P Aging Summary
As invoices age, there’s a lower chance of them being collected. For that reason, you need to make sure your invoices are getting paid before you send a new one to the same customer.
This also allows you to see when an outstanding balance may need to be sent to a collections agency to try to recover some of your costs.
6. Sales by Customer Summary
You need to know who your customers are and what they’re ordering from you. This does two things for your business.
First of all, you get a better idea of who your target customer is by looking at the demographics of each customer. Secondly, you can learn to anticipate the needs of your biggest customers to serve them better.
This metric can be checked on a weekly or monthly basis since it’s not essential for your success but can help you improve your sales.
7. Sales by Representative Summary
The final sales report you should be checking regularly is the Sales by Representative Summary. This is particularly important when you want to make sure your salespeople are reaching their goals and essential for giving commissions.
This can be checked on a weekly basis to make sure everyone is staying on track for the month.
8. Open Purchase Orders
The final three reports involve your business costs. It’s just as important to know how much you’re spending and how much you’re making.
The Open Purchase Orders reports show you what you’ve ordered that hasn’t arrived yet. You need to keep an eye on this so you can act as quickly as possible when inventory items haven’t arrived as quickly as they should.
Because this is a quick report, you can easily run this every day to make sure you’re getting what you order.
9. Expenses by Vendor Summary
You have to understand where your money is going, which is where this report comes in. Expenses by Vendor Summary lets you see how much you’re spending with each of your vendors.
This is another good way to work on lowering your overhead costs as you can see where there are unnecessary expenses or when you’re spending more than you should on certain items.
In most cases, you’ll want to check this on a weekly or monthly basis.
10. Outstanding Checks Report
The last report that you should be checking frequently is the Outstanding Checks Report. This is also known as the Missing Checks Report and will show you any checks that have been accidentally duplicated or voided.
Run this report every day so you catch these mistakes as soon as possible so you can act quickly to resolve any problems before they cause bigger issues.
Need Custom QuickBooks Online Reports?
Now you know the ten QuickBooks online reports that you should be running for your business on a regular basis. As you can see, each of these should be run with different frequencies so you may want to add these to your schedule so you don’t miss any.
If you’re looking for a different type of report that is specific to your industry or company, we can help you with that. Here at FourLane, we can create custom QuickBooks reports that work for you.
