How to Create Custom Reports in QuickBooks Online

A custom report in QuickBooks Online is a standard report you have filtered, re-columned, and saved. You are not building a report from a blank page, you are starting from one of the 150-plus standard reports and narrowing it. Knowing that up front saves a lot of hunting for a report designer that does not exist on most plans.

Steps

1. Start from the closest standard report

   Open Reports and pick the standard report nearest to what you need. Sales by Customer Summary is a better start for a revenue-by-client view than building from a transaction list. The closer the starting report, the less customization you have to hold in place.

   
2. Open Customize and set the filters

   Select Customize and a panel opens on the right with Data and Visual tabs. Under Data you get Filters (filter by customer, vendor, class, location, or product), Show non-zero or active for which rows and columns appear, Number format including divide by 1000 and how negatives display, and Edit section titles for renaming Income, Cost of Goods Sold, and the other section headings. Changes stack up and apply together when you select Apply changes. Note that report period and accounting method are not in here: they live in the toolbar above the report.

   
3. Save it as a new report

   Select Save As. In the "Save as new report?" dialog, name the report clearly enough that a colleague knows what it is, choose who to share it with, and optionally add it to a group. QuickBooks prefills the name as the original plus "- copy", which is worth replacing. Saved reports keep their filters, so the next run is a single click.

   
4. Manage and schedule them from Custom reports

   Custom reports in the left nav lists what you have saved, with columns for who created it, who last modified it, the date range, whether access is Private or Shared, and the email schedule. Use Edit on a row to set recipients and a frequency, and QuickBooks sends that report without you opening it. Reports added to a group go out together.

   
5. Know where customization stops

   You cannot add a calculated row, reorder accounts by hand, merge two reports into one view, or put a commentary column next to the numbers. Those all live outside QuickBooks. QuickBooks Advanced adds a drag-and-drop custom report builder with more field-level control, but it is limited to that plan.

   

See also

Frequently asked questions

Related report guides