Some of QuickBooks’ customization options are specific to individual types of reports.
Most of QuickBooks’ report customization options apply in all cases, and you’ll see them no matter which template you request. But others vary. A QuickBooks training course would spell these all out for you.
We’re been looking at Summary reports in this series, which have fewer options for modification than Detail reports. When you run a Summary report, you can select from a wide variety of Filters that will impact the document’s content. But you can’t specify which columns will display.
To see this in action, open the A/R Aging Detail Report (Reports | Customers & Receivables | A/R Aging Detail). Click the Customize Report button in the upper left. The Display tab should be active. You’ll see something like this:
You can specify which Columns will display in many QuickBooks reports.
You should learn how to use QuickBooks’ capabilities in this area; customizing columns will add tremendous depth to your reports.
It’s easy to do this. Under COLUMNS on the left, scroll down and up to find the columns that should appear in your QuickBooks reports. These are not Filters. Altering the column display does not affect the content of your reports. It only tells QuickBooks what elements of that content should appear on the screen and in print.
If there is a column active that you want to turn off in the report, just click on the checkmark to the left of it in the list. Similarly, click next to the labels that you want to include in the output. When you’re satisfied, click OK.
Of course, the more columns you select, the wider the report will appear on the screen, and you’ll have to scroll to see everything. In these cases, you may want to export your data to Excel and format it there for easier viewing.
Headers, Footers and Fonts
You have control of how your report displays in other ways. Click on the Header/Footer tab to see this:
Though some elements of report customization may require involvement with QuickBooks videos or tutorials, it’s easy to change the way other elements display.
This screen is fairly self-explanatory. By default, all of the Header and Footer options (the text that appears at the top and bottom of your screen) are active. To turn any of them off, click in the box to their left to remove the checkmark. To alter the text that appears, simply replace what’s there with what you want.
You can also change the way the report pages are aligned by clicking the arrow under Alignment on the right. Your report is set to Standard by default, but you can change this to Left, Right or Centered.
Click on the Fonts & Numbers tab to alter those attributes. If you’re just using a QuickBooks report internally, these cosmetic options probably don’t matter to you. But when you’re preparing a report to present to customers, financial institutions, etc., you’ll want to dress it up.
To return to the defaults at any point in this customization process, click the Revert button. Otherwise, click OK when you’re done.
