Episode 8
Episode 8: QuickBooks Reports You Should Check Every Month
Episode 8: QuickBooks Reports You Should Check Every Month
In this episode of QuickBooks Mastery for Small Business Success, father-daughter team Erica Northrup and Lee Davis break down the most important QuickBooks reports every business owner should review each month—and why they matter.
Too many business owners rely on their bank balance instead of their financial reports. In this episode, Erica and Lee explain how reports tell the real story of your business, help you spot trends early, and give you confidence when making financial decisions.
They walk through where to find each report in QuickBooks, what to look for, and how to use the information to guide growth, manage cash flow, and avoid costly mistakes.
Listeners will walk away with clarity, confidence, and a simple monthly reporting routine they can start using right away.
Key Takeaways
- Why reviewing reports monthly is essential for business growth
- The 5 core QuickBooks reports every business owner should run
- How to read Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow reports
- How reports help you make better decisions around spending, hiring, and growth
- Why reports act as your business “report card”
Questions to Reflect On
- Am I reviewing my financial reports consistently—or just checking my bank balance?
- Do I understand what my numbers are telling me about my business health?
- Which report could give me the most clarity right now?
Mentioned in This Episode
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Youtube Link for Episode Video: https://youtu.be/IMGDXiC_hUY
Timestamps
Timestamp | Chapter Title
00:00.000 | Welcome & Introduction
01:25.558 | Why Reports Matter
04:16.674 | #1 Profit & Loss Report
06:06.738 | #2 Balance Sheet
07:47.920 | #3 Cash Flow Statement
09:17.570 | #4 Sales by Customer Summary
11:09.933 | #5 Budget vs Actual
14:16.513. | Bonus & Advanced Reports
17:08.872 | Using Reports to Make Better Decisions
20:26.454 | Practical Reporting Habits
20:26.454 | Outro & Call to Action
Call to Action
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Transcript
Welcome to QuickBooks mastery for small Business Success.
Speaker A:I'm Erica Northrup.
Speaker B:And I'm Lee Davis.
Speaker A:I handle the tech and he handles the numbers.
Speaker A:And together as a father daughter team, we bring decades of experience helping small to medium sized businesses thrive.
Speaker B:We know that as a business owner, your time is best spent mastering your craft and growing your business, not getting lost in QuickBooks.
Speaker B:Managing finances can be confusing and you don't have hours to waste sorting through spreadsheets or fixing bookkeeping mistakes.
Speaker B:That's where we come in, helping you streamline QuickBooks so you can focus on building your business.
Speaker A:Each week we break it all down into simple, actionable steps so you can focus on growing your business, not fixing your books.
Speaker B:Let's embark on this journey together.
Speaker A:Welcome back to QuickBooks mastery for small business success.
Speaker A:This is episode 8, QuickBooks reports you should check every month.
Speaker A:Well, Bubba, I feel like we've made it to one of the most important podcasts.
Speaker A:We've been talking about reports in many of the different podcasts that we've already done and so I think this will be a good kind of breakdown for people.
Speaker A:Here are the reports that are important for you to run every month and then to have on your radar to know about these reports when you want to run various different scenarios.
Speaker B:Yeah, the reports that we've talked about them, but now we're going to show them actually how to access them, run them and where to find them.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's super important.
Speaker A:Why, from your opinion, why do reports matter?
Speaker A:Why should people spend the time, the extra half hour it might take to either set that report up and then run it monthly?
Speaker A:Why should they do that?
Speaker B:In many ways, it's a way to close your month.
Speaker B:So if you've done the work, you've entered your data, what are you going to use it for?
Speaker B:How does it help you putting all that data in?
Speaker B:And in many ways it's summarized and what you have to remember about any report feature or any reports in QuickBooks, the profit and loss report is a report that you can run over a period of time and that's useful, but that gives you a look a given period of time.
Speaker A:I guess what it comes down to when you talk about reports, reports is you can't grow what you don't measure.
Speaker A:You can't be a profitable business if you don't know where your money is going, whether you're staying on track financially.
Speaker A:I mean, these are all really important reasons why you need to take the time to utilize QuickBooks and the reports because it's one thing just to enter the data, but reports is really how you visually see what's actually happening in your business.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:You draw comparisons.
Speaker B:For example, the balance sheet is a snapshot in time.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:You can get a snapshot in time where the profit and loss is over a period.
Speaker B:So it's important to know what the report is and what kind of information you should pull out of it.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Don't overdo me.
Speaker B:Start out very simple.
Speaker A:Well, I think that's a perfect segue into the meat of this podcast.
Speaker A:We're going to give people the five reports.
Speaker A:If you're not running any reports, here are five reports that I would start with because as we're gonna talk about a little later in the podcast, there are so many different kinds of reports you can actually run that could be overwhelming.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:So these are the five that we've come up with that we really feel like if you start here and run these monthly, it's gonna make a massive difference in your business.
Speaker B:When you look at the first report and I'm gonna use my screen and I'm using a sample company called Craig's Design and Landscape Service, and you can use this.
Speaker B:If you have a QuickBooks product, use this sample company to play around with the reports.
Speaker A:That's a nice way to learn quick and.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's a nice way to learn the reports and to see what you can do.
Speaker B:So one of the things that for the reporting, when you look at access from the reports, they've set up some various reports in the business overview.
Speaker B:So just looking at the business overview screen, you see there are various reports already set up that you don't need to customize.
Speaker B:But the standard report that most people will run is just the standard profit and loss.
Speaker B:When you go ahead and look at that profit and loss, you then can see the fact that you can determine what period of time you want to run the report for.
Speaker B:And let's just say from the perspective that we would like to run and you can look at and said, okay, I'd like to run it from.
Speaker B:In the dialog box, you can choose custom dates, or most frequently, the report is run for last month.
Speaker B:You can get a report for the month and then that gives you a nice profit and loss.
Speaker B:But again, use the report period, and you want to choose whether you want to run it by cash or accrue.
Speaker B:We're not going to go into running the reports necessarily.
Speaker B:I'm just going to show you a few features of that report that you can use quickly.
Speaker B:And then you can compare the report if you'd like.
Speaker B:You can compare it and it'll open up a dialog box from the previous year.
Speaker B:I quite frequently will look at the dollar chain and you can see in real time.
Speaker B:It gives you information that you can use.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's super, super quick on the profit loss.
Speaker A:Nice.
Speaker A:So the profit and loss basically shows you your revenue, cost, net income, and it feels like it reveals if you're profitable and where you're making and spending the most money.
Speaker B:Right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So that report breaks down cost of goods sold, gross profit.
Speaker B:And as you put all of your information in, this is a great report to say, well, how did I do for the month?
Speaker B:But how have I done year to date?
Speaker B:But I suggest to start running it for the month, the prior month.
Speaker A:Nice.
Speaker A:The next report that we are recommending that you run every month is the balance sheet.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So again, you find that in the business overview.
Speaker B:And while I set up some reports in favorites, you can see that favorites are useful for the reports.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And we have the balance sheet in the favorites report.
Speaker B:So indeed you can just click on it.
Speaker B:And it's the same features that you're going to use to estimate if you want it for the month.
Speaker B:But again, it gives you the standard balance sheet.
Speaker B:And if you set up your QuickBooks accounts correctly, the reports follow and are designed by standard accounting principles.
Speaker B:And so you can get a snapshot of your business, you can run it for your balance sheet.
Speaker B:You can run it right up to today if you've got work.
Speaker B:The nice thing about it is it's a snapshot in time.
Speaker A:So it really looks at what you own and what you owe.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I guess why it matters is it shows overall financial health and stability.
Speaker A:It's important to know business is financially and how stable it is.
Speaker B:And if you want, you can just click on any total and you can look at a history.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And it frankly, if you're looking for something, if something doesn't look quite right, you can look and see, oh, yeah, I wrote that check.
Speaker B:And so you can quickly, rather than going and try and figure it out, it's right there at your fingertips.
Speaker B:So the balance sheet is extremely helpful to again, focus in on what you own, what you owe and what the difference is.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker B:And you can see it's your equity, your liabilities and your assets.
Speaker B:So that's the balance sheet.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker A:Well, then moving right along to report number three that we're going to be covering is Cash flow statement or cash flow forecast statement if you're in QBO Advanced.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So your cash flow is a statement of cash flows found in the reports under my account.
Speaker B:You can go right in and click on the statement of cash flows and up comes your statement of cash flows.
Speaker B:Choose your period gives you your operating expenses, investment activities, and gives you your cash at the end of the period.
Speaker A:So this really tells you where your cash is going and whether you're staying cash positive, which is important in a business.
Speaker A:I mean, that's why it's important.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Cash is key, King.
Speaker A:We've talked about that on here.
Speaker A:Knowing where your cash is and how it's moving through your business is super important.
Speaker B:So again, it will analyze quickly for you what cash came in and where did it go.
Speaker A:Makes sense.
Speaker B:And if you borrowed money and you had a cash infusion, it shows up there.
Speaker B:So again, it pulls your net income and then it shows the various aspects of your cash operation.
Speaker B:You know, how much credit card loan payable.
Speaker B:It just gives you a whole snapshot of net cash provided by operating activities.
Speaker A:Love that.
Speaker A:So good.
Speaker B:Real nice feature in a report that again, because cash is king, you want to keep an eye on your cash reports.
Speaker B:That's why we're recommending that.
Speaker B:That's a standard report to you.
Speaker A:Love that.
Speaker A:Okay, well, moving on to number four.
Speaker A:And this is one that you actually just brought up because you had a customer use it and it Sales by customer service summary.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So here's the sales by customer summary.
Speaker B:And unfortunately in the test module, there's not a lot of information, but I can talk to you about sales by customer and really the importance of it.
Speaker A:Yeah, tell us what's important, Papa.
Speaker B:When you have all of your invoicing done for the month, you then want to run this report and see, well, how did I do for my sales for the month?
Speaker B:And then how did I compare?
Speaker B:I want to compare that to the previous month or the previous year.
Speaker B:And I can boil it down by all kinds of services if I'm questioning.
Speaker B:But this is just a good snapshot of how is my business doing on the sales.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Am I actually creating income?
Speaker A:Am I actually bringing in money?
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:And you can look at your customers and you can see, well, which customers brought the business in this month?
Speaker B:And then there may be a customer that didn't purchase from us.
Speaker B:And you might want to say, I wonder what's going on with that customer.
Speaker B:You may want to give that customer a call.
Speaker A:Why didn't they use our services?
Speaker B:And See how they're doing.
Speaker A:And I'm sure it can also show you your customers that bring in the most.
Speaker A:Could you break it down?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Customer.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:You can sort it by the highest to lowest, and you can also categorize that.
Speaker B:You can filter it by the different categories.
Speaker A:So I'm sure if you're wanting to know how one particular part of your business is doing, a particular service you offer, this would be a great report to run, to be able to know, okay, how is that doing?
Speaker A:If you're thinking about making some changes, this would be a good one to keep an eye on.
Speaker B:Yep, absolutely.
Speaker B:It's a great report.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker A:Okay, now, the last one that we think is one that you should actually run monthly is budget versus actual.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And you find this particular report in the screen, you go to the gear, and under tools, you go to budgeting.
Speaker A:Oh, Remember a couple weeks ago we actually talked about budgeting?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:This is a great way to utilize that budget that you've created versus what's actually happening in your business.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So as the screen points out, you can plan better with budgets.
Speaker B:So as long as you have a budget created, you can run the report and be able to quickly analyze how you're doing income versus expense according to what your budget was put into work.
Speaker A:Those tools that you've been using, Love that.
Speaker A:Okay, well, those were the five reports that we feel like every business owner should be running, regardless of your business.
Speaker A:Now let's talk a little bit about, because there are so many different reports that you could actually run.
Speaker A:As we kind of talked about earlier, there's a lot of different categories and different kinds of reports that you could run depending on what your focus is on what you're looking at in your business.
Speaker A:So it's something we want to encourage.
Speaker A:Encourage you, the listener, to really dig into.
Speaker A:We're going to just give a little brief overview of those reports, but there's a lot there that will allow you to just track different aspects of your business.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So what I thought we would do is just overview quickly the kinds of reports that QuickBooks offers.
Speaker B:Because you can go in and select a report and quickly get your information, but you can, as I share my screen, there's the favorites.
Speaker B:There's a business overview.
Speaker B:There is who owes you.
Speaker B:This is where you'd find your accounts receivable report, and you have your sales and customer reports, and then you look at what you owe and then your expense and vendor reports.
Speaker B:And if you collect sales tax, there's a sales tax report.
Speaker B:And then you have your employee reports and then you have a catch all for my account.
Speaker B:The reports that your accountant may want to use and then again, some reports for payroll.
Speaker B:So a couple of reports that are very good to utilize.
Speaker B:You always want to know who owes you you or that you're able to run your accounts receivable summary.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And then you can see that by the aging.
Speaker B:And you're able to quickly see what if you click on that, you can look at the aging detail and see the invoice that might be owing.
Speaker B:So if you want to be calling the customer or you want to send them a reminder, you have all the.
Speaker A:Information at your fingertips without having to sort through every single sale that you've made.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker A:That great snapshot.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And you don't want to have to go back to looking at the customers.
Speaker B:You want to just have this data quickly at your fingertips.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Massive.
Speaker B:In the accounts receivable.
Speaker A:Massive.
Speaker A:Now, you talked about earlier, one report that you thought we really should mention, and that was the profit and loss by class.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker B:When you track your income and expenses, the one of the reports they offer is a profit and loss by class.
Speaker B:I have a couple of restaurants that have various locations and they track their income and expense by location.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And we call it class.
Speaker B:So we're able to see how is each location doing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so that standard report would be the profit and loss by class.
Speaker B:And if you're looking for just an easy breakdown without creating multiple accounts, doing a lot of work, you just create your profit and loss.
Speaker B:You just track classes and then you can run the report.
Speaker B:And it will be a very efficient way to see how each division, if you would.
Speaker B:Or each location might be doing each.
Speaker A:Restaurant, each separate restaurant that you have.
Speaker A:If you have five restaurants and you're tracking each one individually, you can then see which is the best performer, which is the lowest performing, what's mid.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:And that gives you the ability to then go and say, okay, how can I help this particular restaurant do better?
Speaker A:Or if one is doing really good, okay, I need to send some more resources, divert some of my resources from this lower performing one and put it here.
Speaker A:So they'll do even better management reports.
Speaker B:They're just a great way to handle that.
Speaker B:The other report that I recommend all the time and use is because you have to.
Speaker B:When you consider running payroll, the payroll reports under payroll, that for if you're needing to work on a report as various of your vendors, like a payroll for the workers comp.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:You need to put together a list of your employees with their wages and you have to categorize them.
Speaker B:So you're able to use the payroll reporting system to gather those standard reports you need for various types of entities like your workers.
Speaker B:Comp carrier in some cases for your insurance company wants a report listing all of your employees.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:If you're using QuickBooks Payroll, that's a little bit easier.
Speaker B:If not, you have to come up with whatever outside payroll service you use and use their standard reporting features.
Speaker B:But there are a wealth of information in payroll reports.
Speaker A:Seriously.
Speaker A:I knew there was a lot of reports, the different kinds of reports you could run in QuickBooks, but I don't think I quite appreciate how many there actually is and all the nuances and how you compare things year to year, month to month, week to week, day to day.
Speaker A:Like you could really get nitty gritty.
Speaker A:You wanted to with all the different kinds of reporting you can do.
Speaker B:I think some people don't realize that even in all the standard reports, you don't need to customize.
Speaker B:Customization has already been done for you.
Speaker A:It's done for you.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:That is good.
Speaker B:Yeah, just go in and run the.
Speaker A:Well, this is a great segue into.
Speaker A:Now we've talked about some of the different kinds of reports, where they are, where to find them.
Speaker A:So how do you use these reports to make better decisions from an actual financial standpoint in a business, as somebody yourself that helps run businesses and helps make many decisions for separate businesses, how do you use reports to do this to make those decisions?
Speaker B:I think quite frequently you find if, for example, you're going to apply for a loan at a bank, they want to see your balance sheet, they want to see your profit and loss.
Speaker A:Yeah, they want to see those things.
Speaker B:And they're also going to want to see some other type of reporting that might be outside of QuickBooks, like your tax return.
Speaker B:So getting those reports up to date and accurate and be able to just run them and email them over massive or if I am considering a decision, I want to know if I think I'm interested in maybe adding another service.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:I want to see what my current services are and I want to see my sales and then I want to look at my customers.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So is it actually worth it to make that change to my business?
Speaker A:Will that actually help or is that just going to hinder what I'm already doing?
Speaker B:Especially if I'm considering a change to my business plan, just really having the numbers jump out at me.
Speaker B:How did my business do?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I Guess that's the bottom line.
Speaker A:How is your business doing?
Speaker A:And that's why you run reports.
Speaker A:What are the trends that you're seeing?
Speaker A:Are things declining?
Speaker A:Are you actually making a profit?
Speaker A:Are you increasing expenses?
Speaker A:Are you under cash crunches?
Speaker A:I mean, these are all reasons why you would run these reports.
Speaker A:To actually have a really clear vision of where things are and where things are going and what's possible.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I'd say, say it's kind of like a report card.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Am I getting the F right?
Speaker B:How is my business doing?
Speaker B:What's my report?
Speaker A:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker A:What is my report card?
Speaker A:That is so good.
Speaker A:And I guess when you set these reports, I mean, these will allow you to make some big decisions, like, of course, revenue goals, cut unnecessary costs, decide when to hire, invest, or make a pause in spending.
Speaker A:Okay, you know what?
Speaker A:We are spending way more.
Speaker A:We're actually bringing in.
Speaker A:So we need to adjust things a bit.
Speaker A:There's so.
Speaker A:Yeah, those are some great kind of why to use reports and why is it important?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Lots of times it's better not to overwhelm yourself with reports.
Speaker A:Keep it simple.
Speaker B:The basic reports.
Speaker A:Yeah, just do your top five.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Do your top five reports.
Speaker B:You know, you can standardize them.
Speaker B:It does have the ability for you to use custom reports.
Speaker B:And so you can again, use management reports.
Speaker B:There's the management reports in QuickBooks.
Speaker B:You can just run those that they've already set up.
Speaker B:Expense, performance report.
Speaker B:Just some standard reports, but you can customize your own.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:I'd say books has done a fairly good job in the standard reports, the customer reports that you can create, and then management reports, something that might be.
Speaker A:Nuanced to your business and your business alone.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:And you don't have to recreate the wheel every time you want the report.
Speaker A:Which is so good.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, so let's talk about some practical tips for better reporting habits.
Speaker A:So if you're starting something new, it can be overwhelming.
Speaker A:I hear through the Googles that you can actually set a recurring reminder to check reports.
Speaker B:Yes, you can certainly set yourself up with some reminders.
Speaker B:I always say that the ideal is to have by the 10th of the month, have all of your work up to date and closed for the prior month.
Speaker A:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker B:And then run your reports.
Speaker B:Yeah, and then you can always go back and run a report.
Speaker B:But just look at those standard reports and if you think you need to print them out, just have something to write on.
Speaker B:Do that.
Speaker B:And create a report file.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's so good.
Speaker B:And sometimes people just keep the month to month or year to year.
Speaker B:I think whatever is a good way for you to use the report how you want the reports.
Speaker B:And you can save filters and customizations and create custom reports just like we talked about earlier.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I guess another nice feature of Reports is then you can take this very digital screen that you're looking at with the report and then you can export that as a PDF.
Speaker A:So if you want to either save it to reference back or send it to a business partner or your board or whoever is making some financial decisions and wants to see the health of your business.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's so good.
Speaker A:Well, any other closing thoughts on reports?
Speaker B:I would say just start using them.
Speaker B:Even if there's some things you may not have currently in QuickBooks, but start using your reports.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And start to ask questions that every month that you want to answer.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think that's a great tip.
Speaker A:Just use it.
Speaker A:Guys, that was another great podcast.
Speaker A:I hope you learned as much as I learned.
Speaker A:I feel like my mind is blown.
Speaker A:I'm always learning so much from my papa and I greatly appreciate his insight into QuickBooks and the business and how to run the them more efficiently.
Speaker A:Let me tell you, if you are not reviewing your reports regularly, your business might be missing out on a key opportunities or heading into trouble without you knowing it.
Speaker A:Make it a habit you guys.
Speaker A:Make it a habit and let these numbers guide your next best move.
Speaker A:Don't forget to subscribe and share this episode.
Speaker A:We'll have a video that will attach in the show notes that will have all the video stuff that we use so you can actually see see where those reports are.
Speaker A:But we're here for you.
Speaker A:We look forward to next week.
Speaker A:Have a great week.
Speaker A:We'll see you later.
Speaker A:Thanks for tuning in to QuickBooks mastery for small Business Success.
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