The Report Centre is the catalogue of every report SeroBooks can produce for your company, arranged by category the way QuickBooks Desktop arranges its Report Center. Use it when you know roughly what you want to see ("something about unpaid invoices") but not the report's exact name, when you want to pin the handful of reports you open every week, or when you want to build a report of your own.
Every report you open from the Report Centre opens in the same report window, with the same toolbar, date control, drill-down, memorize, print, export and email. Learning one report is learning all of them. See Running a report.
Opening the Report Centre
- Reports ▸ Report Centre on the menu bar.
- Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Reports & Graphs, then Report Centre.
- The Reports menu also opens most reports directly (for example Reports ▸ Company & Financial ▸ Balance Sheet Standard). A report opened from the menu opens over the Home Page, so pressing Esc takes you back to Home rather than to the Report Centre. See Reports menu.
What is on the screen
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| Reports heading and N available | How many reports this company can run. The number depends on your plan and your role: payroll reports, for example, appear only when payroll is on your plan and your role may read payroll; Amazon reports appear only for a company that sells on Amazon. |
| Search all reports… | Searches every category at once (see Finding a report). |
| Build a report | Opens the report builder to make a report of your own (see Building your own report). |
| One key: rail | The reports you can open with a single key press on this screen (see One-key reports). |
| Category rail (left) | ★ Pinned first, then every category with the number of reports in it. Click a category to show its reports. |
| Report cards (right) | The reports in the chosen category, grouped under sub-headings such as Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow. |
The categories
The categories, in the order they appear, are Company & Financial, Sales Tax, Customers & Receivables, Sales, Purchases, Vendors & Payables, Banking, Accountant & Taxes, Budgets & Forecasts, Inventory, Jobs, Time & Mileage, Employees & Payroll, Amazon and Lists, followed by Custom once someone in the company has built a report. Each is explained report by report:
| Category | Article |
|---|---|
| Company & Financial | Company & Financial reports |
| Sales Tax | Sales Tax reports |
| Customers & Receivables | Customers & Receivables reports |
| Sales | Sales reports |
| Purchases | Purchases reports |
| Vendors & Payables | Vendors & Payables reports |
| Banking | Banking reports |
| Accountant & Taxes | Accountant & Taxes reports |
| Budgets & Forecasts | Budgets & Forecasts reports |
| Inventory | Inventory reports |
| Jobs, Time & Mileage | Jobs, Time & Mileage reports |
| Employees & Payroll | Employees & Payroll reports |
| Amazon | Amazon reports |
| Lists | List reports |
A report card
Each card shows:
- the report's name (click anywhere on the card to open it);
- a star to pin or unpin it;
- a one-line description of the question it answers;
- what its dates mean: Period (a from and to date, such as a Profit & Loss), As of a date (one day, such as a Balance Sheet or an aging report) or Current (no date at all, such as a price list or open orders).
A card for a report someone in the company built also has a ⋮ menu with Edit report and Delete report.
Finding a report
- Click in Search all reports….
- Type any word from the report's name, category, sub-heading or description: aging, gst, vendor, month, margin.
- The cards update as you type. Every word you type must match, so sales month finds Sales by Month and Sales by Customer by Month but not Sales by Item Summary.
Search looks across every category, not only the one selected on the left, so aging finds both the receivables and the payables aging reports. Click × in the box, or press Esc, to clear the search; press Esc again to leave the Report Centre.
If nothing matches you see No report matches "…". Try a shorter word, or the QuickBooks name.
Pinning the reports you use
Click the star on a card to pin the report; click it again to unpin it. You can also pin from inside a report with the Pin button on its toolbar. Pinned reports appear under ★ Pinned at the top of the category rail.
- Pins are kept for this company on this computer. Another user, or you on another computer, keeps separate pins.
- While nothing is pinned the Report Centre opens on the first real category instead of an empty Pinned list. The Pinned list itself then reads Nothing pinned yet — click the star on any report card, or Pin inside a report.
One-key reports
While the Report Centre is the screen in front, no report is open over it and the cursor is not in a box, a single letter opens one of the reports accountants reach for most. The rail at the top shows the letters; hover over one to see Press B on this screen, or click it.
| Key | Opens |
|---|---|
| B | Balance Sheet Standard |
| T | Trial Balance |
| S | Stock Status by Item |
| A | Account Summary (Party Abstract — Customers) |
| L | Ledger (General Ledger) |
| G | Item Movement (Stock Movement Summary) |
| V | GST/HST Return |
Only letters for reports your company can run are shown. The letters do nothing on other screens, inside a report, or while you are typing, and they are ignored with Ctrl or Alt held down.
Building your own report
Build a report makes a report that is not in the catalogue, for example Unpaid invoices by customer with only the columns you want. It needs the Build a Custom Report permission under Reports ▸ Report Centre in your role (see Roles and permissions explained).
The builder window has three panes, read left to right.
1. What is it about?
Pick the records the report lists. Each choice says what one line of the report is:
| Source | One line per… |
|---|---|
| Sales | invoice or credit memo (credit memos subtract) |
| Sale lines | item sold (returns subtract on the credit memo's date) |
| Purchases | bill or vendor credit (vendor credits subtract) |
| Purchase lines | item bought (goods sent back subtract on their own date) |
| Expenses | expense (refunds subtract) |
| Payments | payment received or paid out |
| Customers | customer, with their sales in the period and what they owe today |
| Suppliers | vendor, with purchases in the period and what is owed today |
| Items & stock | item per location: stock today, prices, and what sold in the period |
| Stock movements | movement in or out: received, sold, returned, adjusted, transferred |
| The ledger | posted entry in the books (agrees with the Trial Balance) |
Start from an example, at the top, fills in the whole report from a ready-made one that you can then adjust.
2. Design it
The middle pane has three tabs:
- Columns — find fields with Find a field… and tick the ones to show. Amounts are marked as such and are added up when the report shows totals. YOUR COLUMNS lists your choices in order; drag to reorder, and use the remove button to take one off.
- List / Totals — how the report reads. A list gives one line per record, with a total at the bottom. Totals gives one line per group: your descriptive columns become the groups, and the one highest in Columns is the outer group. Under Order choose Sort by (or Natural order) and Low → high or High → low. Show at most limits the lines to 100, 500, 1,000 or 5,000; the total always covers everything that matched, even past the last line shown.
- Conditions — Add a condition to keep only the lines you want: a date between two dates, an amount above or below a figure, a name among chosen values. Choose values… offers the values found in the period, or type your own. Only lines meeting every condition are counted.
3. Preview
Choose the period with the date button, then click Run preview. The table shows exactly what the report will produce, with the number of lines and more matched than are shown when the line limit cut it short. If you change anything afterwards, the preview says You changed the report — refresh to see it as it is now; click Refresh.
Saving it
Fill in Report name (and, if you like, What it is for) and click Save report. The builder saves only after you have previewed exactly what you are saving; otherwise it says Run the preview first, so what is saved is what you have seen. or Give the report a name.
The report appears in the Report Centre under Custom for everyone in the company, and opens in the ordinary report window with a period control, print, export, email and memorize. To change it later use ⋮ ▸ Edit report on its card. ⋮ ▸ Delete report asks first: The report is removed for everyone in this business. The figures it reported are not affected.
Common problems
| Problem | What to do |
|---|---|
| Could not load the report list | The report list comes from your company's server. Check your internet connection and click Try again. The older report screens (see The Sales, Purchases, Inventory, Damaged and Tax report screens) still work. |
| A report on the Reports menu says This report is not available — the server may need updating, or your role cannot read it. | Your role does not include that report (payroll reports need payroll permissions), or it is not on your plan. Ask an administrator. |
| A report I expect is missing | Search for it by its QuickBooks name and by its SeroBooks name. If it still does not appear, check with your administrator that your plan and role include it. Amazon reports appear only once the company has Amazon data. |
| My pinned reports are gone | Pins are stored per company on each computer. Pin them again on this computer. |
| Edit report says That report could not be found. Refresh and try again. | Someone else deleted or changed the custom report. Leave the Report Centre and open it again. |