Reports: what's there and how they work

What this does

Accounting → Reports in the sidebar lists the financial statements and the main detail reports. The full catalog, including a few that aren't in the sidebar, is the reports page at /accounting/reports under your shop's address:

• Financial Statements: Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, Trial Balance.
• Receivables and Payables: AR Aging and AP Aging, Vendor Spend.
• Detail: General Ledger, Sales Detail.
• Tax: Sales Tax Liability.
• Other: Uncategorized Expenses, Depreciation Schedule.

Two kinds of report

Ledger reports read posted journal entries and nothing else: Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, Trial Balance, General Ledger, Uncategorized Expenses. If a number is wrong on one of these, the fix is in the ledger (a wrong account on a transaction, an entry that didn't post), and the General Ledger report shows you which entry.

Operational reports read the shop's own records rather than the ledger: Sales Detail reads work orders and invoices line by line; Vendor Spend reads bills, checks, and card charges by vendor; the aging reports read open invoices and bills; Sales Tax Liability reads invoice lines. They agree with the ledger when everything posted, and they're the place to look when it didn't.

Controls every report shares

A date range (Start Date / End Date, or As of for a point-in-time statement; Cash Flow and Vendor Spend add presets like This Month or Last Quarter), then Run Report. Every report has Export CSV, which downloads exactly what's on screen. The General Ledger report links each line to its journal entry; the others are read-only tables.

Profit & Loss and Sales Detail carry the Accrual / Cash switch. Accrual is what the ledger records; Cash re-reads the period by money received. The switch is inert, with the reason shown, for a period that can't support a cash view; see Cash and accrual.

Before you start

reports.view (Owner, General Manager, Service Manager, Office Manager, Accountant). Reports are only as good as what's posted: work the Transaction Inbox down, approve pending bills, and post open deposit slips before you trust a month.

Common problems

The P&L and Sales Detail disagree on revenue. Sales Detail counts every work order and invoice; the P&L counts what posted. An invoice that failed to post (a missing Sales Tax Payable account, a locked period) is in one and not the other. The nightly checks flag these; see Nightly checks.

Last month's numbers changed. Something was posted, edited, voided, or re-dated into it. Lock the period once you've reported on it; see Period locking.

A report is blank. No posted entries in the range, or the range is inverted. Check the dates and Run Report again.