Chuck's Reporting Corner June 2008

Why reports are not generic

After thousands of reports, potential customers have a reasonable expectation that we would have their exact report that we could produce without any modification.

The truth is it rarely happens – if ever.  Why?

• Everybody’s QuickBooks file is different.  Pro advisors have a multitude of pet methods they like to use for vertical clients, and users have their own methodology based upon their own experience – or lack of it.
• Business owners each have their own unique vision of what their key metrics should look like. 
• Bookkeepers and money managers organize the data that best honors their workflow and daily efficiency.
• QuickBooks provides a multitude of avenues to arrive at the same operational and reporting destinations.

I delineate software applications into three succinct areas:

1. Data Input
2. Workflow
3. Data Output

Intuit has a history of listening to customers, and making the product easier to use for customers, even though the ease of use, in some areas, has made tax practitioners cringe for years. I give Intuit an A in workflow and ease of use.

But there are problems associated with ease of use: the data entry has too many holes, and contributes to inconsistent data output for a variety of users. 

The best use of the existing QuickBooks data is for compliance reasons – although I would argue that Sales Tax reporting is an Achilles heel.  Think of the data pieces involved that could affect the final Sales Tax reports:

• You could setup the tax items, incorrectly.
• You could set up the tax codes (the same tax code is used for determine whether line items are taxable/nontaxable – or whether customers are taxable/nontaxable).
• You could enter sales tax items as a line item or for the whole invoice.
• You could also use journal entries to write off invoices – and forget to affect the original invoice sales tax. 

The smart pro advisor counsels the client and gets them to understand that in order to get an accurate Sales Tax Report you MUST create the rules for data input.  Is this not true of any data output your client wants?

Many of our clients and students are eager to get to know the structure of QuickBooks, but I endeavor to get them to realize that the MOST IMPORTANT part of a custom report engagement is to get a picture of what the client wants FIRST.  Only then can you begin to ascertain where the data comes from, and how you would tie a series of tables together to achieve the end result.

This leads us back to our topic of why there are so few generic reports. 

Reason number one: we have found that almost EVERY client has a different idea of what the output should look like – and how it should run:

• Columns:  What specific data are they looking for:  it is a simple amount column, or part of a memo field, part of a job number?
• Order of Columns:  What is the most comfortable reading order; does the field need to expand to the next line, can they even fit on the same line?
• Groupings: (i.e. by class, by customer, by item, or by item by customer, etc.).  Where do you want to see subtotals, and what do you want to subtotal – and in what order?
• Sorting: Is it date, customer, invoice number, sales rep?
• Filters: (particular classes, customers, items, date ranges, etc.).  Does the client just want to see information for one sale rep, or a range of customers, or customer types?  Secondarily do they want to exclude certain items like freight, and is their item setup to excluding just a type of item, as opposed to including or excluding individual items.

Reason number two: where does the data come from?  A good example is item costing:

• Do you pull from what is actually posted for that invoice?
• Do you use the current system average cost?
• Do you use the amount someone manually enters in the item cost field?
• Do you attempt to use a cost on a vendor bill while tying it to an invoice using a custom field, memo field (or some other convoluted method)?
• Do you use a custom field on the invoice to manually enter a cost?

Believe it or not, these are all methods customers have requested, used or suggested – and there are probably more that I haven’t remembered.

Reason number three: Formatting

• Orientation: Portrait, Landscape
• Font:  Type, Size and Color
• Other: use of lines, rounding, floating $ sign,  negative number indicators, percentage, etc. etc.

In the formatting pace, you can make some suggestions for readability, but again the client usually dictates the size of font they want for their own eyes.

It never ceases to amaze me how many different types of reports we create – even within a single genre, like commissions.  But once you ask the correct questions, and get a picture example of their report, you learn not to get surprised.

You might re-use the data logic for multiple clients, but you will rarely get to re-use the same report twice.