Account Quickreport question

[DRD1390]

New to QB, I use the Enter Bills/Pay Bills/Print Checks to pay bills -- No problem there. The problem I have is when our Corporte Office want the 'Account Quickreport' report, it list in the Splits column 'Account payable' instead of the actual Expense Account that was selected. Is there a way to change this on the report.

[Wartrace]

Go to customize report in the upper left, select the filters tab and click on accounts. You can scroll up and select "all" and it will show all accounts.

[DRD1390]

Thanks for the reply, but that didn't work. Account payable still shows in the 'split column'. I need the 'Expense Account' that I assign when I enter the information in the check to show in the 'split column' on the report. I also noticed that I have a negative balance in Account payable after paying all bills.

[Wartrace]

Ok, go back and click filters and in the account select choose "All income and expense" accounts. I just did it on an accounts payable quick report and it showed the expense account.

[BookemDanno]

I realize this is an a month-old thread, but it didn't look to me like the replies answered the question I thought was being asked (then again, I'm not entirely certain what the question was).

If you're making an Account QuickReport of your expense accounts, the report will be divided up and subtotalled for each account, and the account will be named in the heading of each section.

Assuming that you want only the Accounts Payable transactions that had expense lines associated with them (that is, only the bills and credits, not the bill payments), do the following:

1. Select an expense account on your Chart of Accounts (Ctrl-A to open it if using Windows)
2. Open the "Modify Report: Account QuickReport" window (either hit Ctrl-Q, or select QuickReport from the Reports menu at the bottom of the screen or from the right-click menu on the account line)
3. Enter the desired date range.
4. In the Columns list, un-check "Split" (since you said you do not want that column) and then check "Account" (since you do want that one).
5. From the Filters tab, change the selected Account name (click the triangle and scroll up on the resultant menu) to either "All ordinary expense accounts", "Expense and other expense accounts", or "Multiple accounts..." (which allows you create a custom list of which accounts to include).
6. Select "Transaction Type" and change it from "All" to either "Bill" or "Multiple Transaction Types" (if you wish to include also Bill Credits, Checks, Credit Card, etc.)
7. Click OK.

That will give you a report of the line-item transactions for the desired expense accounts as of when they were expensed (which is not necessarily the date you paid for them).

Note that, as I mentioned above, this report will be subtotalled for each account. I don't believe there is any way to make an Account QuickReport for expense accounts that is sorted exclusively by date. (If you have Excel and need the lines sorted only by date, export the report to a spreadsheet where you can re-sort the lines and re-format the report.)

Now, if you were trying to create a QuickReport on Accounts Payable (rather than on expense accounts), do as above, but select your Accounts Payable account for the desired account, click on the radio button next to "For detail accounts matching", and select "Expense and other expense accounts" (or, as above, which ever filter you desire) from the scrolling menu below it.

Again, the report will be divided by account rather than just by date and results will be dated by the date they became payable, not by the date you paid for them.

The only difference between the two reports is, I believe, that the QuickReport on A/P will have a Retained Earnings line expressing the A/P account's beginning balance (and there is also a Balance column on the right, but you can easily add that to an Expense QuickReport). But, unless you're including all matching accounts and transaction types, the A/P balance is pretty much meaningless.

You cannot make a report on Accounts Payable which lists the expenses dated by when they were paid, because a bill payment transaction does not have any expense lines associated with it (it typically only moves funds between the A/P account and a bank or credit card account). This limitation is not exclusive to Quickbooks; rather, it is inherent to double-entry bookkeeping.