Axiom CPA, P.A. - Axiom CPA Blog

It seems like 99% of the world uses QuickBooks. That's not necessarilly a bad thing, but the majority of QuickBooks users are not accountants and that can cause problems when it comes to getting accurate reports out of the system. One of the problems I run into a lot is that people don't know how to use the reports in QuickBooks. It might be more accurate to say they use TOO MANY reports. Here's a little piece of advice I give my clients. When you open QuickBooks the first thing you should do is bring up the balance sheet and the profit and loss.

That's it, don't bother with quick reports or even open the chart of accounts. Don't run transaction reports or sales by customer or any of that stuff. Just work off the financial statements. Once in a while you will need to review vendor or customer payments and you can use the aging summary reports. Everything else can be handled from the balance sheet and profit and loss. The reason I favor this approach is that the financial statements present the actual fiscal position of the company. Using the drill down feature and the financial statements I can get to ANY transaction in the company, and I'm doing by starting from the proverbial 50,000 foot view.

I'm not just advocating a simpler method of accessing data. I'm trying to get my clients more accustomed to looking at their own financial statements. Somewhere along the way most business owners have become convinced that the only person qualified to review their statements is an accountant. That's just not true. You should be looking at your own statements every day or every week. And when you're in there every day drilling down to discover what's behind your numbers you will have a much better understanding of your financial statements and what makes them tick. That's not only more efficient, it's just better business.