Advanced QuickBooks Reporting and QuickBooks Advanced Reporting (not redundant)

Are you getting the reports you want out of QuickBooks? Many times, the limitations of QuickBooks’ predefined reports make us reach outside and use complex data access tools or reporting add-ons that may have limitations of their own.

Enter QQube (by Clearify). It is a technology that eliminates the need to know connections, tables, and relationships. No more having to be a reporting expert. You can use Excel, Crystal Reports, or the data analysis tool of your choice. Included is an Excel add-in that allows to drag and drop information into a spreadsheet for simple data lists or for use in powerful pivot tables. The ease of use allows anyone to create and manipulate data and reports on their own. Imagine being able to simply drag and drop fields into Excel and have QQube build the pivot table. Sample pivot tables are included as a starting point, or you can create them from scratch.

Reports that would take hours or days before, now take minutes to create. A good example is inventory/sales reporting. We created a Sales by Item Summary for multiple periods showing at the same time as well as gross margin by product and the ability to filter by item range (as opposed to by selecting “multiple items” as you do in QuickBooks). This report took us no more than five minutes to create.

Another area where QQube is powerful is job costing. For another client, we built an Estimates vs Actuals report with additional data fields not available in QuickBooks built-in reports, and the ability to report multiple selected time periods (not necessarily adjacent) together. This also took minutes instead of hours to build. As an added bonus, because of QQube’s ability to combine data from multiple QuickBooks company files, the client can use the exact same spreadsheet and toggle/filter by company name to display each company’s underlying report. And further, the spreadsheet can be sent for others to see even if they don’t have QuickBooks.

QQube works with all current desktop versions of QuickBooks (Pro, Premier, Enterprise Solutions). QQube is the creation of Chuck Vigeant, who has worked in the accounting and database technology field longer than anyone in the industry. I know no one outside or inside of Intuit who understands the QuickBooks database structure better than he does.
QQube is what we use today for our clients’ advanced QuickBooks reporting needs. Another versatile tool is the new “Advanced Reporting” module in QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 15.0 (not available in previous QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions versions). It provides enhanced searching and filtering, including pre-built charts and search boxes. You can start from a group of reports you commonly use or create your own unique report to meet a specific business need. Advanced Reporting “lives” in its own window launched from inside QuickBooks and does not support reporting on multiple company files. While a vast improvement over QuickBooks built-in reports, it does require some understanding of database tables and relationships.
Two very good reporting solutions, one used for virtually unlimited advanced QuickBooks reporting, and the other is the QuickBooks Advanced Reporting module built in QuickBooks Enterprise. Hopefully this did not confuse anyone… and now you know how I was not being redundant in this article’s title (!!)

…MARIO