QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual

Filtering Reports

Reports that show individual transactions usually show more information than you want. For example, a Purchases by Item Detail report could run page after page, listing your weekly purchases of Turtle Chow. Filtering a report removes transactions that don't meet your criteria, so you can home in on just the Turtle Chow purchases from Myrtle's Turtle Mart.

In QuickBooks, filters are unlike sorting in that you can apply as many as you want at the same time. Each filter adds one more test that a transaction must pass to appear in your report. For example, when you set the date range for a report, what you're really doing is adding a filter that restricts transactions to the ones that occurred between the starting and ending dates. Then, if you want to find the sales for only your corporate customers, you can add a filter based on the Customer Type field.

QuickBooks provides dozens of filters, from the most common, such as dates, items, and transaction types, to the less useful, such as Workmen's Comp Codes and FOB (that's Free on Board, discussed on page 190).

Built-in reports already contain some filters, but you can customize a built-in report by adding additional filters, editing the filters already there, or removing filters. In the report window, click Modify Report and then, in the Modify Report dialog box, click the Filters tab.

Depending on the field you choose as a filter, QuickBooks provides different criteria, one example of which is shown in Figure 19-15 ...