18 Nov Work Papers
Work Papers
Work papers are of many different styles and formats. QuickBooks has in excess of 100 standard reports, many of which show the detail in the accounts in a format that supports the account balance and/or reconciliation to third party documentation. The first step to creating work papers efficiently is to review the reports already available within the software. If the report is close, but not exactly in the format desired, a few simple report modifications may achieve the desired result. The report can then be memorized for use of the format in the future.
There are numerous standard reports in QuickBooks, all of which can be modified to meet certain reporting requirements. Increased flexibility was added with Version 5.0 and higher to permit additional customization for business management purposes.
Additional reports are available with each upgrade. For example, the Pro version of QuickBooks has additional reports as compared to basic due to the additional features available. With the change in the reconciliation feature in 2002 was several new reconciliation reports available from the reports pull down menu. New with QuickBooks Premier 2003: Contractor Edition (and included in the Accountant Edition) was several reports specifically geared toward small business who use QuickBooks in Contractor industries. The same is true for the Healthcare Edition. With the expansion of industry specific flavors with version 2004 the list of standard reports continues to expand. By purchasing Premier: Accountant Edition all the industry specific reports are included as well.
TIP: Time spent developing some familiarity with the standard reports will permits creation of custom reports more efficiently. The setup function procedures are also easier if a basic understanding of reports that will be needed once the data has been entered. The best part of the report function is that it is possible to try lots of different choices, memorize them if they seem to be useful, but the original standard reports remain unchanged. Basically, there is no way to “hurt” the software no matter what is done to the reports.