Angela Meharg on QuickBooks Reporting Challenges and Custom Reporting for Accounting Firms 

QuickBooks reporting can be a major headache for accounting firms, bookkeepers, and business owners. Many teams spend hours exporting data, fixing spreadsheets, and rebuilding reports each month, often relying on guesswork to keep up with complex requirements.  

Ace Cloud Hosting spoke with Angela Meharg, founder of Datisfy Inc. and a Top 100 ProAdvisor/International ProAdvisor since 2020, where her sole focus is on custom reporting for QuickBooks. When first asked to build a custom report for QuickBooks in 2013 – a split commission calculator – she learned first-hand how challenging it can be to get data out of QuickBooks. 

In this informational video, Angela Meharg explains why multi-entity reporting remains such a struggle for many firms, how traditional spreadsheet-based approaches create errors and inefficiencies, and what better solutions look like for saving time, reducing mistakes, and meeting deadlines with confidence. 

Why QuickBooks Reports Don’t Show What You Need

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Angela Meharg, founder of Datisfy. Since 2013, I’ve been helping companies get the reports they wish QuickBooks could generate because I kept seeing smart people stuck in frustrating manual processes just to get answers from their own data.

Let’s talk about when you actually might need a custom report. You might be thinking, well, we already use the reports inside of QuickBooks. Why would I bother? Well, what do you know about how much time your team is spending exporting data, reformatting it, and rebuilding the same spreadsheets every month? It’s frustrating because you know that the data is in there, but you can’t access it the way you need it.

Here are a few clues that it might be time for something better. Maybe someone is exporting reports just to add custom totals or formatting. Maybe you’re regrouping the accounts and subtotals for the board in a format QuickBooks can’t provide. Or maybe you need a commission report that does some complicated calculations, like splits or quotas. Or how about gross margins?

Custom reports can solve problems you might have assumed were just part of the job, your job. Tailored layouts, dynamic calculations, or visuals that QuickBooks won’t let you do. Pulling in related data that QuickBooks doesn’t store, like project notes or goals, for example. Automatically generate and distribute reports on time every time.

I’m not sure if this is for you, but if you’re a bookkeeper or accountant spending hours on this kind of work, you should probably be charging like a developer or finding a better way.

Custom reporting is technical. It requires a deep understanding of business data, relational databases, and how QuickBooks actually stores information under the hood. Before you make up your mind about what QuickBooks can or can’t do, it’s worth knowing the data is already in there.

But getting it out and turning it into something useful is another story. Unless you work with this data every day, it’s not something you’re likely to tackle successfully. And while Intuit offers many standard reports, they cannot possibly predict all the ways you might need to see your business data. They’ve also kept access relatively closed off, which can make things harder for users who just want clarity. That’s where people like us come in.

Most people don’t realize it. There’s a small but mighty category of specialists who do exactly this, and I know most of them because there are very few of us. Let me leave you with this. What are the reporting roadblocks in your business? The manual steps, the rework, the frustration. Just imagine if those steps disappeared and your reports were just ready when you needed them.

How open-minded would you be to explore a more intelligent approach to reporting without having to leave QuickBooks for a more sophisticated ERP? We should talk about it.

How To Consolidate Reporting for Multiple Company Files in QuickBooks?

Transcript:  

Hi, I’m Angela Meharg from Datisfy. I started this business over 10 years ago because I saw the same issue again and again. Businesses running multiple QuickBooks files with no good way to get consolidated single-click financials.  

If you manage more than one company file or account, what do you know about the time it takes to build consolidated reports manually? Here’s the usual process. Export data from each file, combine it in Excel, build formulas, recheck totals, and repeat it all again next month, or repeat it all if you discover an error in the numbers.  

That’s a lot of effort for something that should be automatic. I’m not sure if this is for you, but if you’re looking for a straightforward way to get great-looking consolidated financials, this is the kind of reporting that can get you there.  

Proper consolidated reporting includes: 

• Clean data merged from an unlimited number of files or accounts.  
• Consistent or customized account numbers, names, and groupings.  
• Support for different fiscal calendars or currencies.  
• Optional slicing by class or location.  

And yes, you’ll need a place to store that data. That means an external database and/or reporting platform. You might have heard recently that Inuit has launched something called QuickBooks Enterprise Suite, which appears to handle multi-entity needs. It likely helps with intercompany transactions and adds a dimensions feature for adding more context.  

But here’s the catch. At this stage of its development, it’s simply a rebranded version of QuickBooks Online Advanced for a hefty price tag. So much so that pricing isn’t even made public. And even if you do invest in that, you still can’t create reports exactly the way you want them if the system doesn’t offer those columns or layouts. Most people assume QuickBooks just can’t do it.  

But that’s not entirely true. It just needs a little help. Just imagine having reports that show you everything you need and want from all entities in a format that actually works for you.  

How open-minded would you be to build a reporting system that reflects how you actually run your business? Let’s talk about it. 

How Datisfy Improves QuickBooks Enterprise Reporting for Manufacturers and Wholesalers 

Transcript: 

Hi, I’m Angela Meharg from Datisfy. Since 2013, I’ve worked with dozens of manufacturing and wholesale companies using QuickBooks Enterprise who were surprised to learn they couldn’t get the reports they actually needed, even though the data is in there.  

QuickBooks does have powerful features for inventory and assemblies, but the reporting is another story.   

Let me ask you this. What do you know about how your team tracks component requirements across all your open sales orders? Especially in the case when the same component is used in multiple different assemblies.  

Here’s what most people do. They export reports, build massive spreadsheets, and try to piece it all together every week. Or worse, they just guess. I’m not sure if this is for you, but if you’re building assemblies and managing inventory, you’ll want to know what we’ve created. Our manufacturing report package fills the gaps.  

It shows total quantities of components needed across all open sales orders. It helps with timing when parts are needed based on the due dates of sales orders and purchase orders. It combines inventory levels with historical usage to guide your purchasing, and it projects what you’ll need before you run out. That kind of visibility can make or break your ability to deliver on time and manage customer expectations.   

Let’s be real; most accountants or bookkeepers are simply not equipped or compensated to build this kind of report. Just imagine being able to see exactly what your production team needs without touching a spreadsheet, avoiding the cost and business interruption of implementing a new inventory system.   

How open-minded would you be to see how better reporting could support your manufacturing? Let’s talk about it.  

All of Angela’s and Datisfy’s favorite tools, and QuickBooks Desktop, run seamlessly on Ace Cloud Hosting.

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