Organizing by Class

Question: Is there a way to view my profit by type of customer?

Answer: QuickBooks has a function within it to allow segmenting your business in reports. It is called “classes.” You can create a set of classes, which you enter into QuickBooks and apply to customers, vendors or other categories. For instance, you can have “hospital customers,” “school customers,” etc.

You can run income statements by class. I don't recommend running balance sheets by class, because I’ve seen too many times when it miscalculates, which is more harm than benefit.

One other word of caution is to set up classes for one purpose, such as customers or suppliers. Do not mix sets of classes or your reports by class will become meaningless.

Please email accounting questions you would like considered for the column to HGatter@AccountingSupportLLC.com with the subject line of "Ask the Accountant."