How to run financial reports for a month, quarter or any period

Year-end statements are only part of the job. A client wants to see how the December quarter went, a bank wants the half year, and you want to look at last month without exporting anything. Custom periods let you run a report for any run of whole months, from the same screen and in the same format.

Running a custom period

1. Open a report and click the period dropdown at the top.
2. Choose Custom period.
3. Pick From, then Month, Quarter, Half year or Year to count forward from it, or set From and To yourself.
4. Click Apply. Report Craft fetches the figures and shows the report.

Compared with the period before

A custom period is compared with the period straight before it, of the same length, not with last year. Run October to December and the comparative is July to September, which is the question you are usually asking of a part-year: is it getting better or worse?

Quicker the second time

• Saved periods reappear in the dropdown, up to eight per ledger, so a period you run each quarter is one click away.
• Figures are fetched once, so going back to a period is instant.
• The last 12 complete months are fetched in the background after a refresh of a QuickBooks, Xero or MYOB ledger, ready to pick.

Good to know

Custom periods work on QuickBooks, Xero, MYOB and imported ledgers. The Dashboard and graphs stay annual, because they compare financial years. On a connected ledger, a custom period shows the package's own figures without your Report Craft adjustments, and the report says so.

See it in the custom periods how-to video.