Custom report layouts

Every business likes to see its numbers slightly differently. A custom report layout is a saved design for your Profit & Loss or Balance Sheet: which lines appear, in what order, grouped how, under what names, and with which extra columns. Save a design once, and it’s one click away every time you run the report.

You can have as many layouts as you like — say, a “Board summary” that shows only the big groups, and a “Detail” one with every account — and switch between them while you work.

Which reports support this

Custom layouts apply to the Profit & Loss and the Balance Sheet. All the other reports use their standard layout.

Switching layouts

Open Reports → Profit & Loss (or Balance Sheet) and look at the bar at the bottom of the report. The Layout picker lists the standard layout plus any saved layouts your organization has created — the one everyone sees by default is marked (default).

Pick a layout, then click Run Report. Nothing is saved until you decide to save it — switching layouts is just a viewing choice.

Who can do what

Anyone who can see reports can switch layouts. Creating and editing layouts is an admin job — if you don’t see the Edit layout button, ask your admin.

Editing a layout

On the Profit & Loss or Balance Sheet page, click Edit layout in the bottom bar. A full-screen editor opens showing the report exactly as you had it on screen — your starting point is the report you were just looking at, not a blank page.

The editor has two parts: a live canvas of the report you rearrange directly, and a settings panel on the right for whatever row you’ve selected. As you rearrange things, the canvas shows your real numbers, so you always see what you’re getting.

The building blocks

A report is a tree of blocks, nested as deep as you like:

Block	What it shows
Group	A heading with rows (or other groups) inside it, and an optional total row
Account row	One account from your chart of accounts
Funnel	The catch-all for one account type — every account of that type you haven’t placed explicitly renders at the funnel’s position, and accounts you create later flow in automatically
Formula row	A calculated line built from other rows — for example Liabilities + Equity

One funnel per account type

Each account type (Bank, Current Asset, Expense, and so on) has one funnel — in the editor its rows carry a small funnel icon. Accounts you place somewhere specific are skipped by it automatically — an account only ever appears once.

Rearranging the report

• Drag a row onto a group’s heading to drop it inside that group.
• Drag between rows — a line shows where the row will land.
• Drag a top-level group’s heading to move the whole group; drop it on the very top or bottom edge of another group to place it between groups.
• Select any row and use the Position buttons in the panel to move it up or down, nest it into the group above, or lift it out one level.
• Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y (Cmd on a Mac) undo and redo as you go.

Deleting a group never deletes its rows — they lift out to where the group was, so nothing gets lost. Account rows and engine-computed rows (like Retained Earnings) can’t be deleted at all; they always belong to the statement, and simply move.

Deleting a group that a formula uses

If a formula row adds up a group you delete, you’ll be asked to confirm. The formula is marked with a warning triangle and shows its broken references in the panel until you fix it — a layout with broken references can’t be saved.

Styling and collapsing

Select any row to rename it and style it — bold, italic, underline. A group’s total row has its own label and styling (click the group’s Total row).

Collapsed renders a group on the report as a single row summing the sub-total. In the editor the group keeps showing its contents with a Collapsed badge, so you always see what’s inside; the report shows the one summarized row. Turning Collapsed on turns the separate total row off — the summarized row is the total.

Flipping a row’s sign (credit vs debit)

Rows display with their natural sign — income as a positive credit, expenses as a positive debit. To show a row the other way round, you don’t need a formula: use a group’s Sign convention.

1. Click Add row and add a Group.
2. Drag the row (or rows) you want flipped into the group.
3. With the group selected, set Sign convention in the panel to the opposite of the rows’ natural one — Credit positive to flip an expense, Debit positive to flip income.
4. Turn Collapsed on, so the group renders as a single row.

The collapsed row sums its contents with the flipped sign — an expense reading as a credit, income reading as a deduction — while the underlying figures and every other row are untouched. Delete the group later and the rows lift straight back out, sign and all.

Adding rows and columns

Click Add row in the toolbar to add a Group, a Formula row, or a Spacing gap. Build a formula in the panel by picking rows to add or subtract, step by step. Accounts come from your chart of accounts — create the account first (Accounting → Chart of Accounts), and it flows into its type’s funnel automatically unless you drag it somewhere specific.

Click a column heading (or the Add column button) to add extra columns — up to twelve:

• Prior year — the same figures 1 to 12 years back.
• Fixed date range — any dates you like, for a “this quarter vs. last quarter” style comparison.
• Variance — the difference between two columns, so you can see how much things moved.
• Percentage — each line as a share of a chosen column.
• Notes — a free-text note next to any line (“rent went up in March”).
• Formula — your own calculation over other columns.

Use Insert Content to add text above or below the report — headings, explanations, or commentary with basic formatting. They appear on screen, in print/PDF, and in the Excel download. You can also set a page break before any row so long reports print neatly.

What stays automatic

Group totals always sum everything inside them — including nested groups, so the math always matches what’s shown. An account the layout leaves without a home — no funnel covers its type and it isn’t placed individually — collects in a trailing Unassigned section with its own subtotal, so nothing quietly disappears.

Saving your work

Click Save and give the layout a name. Turn on Org default if this design should be what everyone in your organization sees first.

A few safeguards keep editing friendly:

• Undo/redo works as you’d expect, and the editor warns you if you try to leave with unsaved changes.
• If another admin saved changes to the same layout while you were editing, you’ll be offered Overwrite or Reload — no silent clobbering.
• If the layout was deleted in the meantime, you can Save as new layout instead of losing your work.

Rename or duplicate saved layouts from the small menu next to the layout picker; deleting a layout that’s in use returns the report to the standard layout.

Saving the report itself

Separately from layouts, the Save button on the report bar saves the report as a document:

Status	Figures
Draft	Work in progress — figures stay live
Custom	A saved custom report — figures stay live
Published	Freezes the currently displayed figures into a snapshot that never changes

Published snapshots capture exactly what was on screen — ideal for month-end packs and year-end archives — and can be archived (and restored) later from your saved reports list.

Worked example: a simpler P&L for the monthly meeting

Your full Profit & Loss has forty accounts; the monthly team meeting only cares about the shape of things.

1. Run the Profit & Loss and click Edit layout.
2. Drag all the income accounts under one new group called Money in, and the expense accounts into groups like Team, Office, and Marketing — turn Collapsed on for each so the report shows one summarized row per group.
3. Add a Prior year column and a Variance column, so each line shows this year, last year, and the change.
4. Use Insert Content to add a short note under the report: “Figures are preliminary until the bank feed is reconciled.”
5. Save as Monthly summary and tick Org default.

Next month, open the report — your summary is already on screen. Click Save, pick Published, and the frozen snapshot is ready for the meeting.