How to Export QuickBooks Report to Excel

Exporting a report from QuickBooks to Excel is a simple way to take your financial analysis to the next level. While QuickBooks offers powerful built-in reporting, moving that data into a spreadsheet opens up endless possibilities for custom calculations, advanced visualizations, and combining financial data with information from other parts of your business. This tutorial will walk you through exactly how to get your data out of both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop and into Excel.

Why Export QuickBooks Reports to Excel?

You might be wondering why you'd even bother with another tool when QuickBooks has dozens of pre-built reports. Moving your data to Excel gives you a level of flexibility and analytical power that no single software can provide on its own. It allows you to step outside the predefined templates and truly make the data your own.

Here are a few key advantages:

• Advanced Analysis and Forecasting: In Excel, you can build financial models, run "what-if" scenarios, and create detailed sales or expense forecasts using your actual QuickBooks data as a baseline.
• Custom Charts and Dashboards: While QuickBooks has decent charting, Excel offers complete control over your visualizations. You can build perfectly branded charts and combine multiple data points into a single dashboard view.
• Combining Data Sources: Your financial data doesn't exist in a vacuum. In Excel, you can merge your Profit and Loss report with marketing spend from your ad platforms or CRM data from Salesforce to calculate things like customer acquisition cost (CAC) or return on investment (ROI) by campaign.
• Simplified Sharing: Not everyone on your team or board needs a QuickBooks license. Exporting to a clean, well-formatted Excel file makes it easy to share critical financial insights with any stakeholder.

How to Export Reports from QuickBooks Online (QBO) to Excel

Getting your reports out of QuickBooks Online is a straightforward process. The most important thing is to make sure you've customized the report before you export it to get exactly the data you need.

Step 1: Navigate to the Reports Tab

First, log in to your QuickBooks Online account. On the left-hand navigation menu, click on Reports. This will take you to the main reporting center where all of your standard, custom, and management reports are stored.

Step 2: Find and Run the Report You Need

QuickBooks organizes reports by category, such as "Business Overview," "Sales and Customers," or "Expenses and Vendors." You can use the search bar at the top of the page to find a specific report by name. For this example, let's say you want to export a Profit and Loss report.

Find the "Profit and Loss" report and click on its title to run it.

Step 3: Customize Your Report's Date Range and Filters

Once the report loads, you'll see a set of customization options at the top. This is the most important step for ensuring your export contains the right information. You can adjust things like:

• Report period: Change the date range from "This Month" to "Last Quarter," "This Year-to-date," or set a custom range.
• Display columns by: Break down the report by days, weeks, months, quarters, or customers. This is great for trend analysis.
• Compare another period: Show a side-by-side comparison with the previous year or previous period.
• Filter: Add filters to include or exclude specific data, such as looking at a certain class, customer, or location.

Take a moment to set these options correctly. Once you're happy with how the report looks on screen, you're ready to export.

Step 4: Export the Report to Excel

In the top-right corner of the report window, you'll see a small collection of icons. Look for the export icon, which looks like a box with an arrow pointing out of it. It's usually positioned next to the print icon.

Click the export icon, and a dropdown menu will appear. Select Export to Excel.

Your browser will then begin downloading the report as an .xlsx file. Once the download is complete, you can find the file in your computer's "Downloads" folder and open it with Microsoft Excel to start your analysis.

How to Export Reports from QuickBooks Desktop to Excel

The process for QuickBooks Desktop versions (like Pro, Premier, or Enterprise) is similar, but the user interface and export options are slightly different. The Desktop version actually gives you more control over the export itself.

Step 1: Go to the Report Center

From the top menu bar in QuickBooks Desktop, click on Reports. This will open the Report Center, where you can find all available reports neatly categorized.

Step 2: Select and Generate Your Report

Browse through the categories or use the search bar to find the report you want to export. Let's use the Profit & Loss Standard report as an example. Double-click it to run the report.

Step 3: Customize the Report

Just like in QBO, you'll want to customize the report before you export it. The customization options are located at the top of the report window. Set your desired date range from the "Dates" dropdown and use the "Customize Report" button for more advanced filtering, such as filtering by Account, Class, or Item.

Step 4: Use the "Excel" Export Button

Once the report is configured, look for the Excel button in the report's toolbar at the top. Click on it, and a dropdown menu will appear with a couple of options.

Step 5: Choose Your Excel Export Option

This is where QuickBooks Desktop offers some neat functionality that QBO lacks:

• Create a new worksheet: This is the most common option. It will export your report's data into a brand-new Excel file.
• Update an existing worksheet: This powerful feature lets you refresh the data in an Excel file you've already exported and formatted. If you've built charts or formulas based on a previous export, you can update the raw data without breaking all your work. QuickBooks will update the numbers but preserve your formatting and formulas on other sheets.

When you select "Create new worksheet," you'll get another dialog box asking where to place it in a new or existing workbook. For more control, click the Advanced button. Here, you can toggle options like:

• Auto Filtering: Automatically adds filter dropdowns to your columns in Excel.
• Freeze Panes: Keeps your headers visible as you scroll down through the data.
• QuickBooks Export Tips: Adds a helpful tips sheet to your Excel file.

Make your selections and click "Export."

Step 6: Open and Work in Excel

QuickBooks will automatically open Excel and populate a new worksheet with your report data. It's now ready for you to format, analyze, and visualize.

Tips for Working with Exported QuickBooks Data

Getting the data into Excel is just the first step. Here are a few tips to make your analysis more efficient and insightful.

1. Immediately Format as a Table: The very first thing you should do is convert your raw data export into an official Excel Table. Click anywhere inside your data, and press Ctrl + T (or Cmd + T on a Mac). This makes your data much easier to work with — formulas are easier to write, sorting and filtering is a breeze, and any charts you build from it will update automatically as you add new data.

2. Clean Up Headings and Totals: Exports from QuickBooks often include extra empty rows, merged header cells, or summary totals at the bottom. Delete these before you start your analysis, especially if you plan to use PivotTables. Your goal is a clean, rectangular block of data with a single header row.

3. Use PivotTables to Summarize Data: PivotTables are your best friend for quickly summarizing long reports. For instance, you could take a detailed Transaction List report exported from QuickBooks and use a PivotTable to instantly summarize total sales by customer or total expenses by vendor, all without writing a single formula.

4. Keep Your Raw Data Separate: Never do your analysis on the original exported sheet. Make a copy of the export tab or, even better, reference the raw data tab from a separate "Dashboard" or "Analysis" tab in your workbook. This way, if you make a mistake, you can always go back to the original, untouched data without needing to re-export from QuickBooks.

Final Thoughts

Moving your data from QuickBooks to Excel is a simple process for both Online and Desktop versions that allows for deeper financial analysis and customized reporting. By customizing your report before export and using tools like Excel Tables and PivotTables, you can turn a standard report into a powerful dashboard for understanding business performance.

Of course, manually exporting reports every week or month can become a chore, especially when you need to combine that data with information from marketing or sales platforms. To automate this entire process, we built Graphed. Instead of moving CSVs around, you can connect your QuickBooks account directly and build real-time, interactive dashboards just by describing what you want to see. It keeps your data constantly updated, so you're always looking at the freshest numbers without lifting a finger.