Summarize Payroll Data in Excel
This feature is available in QuickBooks 2004 and later, and enables you to generate numerous payroll reports in Excel with just a couple of mouse clicks. Keep in mind that the mix of reports that you see may vary, based on your version of QuickBooks. In addition, the Excel-based reports take two different formats:
- Pivot table-based: Excel's pivot tables feature summarizes rows of date into a concise format. In this case, the rows of data are in QuickBooks, so the resulting spreadsheet becomes an extension of QuickBooks. In general, pivot tables offer several special benefits:
- You can rearrange the pivot table by dragging and dropping fields.
- You can double-click on any number within the pivot table to drill down to the underlying detail.
- Certain fields in the pivot table include drop-down lists, from which you can exclude certain items or employees.
- You can set the pivot table to put a page break between each employee or item, which enables you to easily print a separate report to share with each person on your team. - Worksheet-based: The worksheet-based reports that QuickBooks generates are static in nature, meaning you can't double-click on any numbers to view the underlying detail. These reports are similar in nature to reports that are generated when you use the Send to Excel feature to analyze any of QuickBooks built-in reports. You can, however, copy and paste portions of the reports into other workbooks, or modify the reports to meet your needs.