Financial Reports: Reading What Your Books Say
Reports are where bookkeeping stops being data entry and starts being useful. This guide covers which reports run in DynaTax AI today, the one setting that changes every number on the page, and which report to reach for when something does not look right.
Which Reports Run Today
The report catalogue is long, and it is organized the way an accountant thinks — business overview, who owes you, what you owe, sales and customers, expenses and vendors, sales tax, employees, and a section for your accountant. Not every entry in it is built yet: reports still being worked on are marked Coming soon in the list, and some appear only if you use the module they belong to, such as payroll, inventory or projects.
These are the ones that run now:
- Profit & Loss — plus P&L by Month, P&L Comparison and P&L Detail
- Balance Sheet
- Cash Flow
- Trial Balance and General Ledger
- A/R Aging — summary and detail
- A/P Aging — summary and detail
- Transaction Report and Subledger Tie-Out
Business owners find these under Reports → Financial Reports. Tax professionals open the client and go to Bookkeeping → Reports — the same reports, off the same engine, so a number never differs depending on who ran it.
Cash vs Accrual
Every report runs on one of two bases, and the choice changes the numbers — often dramatically. It is the first thing to check when a report surprises you.
Cash basis
Income counts when the money arrives; expenses count when the money leaves. It matches your bank account, which is why most small businesses file this way.
Accrual basis
Income counts when you earn it and expenses when you incur them, regardless of when cash moves. It shows what a month actually produced rather than what happened to settle in it.
The Three You Will Use Most
Profit & Loss
Income minus costs over a period. Because DynaTax AI keeps cost of goods sold as its own account type, the P&L shows gross profit as a real line — revenue minus COGS — before operating expenses. That line is what tells you whether the thing you sell makes money, separately from what it costs to run the company.
P&L by Month spreads the same period into monthly columns, which is usually more useful than the total: a single annual figure hides both seasonality and the month something went wrong.
Balance Sheet
What you own, owe and are left with, at one moment. Unlike the P&L it is not a period — it is a photograph of a date.
Cash Flow
Where the money actually went. This is the report that explains the most common complaint in small business — a profitable month with an empty bank account — usually because profit went into unpaid invoices, inventory, or paying down debt, none of which appear as expenses on the P&L.
Reports That Check Your Books
The remaining reports are diagnostic — you run them when a number looks wrong, not monthly.
- Trial Balance — every account with its debit and credit totals. The standard starting point when the balance sheet does not balance.
- General Ledger — every entry in every account, in order. Where you go when you need to see exactly what made a balance what it is.
- Transaction Report — activity across accounts, for tracing a specific amount.
- Subledger Tie-Out — checks that the detail agrees with the control account. If A/R aging totals one number and the balance sheet says another, this is the report that finds the gap.
- A/R and A/P Aging — who owes you and who you owe, bucketed by how overdue. Summary for the totals, detail for the invoice-by-invoice list.
Comparison Periods
A single period tells you very little on its own. Reports can be compared against:
- The previous year — the same months a year earlier, which controls for seasonality
- The previous period — the run immediately before this one
- A custom period — any date range you choose
For a seasonal business, compare to the previous year rather than the previous month. A landscaper down 40% from July to November has not got a problem; a landscaper down 40% from last November has.
Saving and Exporting
A report you have set up the way you like — right basis, right period, right comparison — can be saved and re-run later without rebuilding the settings. Frequently used reports can also be marked as favourites so they surface first.
Any report can be exported as PDF or CSV. Rough rule: PDF for anything you send to a person — a lender, a partner, your accountant — because it is fixed and cannot be quietly edited. CSV for anything that needs further work in a spreadsheet.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my P&L disagree with my bank balance?
It is supposed to. The P&L only shows income and expenses; loan repayments, owner draws, equipment purchases and money tied up in unpaid invoices all move cash without touching it. Run the cash flow report to see the difference explained.
A report I want says “Coming soon”.
Then it is in the catalogue but not built yet. The list is deliberately complete rather than trimmed to what runs, so you can see what is planned — but a Coming soon entry will not produce numbers.
Should I run reports on cash or accrual?
Run whichever basis you file on for anything tax-related, and look at the other one when you are making a business decision. Your accountant will tell you which basis your return uses.
My accountant sees different numbers to me.
They should not — client and professional views run the same engine over the same books. Check that the basis, period and comparison settings match before assuming the data differs; those three explain nearly every apparent discrepancy.