Some of the best time-savers in QuickBooks Online aren’t big features. They’re small ones, used consistently. Bookmarks, and specifically, bookmarking your customized reports, are near the top of that list. It’s one of my genuine favourites, and most people don’t know it’s there.
Let’s walk through what it does, why it matters, and how to set it up.
First: what bookmarks actually do in QBO
If you use QuickBooks Online regularly, you almost certainly visit the same handful of places over and over. A particular report, a specific module, the screen you check every Monday morning. Bookmarks let you pin those to a sidebar so they’re one click away, instead of clicking through the same menus to find them every single time.
On their own, that’s a nice little convenience. But the real magic shows up when you combine bookmarks with customized reports.
Why this matters more than it used to
Here’s an honest aside: QuickBooks Online has been through some interface changes, and the newer layout can take more clicks to get where you’re going. Things that used to be a click or two away can feel a little more buried now. Whatever you think of the redesign, it makes a trick like this more valuable, not less. If the path to your favourite report got longer, a bookmark that skips the path entirely is exactly the fix.
In other words: the messier the menus, the more a one-click shortcut is worth.
The real power move: customize, then bookmark
This is the part most people miss. You don’t just bookmark a standard stock report, you bookmark a report you’ve already set up exactly the way you want it.
Think about a report you pull regularly, say a Profit & Loss. On its own it’s generic. But once you customize it with the right date range, the right comparison period, the columns and filters you actually care about, it becomes your report, tuned to the questions you ask every month.
The problem? Re-customizing that report every time you open it is tedious. That’s where bookmarking a saved, customized report changes the game. You do the setup once, save it, and bookmark it. From then on, your exact report, configured your way, is one click away. No rebuilding, no re-filtering, no hunting.
How to set it up
The general flow looks like this (QBO’s exact menu labels shift from time to time, so the wording on your screen may differ slightly):
- Open the report you use often: for example, your Profit & Loss.
- Customize it the way you actually want it: date range (e.g. ‘Last month’), comparison columns, filters, the works.
- Save the customization so QBO remembers your setup as its own saved report. (Look for the option to save the customized report — it’ll then live in your custom/saved reports)
- Bookmark it using the bookmark/ribbon option, so it pins to your sidebar for one-click access.
Now your custom report isn’t just saved, it’s immediately reachable, every time, without digging.
A few ways to actually use this
- Bookmark your “Monday morning” reports. The two or three you check at the start of every week. Pin them so your weekly review starts in one click.
- Bookmark a cash-flow or A/R view if keeping an eye on who owes you (and what’s due) is (or needs to be) a regular task.
- Bookmark the modules you live in, not just reports, if you’re in the same section daily, pin it.
- Keep your bookmark list short and intentional. The value is in fast access to the few things you use most. Bookmark everything and you’ve just rebuilt the cluttered menu you were trying to escape.
The bigger principle
This is a tiny optimization, and that’s exactly the point. The biggest time savings in bookkeeping rarely come from one dramatic change. They come from shaving small, repeated frictions: the click you do fifty times a week, the report you rebuild every month, until the software stops fighting you.
Set your customized reports up once, bookmark them, and let QBO do the remembering. It’s a five-minute setup that pays you back every week.
Want your QuickBooks Online set up so that it works for you instead of the other way around. Custom reports, bookmarks, and all the small settings that quietly save hours? That’s exactly what I help businesses dial in. Learn more about working together and let’s make your books a little less work.