Design a Financial Statement

How do I

Sage 50 has a powerful tool called the Financial Statement Design window. With this tool, you can create customized financial statements. Or, you can just tweak the existing financial statements to make them fit your business better.

Note: While the Financial Statements Design window gives you more individual control over each aspect of the financial design process, it’s probably a good idea to start designing with the Financial Statement Wizard. That way, you’ll have a better grasp of the basic elements of a statement and how to put them together effectively. Once you learn how the wizard builds a statement, designing financial statements on your own will become less of a challenge.

To customize an existing financial statement

You cannot design financial statements from scratch; but, you can customize any of the pre-defined financial statements to meet your business needs. This feature has many formatting options such as user-selectable fonts, customized headers and footers, and text alignment.

From the Reports & Forms menu, select Financial Statements. Then in the Select a Report or Form window, select the statement from the report list. Tell me more about selecting a financial statement.
Select the Design button at the top of the Select a Report or Form window to display the window where you can design financial statements.

Note: You can also display the financial statement in design mode while it is displayed onscreen by selecting the Design button in the Report window.

In the Financial Statement Design window you have several options available in which to modify existing statements. There are two areas in which to work: Header and Body areas.

Each row has a button next to it that defines the row.
To the left of the design window are design tools. These assist in selecting and adding various types of design elements (types of rows).

To move a row, do one of the following:

To move a row up or down a single position in the series of rows, use the Up and Down buttons. Just select the row button for the row you want to move. Then select the Up button to move the row up one position, or select the Down button to move the row down one position.
To move a row or rows multiple positions, select the corresponding row button(s) with your mouse pointer; then select the Cut button. Now, with the mouse pointer, select the row button above which you want to insert the row(s), and select the Paste button.

To modify a row's properties, select the row button, or move your mouse pointer over the row in the design window. Then, right-click your mouse to display the design menu.

You can change the font or row properties using this method. There are properties for text objects, column objects, line objects, and total objects.
To delete any unwanted rows, select the row button for the row you want to remove, and then select the Cut button.

Note: If you remove a row in error, you can restore it by selecting the Undo option from the File menu or by using the keyboard shortcut CTRL+Z.
Select the Options button at the top of the Design window to display financial statement options.
When finished selecting the form options, select OK to return to the Financial Statement Design window.
When finished designing your statement, select Save. Enter or select a name for your form and a description. Then, select OK.

Note: You cannot modify a standard financial statement (those included with Sage 50) and save it to the same name. If you modify a standard statement, Sage 50 will prompt you to enter an alternate name.
Select Close to return to the Select a Report or Form window.

Sage 50 displays the new statement in the report list within the Select Report or Form window.

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List of Sage 50 financial statements

Design a Financial Statement

To customize an existing financial statement

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