How create custom reports with tags
Tags are like sticky notes for your money, little labels that make it easier to find stuff later. They don’t change your accounting, they just help you slice and dice reports in ways that make sense to you.
Want to see if “Project X” made money? Or how much you spent on “That One Event in Cape Town”? Tags have your back.
What are tags?
Custom labels you can add to:
- Invoices
- Expenses
- Income entries
- Journal entries (Pro)
You can add more than one tag to a single entry (e.g. “Client A” + “Launch Party”), and you can reuse them anywhere.
Where to find them
When you’re creating or editing a transaction, look for the Tags field. Add whatever works, just keep it short and clear so you’ll still know what it means six months from now.
Example: The salon buys R5,000 worth of stock for its Winter Sale 2025. When logging the expense, it adds two tags: Stock and Winter Sale 2025. Later, the salon can filter reports by that campaign to check whether the promo covered its costs.
Where they show up
You can filter by tag in most Pro reports:
- Profit & Loss
- Cash Flow
- Sales
- Expenses
- VAT
- Trial Balance
Example: Instead of scrolling through everything, the salon can filter the Sales report by Gift Vouchers in December to see how much that seasonal push brought in.
Real-world uses
- Projects or campaigns: “Website redesign”, “Winter Sale 2025”
- Departments or teams: “Sales”, “Marketing”, “Freelancers”
- Locations: “Cape Town”, “Online store”, “Pop-up shop”
- Grants or donors: “Donor A”, “Education Fund”
Note: Clients are better handled through customer statements, but you can still tag them if you need a quick filter.
💡Tips
- Keep tag names short and consistent. “Team Event” > “teamevent” > “That big thing with the team that one time.”
- Start simple, you can always add more later.
- Don’t tag everything. Too many tags = chaos.