An event report answers one question: who is coming, and how many of each kind of place. It reads the bills, because a reservation is recorded as a bill line — an item such as Adult or Child, a quantity, and an amount. Grouping those lines by item gives the breakdown.
The example through this article is a Sukkot Dinner, whose subcategory holds two items, Adult and Child.
Building the Report
Go to Reports → Transactions and click + New Report.
Give the report a name — Sukkot Dinner RSVP. In the header, set the report type to Bills. Payments would count money received; Bills counts what was reserved.
On the Parameters tab, open Categories under Criteria and select the event's subcategory — Events : Sukkot Dinner. Everything else in the report follows from this one choice, so nothing from other categories can creep in.
Add a Date range as well when the same subcategory is used year after year. Otherwise last year's dinner is counted too.
Open Columns under Output and check Item and Quantity. Add Filed As when you want the families listed by name. Uncheck what you don't need — invoice numbers and categories make the page busy without adding anything here.
Open Grouping & Totals under Output. It offers two useful shapes:
| Setting | Result |
|---|
| Totals only with Total rows by: Item | One row per item — Adult, Child — each with a count and a total amount |
| Show details with Subtotal rows by: Item | Every reservation listed, gathered under Adult and Child, with a subtotal on each group in the PDF |
Aggregate sets what the amount column does: Sum, Average, Minimum or Maximum. A count is always included.
Switch to Preview in the header. From there, PDF List produces the printable report and Export produces a CSV. Both save the report first.
Save keeps the report in the Transactions list, ready to run again — next year, change the subcategory or the date range rather than starting over. The folder button files it with your other event reports.
The Assistant
The Reports page has an ✨ Assistant that builds a report from a sentence such as bills for the Sukkot Dinner subcategory, totaled by item, then opens it in the builder with the criteria and columns already filled in. Everything above can be adjusted from there.
ADVANCEDWhat the report is reading
A Bills report reads bill lines rather than whole bills, which is why Item and Quantity are available at all. Grouping by item is a bills-only option for the same reason: a payment has no item. In a totals report each row carries the count of matching lines and the chosen aggregate of their amounts.