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You can use the View | Reports menu to generate estate reports in PDF format, which you can print or share with others (you can also grant online access to anyone you choose).

If you are using an iPhone, you will need to allow EstateExec to bypass the built-in popup blocker in order to generate PDFs. For example, if you are using Safari, go to Settings | Safari. If you are using Chrome, open Chrome and in the Settings make the desired change. You may have to do a Google search to find the location of the popup blocker setting in your particular browser version.

Inventory Report

The Inventory Report lists information about estate assets and debts. You may want this report for your own records, for a lawyer with whom you're working, or for working on submissions to a probate court.

Example first page of sample estate inventory report

Report Options

You can choose from several options when generating an Inventory report:

Estate As Of: Choose the date the estate inventory should reflect... see more ↓
You can generate an inventory report as of death, as of now, or for any date you want. If you choose a custom date, EstateExec will derive the estate inventory by processing all associated transactions up to and including the requested date.
For advanced users: Note that since you can manually change a debt's amount owed (as opposed to simply recording a debt payment transaction), and there is no dated transaction associated with such a change, EstateExec will report the combined effects of such changes as of the last date of any explicit transactions (i.e., payments or forgiveness) associated with that debt. This can sometimes be a little confusing. For example, if you run a report as of death, and then run the same report as of that date, you may get different results. Obviously, if there were transactions on the date of death, the results would be different. But they would also differ if you had undated changes to a debt's amount owed now, and no other transactions associated with that debt, so that EstateExec would have no choice but to include the changes as of the first day of the reporting period.
Only Probate items: Include only items subject to probate?
(Hint: You can manually override which items are considered subject to probate)
Real Estate Addresses: Include any defined location address for real property assets?
Account Numbers: Include any defined item account numbers (see Account ID)?
Notes: Include any defined item notes?
New Page: Start each table on a new page?
Include Unused: Include tables even if they have no content?

Accounting Report

The Accounting Report documents the high-level financials of the estate settlement, summarizing initial estate inventory, changes to that inventory over time, estate income received, expenditures, and ultimately distributions. You may want to generate this report as you complete the settlement process, for your own records, and for working on final submissions to a probate court (see also Executor Guide: Final Estate Accounting).

Standard Approach (example Summary Section)

Carry Value Approach (example Summary Section)

Report Options

You can choose from several options when generating an Accounting report, for example:

Approach: Standard or Carry Value (see Report Details below)
Date Range: Choose the time period the report should cover (see important date cautions below)
Only Probate items: Include only items subject to probate?
(Hint: You can manually override which items are considered subject to probate)
Real Estate Addresses: Include any defined location address for real property assets?
Account Numbers: Include any defined item account numbers (see Account ID)?
Notes: Include any defined item notes?
New Page: Start each table on a new page?
Include Unused: Include tables even if they have no content?

Report Details

For the most part, the Accounting Report is straightforward and easy to understand, although certain aspects may not be as clear to those not familiar with estate accounting... see more ↓

Standard Report

When creating an Accounting Report, you can choose either the Standard or the Carry Value approach.

Most people use the Standard report, which focuses on the estate, tracking inventory (both assets and debts) from death to estate closure (or whatever date range you specify). This report is split into several sections: assets at death, debts at death, changes to asset value, income, and so on (you can download a Standard example in PDF format generated from the Sample Estate).

Asset Changes: While most report sections are relatively simple, the Asset Changes section, which conveys changes to asset values during the course of estate administration, can be a bit more complex. For your information,

When you transfer holdings of one asset to another, the value of the source asset decreases, while the value of the receiving asset increases by the same amount, with the combined effect of $0 change to the estate.
When you distribute an asset, its value does not drop to $0 – the purpose of this section is to report changes in inherent asset value, and if the asset retains its reported value at death, then no change in value has occurred.
Similarly, when you sell an asset, its value does not inherently drop to $0 – its final value becomes the sales price, and any change from the value at death will be reported here.

EstateExec sometimes adds bookkeeping entries (in blue) into the Asset Changes section in order to keep the report as a whole consistent. For example,

Remove Sold Assets: If you sell an asset and deposit the proceeds into another asset, this section will not report the sold asset as having lost value (for reasons as described above), but it will report the receiving asset as having gained value (because it has!). To balance the overall section so that such sales do not erroneously give the impression of overall estate value increase, EstateExec creates a corresponding bookkeeping entry in this section.
Remove Net Income & Expenditures: If you deposit income into an asset, or use an asset (such as checking account) to pay estate expenses, the value of the asset will necessarily change. But since income and expenses are reported in separate sections of the Accounting report, we don't want to double-count those items when looking at the overall estate. For example, we should not report interest earned in a savings account as both an asset change in value and interest earned by the estate. Since interest must be reported in its own report section, EstateExec creates a bookkeeping entry in this section to reflect the fact that the net effect of the interest is reported elsewhere.
And More: There are other such circumstances that require similar bookkeeping entries, but now that you understand the basic principles (i.e., this section should report net asset value changes, and some changes must be reported primarily in other report sections), any such bookkeeping entries should be easier to understand.

Carry Value Approach

When creating an Accounting Report, you can choose either the Standard or the Carry Value approach.

The Carry Value approach is used somewhat rarely, although it is required for California and Virginia estates. The Carry Value approach focuses on the executor's handling of estate assets, tracking each asset from the time it comes under the executor's control until it leaves the executor's control (or whatever date range you specify). You can download a Carry Value Accounting example in PDF format generated from the Sample Estate.

Received Date: The date at which an asset comes under an executor's control is known as its Received Date, which you can specify on the Assets tab via the Edit | Receive menu. However, all assets listed in an initial Inventory submitted to the court are typically considered "received" as of death, so it is usually only necessary to enter a Received Date for assets discovered after such an Inventory.

Carry Value: This report is called the Carry Value Accounting Report because it emphasizes the "carry value" of each asset, defined as the market value of the asset when the executor receives it. From that moment on, the executor generally "carries" that asset at its original value, regardless of market value fluctuations. More specifically,

An asset's carry value is initially defined as the asset's value at death. If you explicitly assign a received date to an asset, its carry value will be updated to equal the asset's market value as of that date (where the asset's market value is calculated using any Cashflow transactions dated prior to the received date).
When income deposits are made to an asset (such as a bank account), the carry value of that asset increases by the amount of the deposit. Similarly, when expenses are paid from an asset, the carry value of that asset decreases by the amount of the payment.
If an executor sells or otherwise disposes of an asset, the difference between the carry value of the asset and the proceeds of the disposal is reported as a gain or a loss to the estate.
If an executor does not sell an asset, but transfers all or some of it into another asset (for example, moving stocks from one account to another), the corresponding carry value transfers as well.
If an executor simply distributes an asset to heirs, the distribution is reported at its carry value (note that this has nothing to do with taxes, and the heirs should use the cost basis associated with the distribution if they later sell an asset and wish to calculate their own gain or loss on the asset).

Report Date Range

Regardless of the approach chosen above, you can generate an accounting report for the entire period of estate settlement (select "Since Death"), or for any date range you want (select "Custom"). To make things convenient, we also provide shortcuts for commonly desired periods: year-to-date ("YTD"), and last calendar year ("Last Year").

While you can use EstateExec to generate reports for historical periods, it is best practice to generate such reports contemporaneously (i.e., if you need a report for 2023, generate it soon after the end of 2023).

The reason for this practice is that if you subsequently make changes to the estate, a report generated later may not match the report you would have generated at the time. For example, if you subsequently delete items from the estate, generating an historical report will not know that those items used to exist. Similarly, if you manually change a Debt's Amount Owed, since there is no transaction associated with such a change, EstateExec will not know exactly when to report such a change. Accordingly, EstateExec will report the combined effect of any such changes in the last period for which you recorded actual transactions (i.e., payments or forgiveness) for that debt.

Address Book

You can generate an Address Book containing contact information for the estate via the "Address Book PDF" button at the top right of the Contacts table on the Executor tab. You can choose to include various elements when generating an Address Book, including email addresses, general contact notes, and more.

Including Only Certain Entries

If desired, you can choose to include only a subset of your contacts in an Address Book, using one or both of the following methods:

Filter the contacts table to show just the entries you want to include, then press the "Address Book PDF" button to create the PDF
Or, select the entries you want to include via the checkmarks in the far left table column, then choose "Only Selected Contacts" in the Address Book Options dialog that appears when you press the "Address Book PDF" button

For example, if you just want to include Heirs, select "Heirs" in the Type field of the table header row, and then press the "Address Book PDF" button.

Estate Tables

If you want more details than the above reports provide, you can export any EstateExec table into a PDF document by selecting an export option (see below) from the menu in the top right of the table. The PDF report will normally open in a new tab from which you can print the document or download it to your computer (although some browsers will instead simply automatically download the file).

Table Export Options

There are 3 variants of PDF table exports:

"Visible Data" — Exports all data currently in the table (as sorted), even if some rows are scrolled off-screen, but excludes any rows you have filtered out, or columns that you have hidden.
"Selected Data" — Same as "Visible Data", but uses the default sort order and only includes rows that have been selected (via the checkmark in the leftmost column).
"All Data" — Exports "all" data in the table in the default order, whether or not you have modified what visibly shows (but see Note below).

Note: All variants export only the data to which the browser table currently has access. If there are older items that reside only on the server, the "Include Older Items" button below the table will be active. If you want to export ALL data ever known to the system, repeatedly press the "Include Older Items" button, until it indicates that there are no more, then do the export.