I would like to run a report which easily shows products customers have on backorder. The current method of searcing each individual part number is to time consuming
The Open Sales Order by Customer report (Under the sales report menu) is designed for this purpose. By default it is a summary report, however by modifying the report you can change this to a detail report.
By then selecting additional columns like ITEM, DESCRIPTION, QTY you have a detailed backorder report grouped by customer.
Furthermore these detail reports can be exported to Excel where functions like pivot tables and column filters really come into their own.