My preferred sort order for the report is
1. date
2. reference
3. description

How do I set this as my default so that I do not have to change it every time I run this report (which is many times a day)

Thanks

There is a setting in the company profile (or perhaps the User Preferences if that is in the version you have) called 'Remember report settings'. This will save the settings for all standard reports so that they do not have to be re-selected each time.