QuickBooks: A Comprehensive Guide to Learning Quickbooks Concepts and Techniques for Beginners

By Blaine Robertson

Have you ever felt like not going to your office for the day? Maybe you've wondered why you can't just run your business off your phone.

If this is you, then you're in luck, because QuickBooks allows you to do just that!

This revolutionary piece of software enables you to run every facet of your

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blaine Robertson
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088297643

Book preview

Introduction

This guidebook is meant to help you with managing your business finances by guiding you through the basics of keeping appropriate records for your company using Quickbooks. It will help you with numerous things involved in creating your company file in Quickbooks. Be it retail and E-commerce business (eBay sellers, food trucks, coffee shops, etc.), appointment-based business (doctor’s office, driving school, dentist’s office, etc.) or field service and professional businesses.

Whether you’re a big business like Amazon or an up-and-coming entrepreneur, QuickBooks is bound to increase the efficiency of your working process. As you already know, QuickBooks is a business running and accounting program. It allows you to handle a variety of different aspects of running your business.

From accounting to data entry, QuickBooks brings efficiency to your business process. No more hassling around with your accountant, no more posting data entry jobs on Amazon to find good underpaid workers.

The guide will show you how to keep better track of your bills in Quickbooks, as well as ensuring they are all paid on time. It will also help you go through the tracking of your sales, creating sale receipts and invoices for your customers. By regular and accurate updating of your record keeping information in Quickbooks, you will find it easier to make use of the multitude of financial reports that can be generated by Quickbooks for the analysis and better management of your business performance.

QuickBooks Online is a software that is easy to use and made for small business accounting. It enables your business to track all your expenses, income, and even your inventory. It can track your GST in an instant and enables you to pay your business taxes. With QuickBooks Online Accountant, you can find a new way of managing your business, and you can change the way of your accounting practice, consulting, or bookkeeping. QuickBooks Online Accountant makes it a lot easier to work and to manage your business.  It’s cloud-based software.

Seeing all of these features, it’s no surprise, so many businesses are relying on digital technologies more. Compare QuickBooks to traditional accounting. With traditional accounting, you’re almost completely at the mercy of your accountant.

If your accountant makes a mistake, you’ll have a rather hard time discovering it. On the other hand, QuickBooks lets you take the whole process into your hands. It is intuitive and easy to use, you don’t need to go through college to be qualified to use it; in fact, this book is all you need!

If your company is big, you might want to have an accountant handle it anyways, but it also makes their job easier. QuickBooks is extremely easy to use for accountants, and it comes with the additional benefit of being really easy to check for errors. This means that if there’s an error, you’ll be able to catch it quickly, possibly even before the payment is processed.

QuickBooks is also excellent for traveling entrepreneurs. You won’t always have your PC or laptop with you, but QuickBooks will let you manage your business straight from your smartphone. QuickBooks eliminates any and all issues you might have had with the employees on your payroll.

QuickBooks also edges out against using on-site digital measures for your accounting. If you’re using Excel sheets and Word documents, then you’re at a high risk of being compromised. A simple fire or virus could end up annihilating all of your files, incurring a devastating loss. QuickBooks is cloud-based, meaning none of the files need to be stored on the devices you’re using, so you’re at no risk of being hacked. In fact, QuickBooks’ security measures are at the level of an international bank.

With that being said, like with all advanced software, QuickBooks requires some training to learn. That’s why this book is here; we’ll guide you step by step through every nook and cranny of QuickBooks, making you an expert in the next 150 pages!

Chapter 1

Setting Up QuickBooks

QuickBooks Online is easy to set up, and you are all set. You are able to set up your business file in a bit less than 20 minutes, so it makes it really simple. But, there are a few important steps to follow to make sure that you are setting up business files efficiently and accurately.

The setup is optimized for speed and simplicity; however, it still requires some instruction. We’ll dedicate this chapter to getting your QuickBooks business account up and running.

When you reach the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

There are some important steps you need to fulfill in order to set up the file of your company. If you do that setup flawlessly, you really make it easier for your accountant, bookkeeper and, of course, yourself to stay compliant with taxes and GST., you or your business need to subscribe to the software so you can use QuickBooks Online. Your business is also able to subscribe if it visits intuit.com and signs up in order to get a free trial. Also, your accountant is able to set up a file using the QuickBooks Online Accountant.

Company File Creation

First thing’s first: you need to create a company file, given that it’s a place where you store all your company’s financial records. You can either start from ground zero, by creating a new company file, or you can upload and convert records from another small business program. For those of you who are new to bookkeeping, there is always the option of using a file someone else created. For instance, if you had help from an accountant to start up your company, they might be able to help you once more by providing a QuickBooks company file that is already customized for your business, and in turn, give you a head start.

If you don’t have an accountant, worry not, we’ll guide you through setting everything up, so you won’t ever need one. Luckily, QuickBooks is rather simple to use, and setting up a business file isn’t exactly rocket science.

At the beginning of this chapter, we will explain how to start up your QuickBooks. Further, if you are starting your company files from scratch, we will guide you through the QuickBooks setup dialog box, as well as the Easy Step Interview to get you running (and to see what chapters besides this one help you to get the job done). On the other hand, if you are moving from another program, we will try to make the transitional ride the least bumpy. Furthermore, we will go through the opening of the company file, updating it to the latest version of QuickBooks, and basic company info modification.

Customizing QuickBooks for Your Business

The QuickBooks Home page is laid out like the workflow you follow when you’re bookkeeping, so it acts like a roadmap to many of the accounting tasks you perform. Shortcuts to other helpful QuickBooks features are sprinkled throughout the program’s left icon bar; top icon bar; and Vendor, Customer, and Employee Centers. But your business isn’t like anyone else’s. Let’s say you run a strictly cash-sales business. You couldn’t care less about customer lists and invoices; making deposits, though, is a daily event. Fortunately, you don’t have to accept QuickBooks’ initial take on convenience. The Home page and the icon bars come stocked with a set of popular shortcuts, but you can add, remove, rearrange, and otherwise edit which features appear there. You can also add your favorite features, windows, and reports to the Favorites menu. This chapter covers all your options.

In addition to tweaking QuickBooks’ layout, you can also customize the program’s forms. QuickBooks helps you get up and running with built-in business form templates. They’ll do if