30 QuickBooks Tips In 30 Days: Day 9

February 24, 2010 By 4 Comments

Yesterday I mentioned how by default, QuickBooks has way too many icons on the home page.  Well, I also think that there are too many icons on the icon bar by default.  The icon bar is the toolbar at the top of the window that has icons for things like the Home Page, Customer Center, Vendor Center, etc.

Tip #9 of 30:  Customize the icon bar

The nice thing about the icon bar is that you can totally customize it and make it your own.  Just go to the “View” menu and click on “Customize Icon Bar”.  You will see the list of icons currently included on the bar.  You can delete any that you don’t want and you can drag them up and down to reposition them.  You can add new icons here too, but I think there’s a better way to do it.

Close the Customize Icon Bar window and return to your QuickBooks desktop.  Open the screen that you want to add to the icon bar.  For example, if you want to add an icon that open up the “Transfer Funds” screen you first open up that screen.  Now that it is open in front of you, go up to the “View” menu and select “Add Transfer Funds Between Accounts to Icon Bar…”.  You will get to choose an icon graphic, a label and a description.  Bam!  You just added your own shortcut icon to the icon bar!  By default it goes all the way over on the right so you may need to go into the “Customize Icon Bar” screen to move it to the position that you want it.

This technique works for just about any window, including reports.  So you can put icons on your icon bar for easy, one click access to the reports that you use most often.  It is a huge time saver!  And your report gets saved along with any filters or custom columns that you have set up, making it even more useful.

Did you find this tip useful?  If so, I would love for you to leave a comment below.  I would also love to hear some of your favorite QuickBooks tips!

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

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30 QuickBooks Tips In 30 Days: Day 8

February 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

All right, so it’s going to take a bit longer than 30 days to get through this since I keep skipping days!  I just have too much going on right now with tax season at work and teaching at night so my blog always takes a back seat to my “real life”.  But I’m here today with a good tip to help you work more productively in QuickBooks.

Tip #8 of 30: Remove unwanted icons from your home page

You know how when you first install QuickBooks you get a bazillion icons on the QuickBooks Home page?  It looks chaotic and is very overwhelming.  You can easily remove the icons that you don’t need or want though.

Just go to the “Edit” menu, then choose “Preferences”.  Click on the “Desktop View” section, then switch to the “Company Preferences” tab.  There are some checkboxes there and links that you can click to toggle different features on and off.  Don’t worry if you remove something that you need later, you can always go back and turn it back on at any time.

If you aren’t using the QuickBooks payroll features you can get rid of those icons as well by going into the “Payroll & Employees” section of the Preferences.  On the Company Preferences tab select “No payroll” and most of the Employee icons will be removed.

Once you pare down the number of icons on your home page, it looks much less cluttered and can help you focus on getting things done!

Did you find this tip useful?  If so, I would love for you to leave a comment below.  I would also love to hear some of your favorite QuickBooks tips!

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

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30 QuickBooks Tips In 30 Days: Day 7

February 21, 2010 By 3 Comments

This is another tip that seems like a no-brainer, but I see users making mistakes on this all the time.

Tip #7 of 30:  If you’ve entered a bill, don’t pay it with a regular check

There are 2 ways of dealing with bills in QuickBooks.  You can enter the bill into QuickBooks and then pay it at another time (a 2 step process).  Or you can choose to not enter the bill at all (just leave it in a pile on your desk or in a folder or something like that) and simply write a check to pay it when the time comes (a 1 step process).

I don’t really care which way you do it, but you have to remain consistent.  If you have entered a bill in QuickBooks using the “Enter Bills” function, that bill must be paid using the “Pay Bills” function.  If you use the “Write Checks” function it will not clear out the bill and it will still be left in your Accounts Payable balance.  Not to mention the fact that you have now duplicated the expense and distorted your accounting.

So it’s very simple – if you “Enter Bills” then you must “Pay Bills”.

For a more detailed look at these processes, check out episode 4 “Entering Bills” and episode 5 “Paying Bills in QuickBooks“.

Did you find this tip useful?  If so, I would love for you to leave a comment below.  I would also love to hear some of your favorite QuickBooks tips!

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

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30 QuickBooks Tips In 30 Days-Day 6

February 21, 2010 By 15 Comments

OK, so I already missed a day in my 30 day series but I’m making up for it now!  Today’s tip has to do with business credit cards.  For more details on this topic, check out episode 11 of my podcast “Tracking Credit Cards In QuickBooks“.

Tip #6 of 30:  Enter individual credit card charges, not monthly totals

A lot of small businesses use a business credit card to pay for expenses such as gas, office supplies, travel and meals.  And a lot of bookkeepers don’t enter each charge individually, they just wait until the credit card statement comes in the mail and they enter the total amount onto a bill or check.  Sometimes they break it down into multiple expense accounts but for many businesses there is an expense account called “Credit card expense” and the whole amount goes there.

This is not a good bookkeeping practice for several reasons.  Most importantly, there needs to be a proper accounting of all expenses.  So if there are 10 transactions on a credit card statement for gasoline purchases, 3 transactions for restaurants and 3 transactions for office supplies, then at least 3 separate expense accounts should be posted to (Auto Expense, Meals, and Office Supplies).  Also, there is a problem with the timing of the transactions.  If everything gets entered on the same date (the date of the credit card statement) it could distort reality for 2 different accounting periods.  Say your credit card statement starts on the 15th of the month and ends on the 14th of the next month.  If all the charges get posted as totals on the date of the 14th, then expenses aren’t getting charged to the proper periods.

Another issue is that of reporting and tracking.  If individual credit card charges aren’t getting recorded with the actual vendor names then you are losing a whole layer of information that could be useful.  You’ll never know which vendor you spend the most money with and it will be more difficult to track down the details of any one specific charge.  And you’ll have a much harder time discovering any bogus charges if you never see any actual paper receipts.

So my tip is this:  enter each credit card charge individually, using the real vendor name and the real date of the transaction and post it to the proper expense account.  Devise a system to make sure you get the credit card receipts from the person(s) that are using the credit cards and just do it.  It only takes about a minute to record a charge and it has many benefits, as mentioned above.

Did you find this tip useful?  If so, I would love for you to leave a comment below.  I would also love to hear some of your favorite QuickBooks tips!

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

Filed Under: Blog, QuickBooks Tips Tagged With: , , ,

30 QuickBooks Tips in 30 Days: Day 4

February 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Today’s QuickBooks tip may seem obvious to many people, but I see users struggle with this every day and I want to make sure to get this information out in the open.

Tip #4 of 30: Use the “Tab” key on your keyboard to navigate from field to field when entering information in QuickBooks

There is no doubt in my mind that the fastest and easiest way to move around in QuickBooks is to use the Tab key.  Any time you are filling out a form such as the “Enter Bills” or “Create Invoice” screens, tap the Tab key to move forward one field at a time.  After you use the Tab key for a  while you will develop a rhythm and know exactly how many taps of the key it takes to get to the next relevant field.  If you need to go backwards, hold down the Shift key and then press Tab.  It will move you back one field at a time.

I see so many QuickBooks users fill out the first field on a form and then grab their mouse, click in the next field and then use the backspace or delete key to remove the default date or text that is in the input box, then start typing their input.  It takes at least 3 or 4 times as long as just hitting the Tab key and start typing your input.  When you tab into a field, it automatically highlights or selects the text that is already in that field so you can either tap the delete key to instantly clear the field or start typing and it will replace whatever default value was there.  This is a huge time saver!  So if you’re not currently using the Tab key to move around with QuickBooks, you are really missing out and I highly recommend that you start using it right away.

Did you find this tip useful?  If so, please leave a comment below!  Also, I would love to hear about your favorite QuickBooks tips or tricks!

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

Filed Under: Blog, QuickBooks Tips Tagged With: , , , ,
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