Setup and Customization

1. Click on Edit
2. Click on Preference
3. Click the picture of Reminders from the list that appears
4. Make sure a check mark is in the box marked "Show Reminders list when opening a company file"
5. Click the OK button

To password-protect your QuickBooks data file, click on Company in the menu bar, then Set Up Users. From here, you can assign a password for the main (Administrator) account in QuickBooks. You can also set up user accounts, passwords, and different levels of access if you have multiple people using your QuickBooks file.

To allow sharing of your QuickBooks file, your best option is to have a computer network in place. This network will provide the foundation for you to share the file between two or more computers. You can have either a wired or wireless network within your office.

It is also possible to take a backup copy of the QuickBooks file from one computer and restore it to a second computer to allow sharing of the information. However, we don't recommend this if both computers will be entering QuickBooks data. If you do this, you won't know who has the most recent copy of the data file, and things can get messed up quite easily. Your best bet is to talk to a local computer consultant about a network for your home or office.

The first thing you must do is tell QuickBooks that you will be issuing 1099s. Click on Edit (from the menu bar), then Preferences. Scroll down until you find the picture that says "Tax:1099" and click on it. On the Company Preferences tab, answer yes to the question about the issuance of 1099 forms, then follow the rest of the instructions on this screen.

Next, you'll need to identify those vendors who are eligible to receive a 1099. Click on Vendors, then Vendor List. Double-click on the first vendor in the list, then the "Additional Info" tab. In the lower left-hand corner, put a check mark in the box that says "vendor eligible for 1099" and enter the tax ID number they have provided. Repeat this process for any vendors that need to receive a 1099.

Finally, to run the 1099s and related information, click on Reports, then Vendors, then either of the 1099 reports. Verify the data, correct if necessary, and print your 1099s all within QuickBooks.

You can establish default windows for startup so that every time you launch the program, it opens to the screen(s) you want to see first. Also, you can improve navigation by customizing the icon bar. If you've chosen to have multiple windows open simultaneously, you can easily keep track and navigate through all of them by using the Open Windows list.

QuickBooks' home page is one of the program's best features and you have some control over what appears on the home page. And to isolate the functions you use most often, you can also create a Favorites list.

This is not a comprehensive list of tasks you'll need to undertake to prepare for taxes. Rather, it's an overview of QuickBooks' most tax-specific tools. QuickBooks supports many business tax forms, including the 1040, 1120, and 1065, and the steps outlined here apply to all small business tax filers using QuickBooks Pro, Premier, and Enterprise.

Step 1: Order your W-2 and 1099 Kits
Step 2: Check the Company Information window to make sure it reflects the right tax form
Step 3: Make sure your tax-related accounts are assigned to the correct tax line on the form
Step 4: Run tax-related reports

One of the many ways that QuickBooks makes your life easier is its ability to create business forms for all of the financial transactions your company produces. You are able to customize templates designed for use with Intuit’s preprinted forms. You can also personalize your forms, add color schemes, and perform other text customizations.

If you don't have a business plan (or if yours is less than organized or polished), you can use QuickBooks' tools to create or fine-tune one. It allows for a wide variety of customization with data such as your company’s About information, projected monthly income, projected monthly expenses, and information about your assets, liabilities, and equity.

1. Set reminders
2. Monitor customer balances
3. Create an “Overdue” watermark
4. Send email follow-ups
5. Use statements
6. Tweak the Collections Report
7. Accept credit cards

If you're like most QuickBooks users, you rely on the Profit & Loss Standard (P&L) report to monitor how your business is doing. However, you may have overlooked an even more valuable report: the Statement of Cash Flows.

The P&L report is important in its own right, but it only provides partial insight into the financial health of your business. While the P&L shows what you earned and spent, the Statement of Cash Flows shows you where the cash came from and went to, also known as sources and uses.

You can use the Statement of Cash Flows to determine how various activities increased or decreased your cash balance during a given report period. Get in touch with the QuickBooks experts at Candy & Schonwald to know more.

QuickBooks can help keep a close eye on your company's performance. Many business owners compare financial results to an annual budget. If you don't have a budget in place, we'll show you how to get started. Even if you have, we'll show you how to use last year's results as a measuring stick with comparative financial reports. Once you understand these techniques, we'll explain why you should create a monthly appointment with yourself to ensure that your results continue to measure up and take action if they don't. Call us to get started today.

When you first cracked your copy of QuickBooks, you wanted to dive in and start generating invoices. Fortunately, QuickBooks is intuitive enough that you were able to do just that. And its help system is so robust that you were able to get procedural questions answered quickly and easily.

But there's a lot to be said for backing up a bit and taking advantage of the myriad educational tools that QuickBooks offers. Even if you've been using the program for months, you may want to explore them. You'll not only save time with the help system, but you may find better ways of performing tasks. And if you end up stuck with the software, Candy & Schonwald’s professionals are just one call away.

Sales orders can make your bookkeeping more accurate and easier. A sales order (which you'll eventually turn into an invoice) is perfect for customers who place orders frequently and invoicing every time is not practical for them. Another situation where you might want to send a sales order is when you're doing partial invoicing; that is, when you don't have enough items to fulfill the order as it comes in. Sales orders can help you better track sales, speed up receivables with partial invoices, and maintain communications with frequent buyers. But partial invoices require extra attention to inventory. Before working with them, it'd be best to schedule a session with us; we can help you keep things straight.

QuickBooks offers two simple conventions that let you identify related data: classes and types. Classes are used in transactions. Types are assigned to individual customers, vendors, and jobs. You might use classes to, for example, separate transactions that relate to different departments or locations or types of business. A construction company might want to track classes using New Construction, Remodel, and Overhead. Your customer types might help you isolate groups by characteristics like Industry or Geographical Location.

In some cases, the default settings that QuickBooks supplies will work fine for your company. This is not necessarily true in the case of purchase orders, since the whole inventory procurement process is so complex, and users can have such a diverse range of needs. So before you order your first widget, make sure that your purchase order form is designed to accommodate all of the information you want to record and track, with no unnecessary data fields to confuse staff. We encourage you to let us work with you as you begin managing inventory or to contact us if you're tangled up in what can be a very challenging element of QuickBooks.

If your company's finances will allow it, you can help customers on sizable jobs by using progress invoicing, also known as partial billing or progress billing. You could, of course, simply create invoices for smaller chunks of the job as they come. A smarter way is to build estimates for the entire job or sequential phases so your customer can see the big picture. You can still use progress invoicing to start collecting funds one segment at a time.

Estimates provide a useful way to fine-tune your bookkeeping and inform your customers about impending costs. They can also be confusing if you don't keep up with them. We can help you determine when they're a good idea and how to keep them organized. QuickBooks provides good tools here, but they do require some administrative control.

QuickBooks’ tools can help with the repetitive task of recording new stock, but you need to be sure you’re using the right forms. There are two different ones that you’ll use, depending on whether or not you’ve received a bill — Bill in Hand and Delayed Billing.

It's easy to get tangled up on these procedures. We hope you'll consult us when you begin implementing inventory management in QuickBooks, or when you're taking on a new task there. It's a lot easier to prevent errors than to go back and fix them.

The beauty of QuickBooks is that it can be used for so many different kinds of businesses. Its smart design lets realtors, retailers, plumbers, and plastic surgeons track income and expenses, pay bills and invoice customers, and to run those all-important reports.

But Intuit knows that QuickBooks can't — and shouldn't — tailor itself to individual business types (except in the industry-specific versions). So its structure and tools are somewhat generic and as universal as possible.

That's where custom fields come in. You can simply use them for your own informational purposes, but QuickBooks also lets you create and add fields to your existing customer, vendor, employee, and item records and forms, and use them as filters in reports.

Though QuickBooks versions themselves are not scalable (able to expand as your business grows), you can move up to a more sophisticated edition when you outgrow your current version. There are three Windows-based versions of QuickBooks: Pro, Premier, and Enterprise Solutions. QuickBooks Pro is the base desktop product. But would you rather have access to 150+ reports instead of 100, including some that are industry-specific? QuickBooks Premier can provide that, in addition to charts of accounts, sample files and menus tailored to your company's industry. It also offers a business plan builder and the ability to forecast sales and expenses. QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions is well-suited for complex small businesses, and sometimes even larger companies, depending on their structure and needs. It solves the data management problems that Pro and Premier users can experience, thanks to its 100,000+ record and account capacity.

QuickBooks company file errors are hard to detect, but they are there, including:

• Performance problems
• Inability to execute specific processes, like upgrading
• Occasional program crashes
• Missing data (accounts, names, etc.)
• Refusal to complete transactions
• Mistakes in reports

Here’s what you can do to address them:

• Call us for help
• Be proactive and rid QuickBooks of old, unneeded data
• Don’t use Condense Data utility without professional assistance

QuickBooks' automation of your daily bookkeeping tasks has undoubtedly served you well. But that's merely limited use; now it's time to take advantage of QuickBooks' greatest strength: customizable reports.

One of the rewards for diligently entering all of your accounting information is a better grasp of your company's financial performance to date. That insight ultimately leads to better business decisions that can contribute to your future growth and success.

QuickBooks also includes easy-to-use templates for another kind of customer form: the statement. These forms are generally not used nearly as frequently as invoices. However, you may find them more appropriate if you:

• Want to create a form that lists all of a customer's open charges
• Have a customer who accrues multiple charges before being billed
• Receive advance or regular payments
• Need a historical accounting of a customer's activity, including charges, payments, and balance

Like many of QuickBooks' functions, this isn't a difficult activity once you understand it. But it's much easier and economical for you to get upfront guidance than for us to come in and untangle your company files.

Whether you're selling one-of-a-kind items or stocking dozens of the same kinds of products, you need to create records for each. When it comes time to create invoices or sales receipts, your careful work defining each type of item will:

• Ensure that your customers receive correct descriptions and pricing
• Provide the information you must know about your inventory levels
• Help you make smart decisions about reordering

Memorized transactions can be a major time saver. You might use them when you, for example:

• Provide the same service for a customer on a regular basis
• Charge a monthly fee for rentals, maintenance, membership, etc.
• Pay a bill to the same company regularly
• Have a standing order with a vendor for a similar set of items

It's easy to create memorized transactions. QuickBooks provides an icon for them in the toolbar of every transaction form that's supported, like invoices, bills, and purchase orders.

One of your internal controls should establish boundaries for every employee who has access to QuickBooks. You can restrict each staff member to specific areas of the program instead of sharing a master password and giving everyone free rein. Go to Company, then Set Up Users and Passwords, and finally Set Up Users to do this.

QuickBooks' Audit Trail is also your friend. It records everything that is entered or changed in the software, by whom, and precisely when. To view it, open the Reports menu, then click on Accountant & Taxes, then Audit Trail. Like all QuickBooks reports, it can be customized to display the entries you need to see.

There are apps that can be integrated with your desktop QuickBooks company file and enable you to:

• Make sales wherever you are
• Document expenses as they're incurred
• Monitor employee time for payroll purposes

Some of the apps that integrate well with QuickBooks include:

• GoPayment
• Concur
• Tallie
• TSheets Time Tracker

If you need more fields than QuickBooks offers on a record or form, you can easily add your own. The software lets you add 15 fields total to customers and jobs, vendors, and employees, and you're limited to seven for any one record type (if you want to use the same field in two of these, it will only count as one). And you're allowed to define up to five fields for your item records.

This type of modification is easy to do, but it's critical that you think carefully about what fields you should add. You don't want to learn three or six months down the road that one isn't really necessary and two more are needed. This is especially important when you're creating records for inventory items.

You may want to schedule some time with us to go over this (and to explore QuickBooks' item-tracking features if you're new to managing inventory). You can also change custom field names, but you need to understand how this will affect your data if you do this.

QuickBooks helps prevent internal user-related mistakes by setting virtual boundaries. You can specify which features of the software can be accessed by employees who work with your accounting data. Each employee receives a unique username and password that unlocks only the areas he or she should be visiting.

QuickBooks was designed to be used by millions of businesses. In fact, it's possible to install it, answer a few questions about your company, and start working right away.

However, we strongly suggest you take the time to specify your Preferences. QuickBooks devotes a whole screen to this customization process. You can find it by opening the Edit menu and selecting Preferences.

You're not required to go through all of the entries in the Preferences window before you start working. You can always go there to see if there's a setting you can change if an element of QuickBooks isn't performing the way you expected.

It's a good idea to learn about all of your options in the QuickBooks software before you get started — and we can help. If you let us go through this process with you, you'll not only learn about the customization allowed, but you'll also get a good introduction to all of the things that QuickBooks can do, and learn how it can help your business and its needs.

Reports are your reward for all that hard work you put into entering records and transactions in QuickBooks. Sure, you can always find individual invoices, sales receipts, and customers by using the software's search tools, but in order to make smart business decisions, you need to be able to see related subsets of the information you so carefully entered in neat rows and columns.

You've probably created at least some basic reports in QuickBooks. You may have, for example, wanted to see who's late paying you or whether you have unpaid bills. You might need to know your stock levels or which purchase orders are still unfilled. You certainly want to keep a close eye on whether you're making or losing money.

QuickBooks makes it easy to get those answers in only a few seconds. But to get really meaningful, targeted views of your accounting information, you'll want to shape your reports so that they reveal precisely what you need to know. You can do some of this on your own, but you might want to enlist our help to drill down even further — and to create and analyze the more complex output that some reports can provide.

QuickBooks can help you create thorough records for each product you sell. It keeps track of how much you have on hand and warns you when your stock is running low. And its reports tell you what is selling and what is not, so you can make better, smarter purchasing decisions. Before you get started creating item records and including them in transactions, you need to make sure that QuickBooks is set up to start tracking.

Whether you are switching from a manual system to QuickBooks Online, or you have just hired your first employee, you will soon discover that the site can make your payroll-related tasks much more organized and accurate, speeding up the process tremendously.

But before you start getting ready for your first payroll run, you have a lot of setup work to do. Be sure to leave yourself time before those first paychecks are expected. Setup is by far the most challenging part of processing payroll in QuickBooks Online. Once that’s done, you will just be entering hours and making modifications. Please contact us if you are planning to take this on or have any questions.

QuickBooks can organize the unpleasant process of bill paying and can save time and help you avoid confusion. It divides your accounts payable tasks into two separate processes: entering bills and paying them. It requires some extra time upfront as you complete the first step, but streamlines the second so that the actual bill-paying only takes a few seconds.

There may be many times when an unexpected estimate, bid, or proposal, will land you a job you didn't necessarily expect.

Of course, the bottom line is the meat of your estimate, the price you're willing to accept for your work performed. It's your job to determine that. But let QuickBooks do what it does best: provide intuitive, efficient tools for creating and modifying estimates.

Creating an estimate in QuickBooks is just like filling out an invoice. You enter data where appropriate, and select options from drop-down lists. If you don't have any experience with sales forms and need some guidance, please call us and set up a time to go over the entire process. Our experts are ready to answer any other questions you might have about QuickBooks.