BUY THIS BOOK
By Bonnie Biafore
Book Price: $29.99 USD
£20.99 GBP
PDF Price: $23.99
Cover | Table of Contents | Colophon
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1: Creating a Company in QuickBooks
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterA company file is where you store your company's records in QuickBooks, and it's the first thing you need to work on in the program. You can create a company file from scratch or convert records previously kept in Quicken, but the most agreeable approach is to use a file that someone else created. If you've worked with an accountant to set up your company, she might provide you with a company file configured precisely for your business so that you can hit the ground running.If you must create your own company file, this chapter tells you how to use the QuickBooks EasyStep Interview to get started, and it points you to the other chapters in this book that tell you how to finish the job. If you already have a company file, you'll learn how to open it and modify basic company information.Here are the easiest methods for opening QuickBooks:
- Desktop icon. If you requested during installation that QuickBooks create a desktop shortcut, double-click that shortcut to launch QuickBooks.
- Quick Launch toolbar. The fastest way to open QuickBooks is to click its icon on the toolbar (Figure 1-1).
Figure 1-1: The Quick Launch toolbar (no relation to QuickBooks) keeps your desktop tidy.If you have a QuickBooks desktop shortcut, right-drag (that's dragging while holding down the right mouse button) the desktop shortcut onto the Quick Launch toolbar and then choose Copy Here to create a second shortcut on the toolbar. (If you're trying to clean up your desktop, choose Move Here to move the desktop shortcut to the Quick Launch toolbar.) You can also use the right-drag technique to copy or move a shortcut in Windows Explorer or from the Start menu.If you don't see the Quick Launch toolbar, in the Windows taskbar, right-click an empty area and then choose Toolbars → Quick Launch. When a checkmark appears to the left of the Quick Launch menu entry, the appearance of the toolbar in the Windows taskbar should follow. - Programs menu. Without a desktop icon, you can launch QuickBooks from the Windows Start menu. Click Start, and then choose Programs → QuickBooks → QuickBooks Pro 2006 (or QuickBooks Premier 2006).
Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Opening QuickBooks
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterHere are the easiest methods for opening QuickBooks:
- Desktop icon. If you requested during installation that QuickBooks create a desktop shortcut, double-click that shortcut to launch QuickBooks.
- Quick Launch toolbar. The fastest way to open QuickBooks is to click its icon on the toolbar (Figure 1-1).
Figure 1-1: The Quick Launch toolbar (no relation to QuickBooks) keeps your desktop tidy.If you have a QuickBooks desktop shortcut, right-drag (that's dragging while holding down the right mouse button) the desktop shortcut onto the Quick Launch toolbar and then choose Copy Here to create a second shortcut on the toolbar. (If you're trying to clean up your desktop, choose Move Here to move the desktop shortcut to the Quick Launch toolbar.) You can also use the right-drag technique to copy or move a shortcut in Windows Explorer or from the Start menu.If you don't see the Quick Launch toolbar, in the Windows taskbar, right-click an empty area and then choose Toolbars → Quick Launch. When a checkmark appears to the left of the Quick Launch menu entry, the appearance of the toolbar in the Windows taskbar should follow.
- Programs menu. Without a desktop icon, you can launch QuickBooks from the Windows Start menu. Click Start, and then choose Programs → QuickBooks → QuickBooks Pro 2006 (or QuickBooks Premier 2006).
The first time you launch QuickBooks, you're greeted by the "Welcome to QuickBooks" window. Later, if you close a company file, the No Company Open window appears, as shown in Figure 1-2. These two windows are nearly—but not quite—the same. The rest of this chapter tells you when and how to use each one.
Figure 1-2: The No Company Open window includes "Restore a backup file," which you'll gladly click should something go terribly wrong with your QuickBooks company file. To reopen a file that you worked on recently, double-click its name on the list. (If you'd like to play around with an unfamiliar feature, click "Open a sample file" as described in the box on Section 1.3.1.)Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Creating a New Company
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterKeeping books requires accuracy, attention to detail, and persistence, hence the customary image of spectacled accountants hunched over ledgers. QuickBooks can help you keep your books without ruining your vision or your posture—as long as you start your QuickBooks company file with good information.The EasyStep Interview tries to make creating a company file as painless as possible, but the process isn't pain free. Indeed, the EasyStep Interview is much like a family reunion, where you're asked a lot of questions that you don't want to answer. Unlike the reunion, however, you can skip parts of the Interview or return to it when you're better prepared for the interrogation.In QuickBooks 2006, the Interview is short and sweet. All it wants to know is some company information, the industry you're in, and the features you want to use. The Interview sets your preferences and creates a few accounts, but you have to do the bulk of the work yourself later. For example, the company file that EasyStep Interview creates doesn't even know what tax form you use to file your business tax return. You must fill in this information in the Company Information dialog box and slog through individually assigning each account to a tax line.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Steps to Take Before You Create Your Company File
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterIf you've just started a business and want to inaugurate your books with QuickBooks, your prep work will be a snap. On the other hand, if you have existing books for your business, you have a few small tasks to complete before you jump into QuickBooks' setup. Whether your books are paper ledgers or electronic files in another program, gather your company information before you open QuickBooks. Then, you can hunker down in front of your computer and crank out a company file in record time. Here's a guide to what you need to create your company file in QuickBooks.To keep your entire financial history at your fingertips, you need every transaction and speck of financial information in your QuickBooks company file. But you know that you have better things to do than enter years worth of checks, invoices, and deposits, so the comprehensive approach is practical only if you started your company quite recently.The more realistic approach is to enter your financial state as of a specific date (ideally the beginning of a fiscal year) and from then on, add all new transactions in QuickBooks. In QuickBooks, the date you choose is called the start date and you shouldn't choose it arbitrarily. Here are your start date options and the ramifications of each:
- The first day of the fiscal year
Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Starting the EasyStep Interview
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterYou can create a brand-new company file from either the "Welcome to QuickBooks" window or the No Company Open window by clicking "Create a new company." Although the wizard doesn't provide hints about which step comes next, the interview covers the basics for creating and customizing a company file to fit your business. Click Next or Back to move from screen to screen.The Get Started screen assures you that you'll be ready to start using QuickBooks in about 30 minutes. Start by choosing one of the following three buttons:
- Convert Data. If you have existing records in Quicken or Peachtree, you're in luck. Converting your books is easier than starting from scratch.
- Skip Interview. If you're something of a QuickBooks expert, this option lets you set up a company file without a safety net. It opens the bare-bones Creating New Company window, followed by a few screens of data entry. If you need help during the process, you can always click the Help button.
- Start Interview. If you don't fit into either of the previous categories, this one's for you.
The first setup screen asks you for the basic 411 about your company, as you can see in Figure 1-3. If any of the fields are confusing, try clicking "Get answers" in the upper-right corner. Click Next when you're done.
Figure 1-3: On the Company Information screen, fill in both fields, even if the name your company commonly uses is the same as its legal name. In the "Company name" field, type the name that you want to appear on invoices, reports, and other forms. In the "Legal name" field, type the company name as it should appear on contracts and other legal documents. If you own a corporation, the legal name is what appears on your Certificate of Incorporation. The Tax ID box is for the federal tax ID number you use when you file your taxes—your Social Security number or Federal Employer Identification Number.The second screen in the EasyStep Interview asks you to set a password for the administrator login. The administrator can do absolutely anything in your company file: set up other users, log in as other users, and access any area of the company files. Surprisingly, the administrator password is optional. QuickBooks lets you click Next and skip right over it, but this is no time for shortcuts. Type the password you want to use in both the "Administrator password" and "Retype password" boxes. Keep the login name and password in a safe but memorable place; see the box below for more password advice.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - What's Next
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterThe EasyStep Interview in QuickBooks 2006 doesn't tell you what to do next. Because the interview sets up only a bare framework, you may be looking for guidance. Look no further than the book in your hands. Here are the ways you can flesh out your company file:
- Specify the first month of your fiscal year and tax year. See Section 1.9.
- Specify the income tax form you use. See Section 1.9.
- Set up your users and passwords. See Section 23.1.1.
- Review and/or change the preferences that QuickBooks set. See Section 6.1.
- Set up or edit the accounts in your Chart of Accounts. If you set up accounts in the EasyStep Interview, you must edit them to assign them to the tax lines on your tax form. See Section 2.3.2.
- Create a journal entry to specify account opening balances. See Section 13.3.
- Create items for the products and services you sell. See Section 4.1.
- Set up sales tax codes. See Section 4.5.4.
- Set up your 1099 tracking. See Section 6.17.
- Sign up for Intuit Payroll Service if you want help with payroll. See Section 11.1.
- Enter your historical transactions. For invoices, see Section 8.1.3; for bills, see Section 10.2; for payroll, see Section 11.4.
- Create a backup copy. See Section 7.2.
- Customize your forms. See Section 22.3.
Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Open an Existing Company File
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapter"Open an existing company" appears in both the "Welcome to QuickBooks" window and the No Company Open window. When you click this button, the "Open a Company" dialog box appears, and you can double-click the name of the company file you want to open. However, the fastest route to opening your company file (in the No Company Open window) is by double-clicking one of the file names in the list of recently opened files, as shown in Figure 1-6.
Figure 1-6: When you select a filename in this list, QuickBooks tries to display its folder path. But unless you store your company files in a top-level folder, you won't likely see the entire pathname. Initially, QuickBooks tries to store company files in the same folder as the software. But backups are much easier if you store your company files in folders dedicated to data.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Convert a Quicken File to QuickBooks
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterIf you're like many small business owners, your accountant probably recommended that you make the leap from tracking your business in Quicken to using QuickBooks. Quicken doesn't report your business performance in the way that most accountants want to see, nor does it store your business transactions the way QuickBooks does. If you want the conversion to proceed as smoothly as possible, do some cleanup in your Quicken file first.For example, you have to record overdue scheduled transactions and send online payments before you convert your Quicken file. Make sure that customer names are consistent and unique. QuickBooks doesn't support repeating online payments, so you must also send an instruction in Quicken to delete any repeating online payments you've set up. In addition, you need complete reports of your past payroll because Quicken payroll transactions don't convert to QuickBooks.Intuit has published a detailed guide to help you prepare for a Quicken conversion. The easiest way to locate this document is to point your browser to
http://quickbooks.com/support, which displays a section for searching the knowledge base. In the Enter search terms box, type Quicken convert to find topics that include links to the Quicken to QuickBooks Conversion Guide.When your Quicken file is ready for QuickBooks prime time, you have two options in QuickBooks:- Choose File → New. In the EasyStep Interview window, click Convert Data and choose Quicken.
- Choose File → Utilities → Convert → From Quicken.
Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Restore a Backup File
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterIn the No Company Open window, you'll see "Restore a backup file." Backup files are the answer to the adrenaline rush you get when you do something incredibly stupid with your company file or when your hard drive crashes. To learn how to create backup files in the first place, as well as how to restore them, see Section 7.2.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Modifying Company Information
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterIn the EasyStep Interview, QuickBooks extracts the basic information about your company in small chunks spread over several screens. After your company file exists, you can edit any of this information in one dialog box, as illustrated in Figure 1-7. Remember, the legal name and address are the ones you use on your federal and state tax forms. To open this dialog box, choose Company → Company Information.
Figure 1-7: Some company information changes more often than others. For instance, you might relocate your office or change your phone number, email, or Web site. However, information such as your legal name and address, the Federal Employer Identification Number, and your choice of business type (corporation, sole proprietor, and so on) usually remain the same.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Chapter 2: Setting Up a Chart of Accounts
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterIf you've just begun to run a business or keep books, all this talk of credits, debits, and accounts could have you flummoxed. Accounting is the cross between mathematics and black arts that records and reports the performance of an organization. The end result of bookkeeping and accounting is a set of financial statements (Section 14.1), but the starting point is the Chart of Accounts.In accounting, an account is like a bucket of money. When you earn money, you document those earnings in an income account, just as you might toss the day's take at the lemonade stand into the jar on your desk. When you buy supplies for your business, that expense shows up in an expense account. If you buy a building, its value ends up in an asset account. And if you borrow money to buy a building, the mortgage owed shows up in a liability account. Accounts come in a variety of types to reflect whether you've earned or spent money, whether you own something or owe money to someone else, as well as a few other financial situations. The Chart of Accounts isn't actually a chart; it's a list of all the accounts you use to track money in your business.Neophytes and experienced business folks alike should be relieved to know that no one has to build a Chart of Accounts from scratch in QuickBooks. This chapter explains how to acquire a ready-made Chart of Accounts for your business and what to do with it once you've got it. If you want to add or modify accounts in your Chart of Accounts, you'll learn about that, too.The easiest—though probably not the cheapest—way to obtain a Chart of Accounts is to get one from your accountant. Accountants understand the accounting guidelines set by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB— pronounced "faz bee"—a private-sector organization that sets standards with the SEC's blessing). When your accountant builds a QuickBooks Chart of Accounts for you, you can be reasonably sure that you have not only the accounts you need to track your business, but that those accounts conform to accounting standards.Don't worry too much about the cost for your accountant to build a Chart of Accounts in Quick-Books. Your accountant won't start from scratch either. Many financial professionals maintain spread-sheets of accounts and build a Chart of Accounts by importing a customized list of accounts into QuickBooks.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Obtaining a Chart of Accounts
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterThe easiest—though probably not the cheapest—way to obtain a Chart of Accounts is to get one from your accountant. Accountants understand the accounting guidelines set by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB— pronounced "faz bee"—a private-sector organization that sets standards with the SEC's blessing). When your accountant builds a QuickBooks Chart of Accounts for you, you can be reasonably sure that you have not only the accounts you need to track your business, but that those accounts conform to accounting standards.Don't worry too much about the cost for your accountant to build a Chart of Accounts in Quick-Books. Your accountant won't start from scratch either. Many financial professionals maintain spread-sheets of accounts and build a Chart of Accounts by importing a customized list of accounts into QuickBooks.If you've opted to work without an accountant, QuickBooks tries to help you do the right thing accounting-wise. If you use QuickBooks' EasyStep Interview (Section 1.3.3) to create your QuickBooks file, you can tell the program to create income, expense, and bank accounts for you. As you learned on Section 3.3, if you choose an industry during the interview, QuickBooks lists accounts typical for that industry, which you can use as a starting point for your Chart of Accounts.You might find a ready-made Chart of Accounts from other sources. For example, the National Center for Charitable Statistics Web site (
http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/FAQ/index.php?category=77) includes a downloadable QuickBooks file that contains the Unified Chart of Accounts for nonprofits (known as the UCOA).For a few hundred dollars more than QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier offers editions for several different types of business: accounting, construction, manufacturing, nonprofit, professional services, retail, and wholesale. With an industry-specific Premier edition, QuickBooks provides a Chart of Accounts, an item list, payroll items, and preferences already tuned to your industry. The industry-specific editions also offer features unique to an industry, such as enhanced job costing in the Contractor Edition.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Account Naming and Numbering
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterAccountants and bookkeepers tend to refer to accounts by both numbers and names. This section explains why you should set up naming and numbering conventions—and suggests some rules you can follow—but it won't explain the meaning of all the different names you'll find in your Chart of Accounts. If you accept the accounts that QuickBooks recommends in the EasyStep Interview, your accounts already have assigned account numbers, as shown in Figure 2-1. You might think that lets you off the hook. By taking the time to learn standard account numbers and names, you'll find working with accounts more logical, and you'll understand more of what your accountant and bookkeeper say.
Figure 2-1: Accounts that QuickBooks adds to your Chart of Accounts during the EasyStep Interview come with account numbers assigned. If you don't see account numbers in the "Chart of Accounts" window, choose Edit → Preferences. In the Preferences window, click Accounting and then click the Company Preferences tab. When you turn on the "Use account numbers" checkbox and click OK, the numbers appear in the "Chart of Accounts" window.Companies reserve ranges of numbers for different types of accounts; the benefit is that you can identify the type of account by its account number alone. Business models vary, so you'll find account numbers carved up in different ways depending on the business. If you think about your personal finances, you know that you spend money on many different things, but your income derives from a precious few sources. Businesses and nonprofits are no different. You might find expense accounts using numbers anywhere from 5000 through 9999 (see Table 2-1).Table 2-1: Account numbers Number RangeAccount Type1000–1999AssetsAdditional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Creating Accounts and Subaccounts
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterThe different types of accounts represent dramatically different financial animals, as described in the "Making Sense of Account Types" box on Section 2.3. The good news is that accounts of every type share most of the same fields, so you have to remember only one procedure for creating accounts.If you look closely at the Chart of Accounts list in Figure 2-1, you'll notice that accounts fall into two main categories: those with balances and those without. If you're really on your toes, you might also notice that accounts with balances are the ones that appear on the Balance Sheet report. Accounts without balances appear on the Profit & Loss report. To learn more about financial statements and the accounts they reference, see Section 14.1.After you've had your business for a while, you won't add new accounts very often. However, you might need a new account if you start up a new line of income and want a new income account, take on a mortgage for your new office building, or want a new expense account for the ostrich infertility insurance you took out for your ostrich farm. The procedure for creating accounts is simple, which is a refreshing change from many accounting tasks.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Modifying Accounts
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterIf you stick to your account numbering and naming conventions, you'll have few reasons to edit accounts. In the Edit Account dialog box, you can tweak an account name or description, adjust an account number to make room for new accounts, or change an account's level in the Chart of Accounts hierarchy.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Merging Accounts
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterSuppose you find multiple accounts for the same purpose—Postage and Mail Expense, for example—lurking in your Chart of Accounts. Rather than punishing your QuickBooks experts, it's more productive to merge the accounts into one and then reiterate the account naming conventions to everyone who creates accounts in QuickBooks. If you haven't gotten around to setting up an account naming convention, see Section 2.2.2 for some guidelines.When you merge accounts, QuickBooks sweeps all the transactions from both accounts into the account that you keep. Each type of account has a distinct purpose, so you can merge accounts only if they are the same type. As an experienced manager, you can imagine the havoc that merging income and expense accounts would cause in your financial statements.If you find two accounts with similar names but different types, those accounts might not represent the same thing. For instance, a Telephone Ex. expense account probably represents what you pay for your monthly telephone service; the Telephone Eq. asset account might represent the big telephone switch that your mega-corporation owns. In this situation, the accounts should be separate, although more meaningful names and descriptions would help differentiate them.Here's how to eliminate an extraneous account:
- Switch to single-user mode.You must be in single-user mode to merge accounts. Show your fellow QuickBooks workers courtesy by making these changes outside of working hours. If you want to merge accounts during the workday, remember to tell your co-workers they can log into the program after you've switched the company file back to multiuser mode.
- To open the "Chart of Accounts" window, press Ctrl+A. Then, in the Chart of Accounts list, select the name of the account that you want to eliminate and press Ctrl+E.The Edit Account dialog box opens.Accounts must be at the same level in the Chart of Accounts hierarchy (Section 2.3) before you can merge them. If the accounts are at different levels, move the account you plan to eliminate to the level of the account you're keeping. (Drag the diamond to the left of the account name to the left or right to change the account's level in the hierarchy.)
Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Hiding and Deleting Accounts
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterIf you create an account by mistake, you can delete it. However, because QuickBooks drops your financial transactions into account buckets and you don't want to throw away historical information, you'll usually want to hide accounts that you don't use anymore. You don't delete your Nutrition Service account just because you've discontinued your nutrition consulting service to focus on selling your new book, The See Food Diet. The income you earned from that service in the past must remain in your records.The records of past transactions are important, whether you want to review the amount of business you've received from a customer or the IRS is asking unsettling questions. Hiding accounts doesn't mean you withhold key financial information from prying eyes. When you hide an account, the account continues to hold your historical transactions, but account lists in QuickBooks no longer display it, so you can't choose it by mistake with a misplaced mouse click.Hiding and reactivating accounts, demonstrated in Figure 2-5, also comes in handy when you use QuickBooks' predefined Charts of Accounts, explained on Section 2.2. If QuickBooks overwhelms you with accounts you don't think you need, hide the accounts for the time being. When you find yourself saying, "Gosh, I wish I had an account for the accumulated depreciation of vehicles," the solution might be as simple as reactivating a hidden account.
Figure 2-5: To hide an account, in the "Chart of Accounts" window, right-click the account and choose Make Account Inactive from the shortcut menu. The account and any subaccounts disappear from the Chart of Accounts.
To view all accounts, at the bottom of the "Chart of Accounts" window, turn on the "Include inactive" checkbox. QuickBooks adds a column with an X as its heading and displays an X in that column for every inactive account in the list.
To reactivate an account, first view all accounts, and then click the X next to the account name. If the account has subaccounts, in the Activate Group dialog box, click Yes to reactivate the account and any subaccounts.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Chapter 3: Setting Up Customers and Jobs
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterYou might be fond of strutting around your sales department proclaiming, "Nothing happens until somebody sells something!" As it turns out, you can increase your self-satisfaction by quoting that tired adage in your accounting department, too. Whether you sell products or services, the first sale to a new customer can initiate a flurry of activity, including creating a new customer in QuickBooks, assigning a job for the work, and the ultimate goal of all this effort—invoicing your customer (sending her an invoice, which shows the services and products that you sold and how much she owes) to collect some income.The people who buy what you sell have plenty of nicknames: customers, clients, consumers, patrons, patients, purchasers, donors, members, shoppers, and so on. QuickBooks throws out the thesaurus and applies one term, customer, to every person or organization that buys from you. To be precise, a customer in QuickBooks is a record of information about your real-life customer. QuickBooks takes the data you enter for customers and fills in invoices and other sales forms with your customers' names, addresses, payment terms, and other information. If you play it safe and define a credit limit, QuickBooks even reminds you when an order puts customers over their limits.To QuickBooks, a job is simply a record of a real-life project that you agreed, perhaps begged, to perform for a customer—remodeling a kitchen, designing an advertising campaign, or tracking down the safety deposit box that matches your customer's key. Some organizations don't track jobs, and if your company is one of those, you don't have to create jobs in QuickBooks. For example, retail stores sell products, not projects. Even consultants who usually work on projects sometimes work on retainer, which provides a steady income that isn't related to one specific project. In these situations, you simply create your customers in QuickBooks and move on to invoicing them for their purchases without assigning the income to a job.Regardless of how your organization works, customers and jobs are inseparable in QuickBooks. Both the New Customer dialog box and the Edit Customer dialog box, which you'll meet in this chapter, include tabs for customer informationAdditional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - What to Do Before You Create Customers and Jobs
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterQuickBooks doesn't care if you create customers and jobs without any fore-thought, but you should take the time to set them up properly. If you want to report and analyze your financial performance to see where your business comes from and which type is most profitable, categorizing your QuickBooks customers and jobs is the way to go. For example, customer and job types help you produce a report of kitchen remodel jobs that are in progress for residential customers. With that report, you can order catered dinners to treat those clients to customer service that they'll brag about to their friends.With the handy <Add New> menu command in every drop-down list of customer and job types, QuickBooks gives you just-in-time customer and job type creation. Spending a few minutes up front planning your customers and jobs in QuickBooks can save you hours of effort when you want to get information about your business.You can add customer and job categories, as well as customers and jobs at any time. If you don't have time to add categories now, come back to this section to learn how to categorize them all.Categorizing your customers and jobs is one way to slice and dice your business reports to show where your business is doing well and what needs closer attention. In a construction company, knowing that your commercial customers cause fewer headaches, and that doing work for them is more profitable than residential jobs, is a strong motivator to focus your future marketing efforts on commercial work. Organize your customers and jobs by type, and you'll easily get some insightful analysis.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Creating Customers in QuickBooks
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterIf bringing in business were as easy as creating customers in QuickBooks, sales of QuickBooks would propel Intuit past Microsoft as the software company with the largest market capitalization. Face facts—you still have to convince customers to work with your company. But once you've cleared that hurdle, you create customers in QuickBooks so you can charge for the products you sell and the services you deliver.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Importing and Exporting Customer Information
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterChances are you store customer information in other applications besides QuickBooks, such as a customer relationship management program to track customer interactions or a word processing application to produce mailing labels. Entering the same information more than once is not only mind-numbingly tedious, it also wastes time you should spend on more important aspects of your business, such as selling, managing cash flow, or finding out who has the incriminating pictures from the Christmas party. If the other programs you use support delimited text files, you can avoid data entry grunt work by transferring data to or from QuickBooks. Delimited text files are nothing more than files that separate each piece of data with a comma, a space, a tab, or another character. The same kind of information appears in the same position in each line, so other programs can pull the information into the right places.To extract customer information from QuickBooks, you have three choices:
- Export your customer information directly to Excel if you're not sure what information you need, and you'd rather delete and rearrange columns in a spreadsheet program. QuickBooks exports every field for customers and you can edit the spreadsheet all you want and transfer the data to yet another program when you're done. (The one downside to this approach is that the spreadsheet includes blank columns between each field column.)
- Create a report when you want control over exactly which fields to export. By creating a customized version of the Customer Contact List report, you can export the same set of records repeatedly, creating delimited files, spreadsheets, and so on.
- If you need a delimited file to load into another program, QuickBooks lets you export a text file of your customer data. The delimited file contains each customer in its own row with each field separated by tabs.
Section 3.3.1.1: Exporting to Excel
In QuickBooks 2006, exporting the Customer List to Excel is a snap, as Figure 3-6 demonstrates.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Creating Jobs in QuickBooks
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterProject-based work means that your current effort for a customer has a beginning and an end, although it sometimes seems like your project will last forever. Whether you build custom software programs or apartment buildings, you can use job tracking in QuickBooks to analyze financial performance by job.If you sell products to retailers and don't give a hoot about job tracking, you can simply invoice your customers for the products and services you sell without ever creating a job in QuickBooks. On the other hand, suppose you want to know whether you're making more money on the mansion you're building or the bungalow remodel. What's more, you want to know the percentage of profit you made on each project. These financial measures are the reason you create jobs for each project you want to track.In QuickBooks, jobs connect to customers like baby possums clinging to their mothers. A QuickBooks job always belongs to a customer. In fact, if you try to choose the Add Job command before you create a customer, you'll see a message box telling you to create a customer first.Because a job belongs to a customer, you must first create a customer before you can create any of that customer's jobs. Follow these steps to add a job to an existing customer:
- Open the Customer Center. Right-click the customer you want, and then choose Add Job from the shortcut menu.The New Job dialog box appears. You can also click New Customer & Job in the Customer Center icon bar and then choose Add Job.
- In the Job Name box, type the name for the job.The name that you type appears on invoices and other customer documents. You can type up to 41 characters in the Job Name box. The best names are short but easily recognizable by both you and the customer.QuickBooks fills in most of the remaining job fields with the information you entered for the customer who owns the job. Unless the information on the Address Info, Additional Info, and Payment Info tabs is different for the job, you can skip the fields on these tabs. For example, if materials for the job go to a different shipping address than the one stored with the customer, type the job shipping address in the fields on the Address Info tab.
Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Modifying Customer and Job Information
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterAs long as you enter a customer name when you create a new customer, you can leave the remaining customer fields blank. You can change customer information at any time to add more data or to change what's already there. Similarly, you can create a job with only the job name and come back later to modify or add more. To modify a customer or job, open the Customer Center and then double-click the customer or job that you want to edit.If double-clicking isn't your favorite action, select the customer or job you want to edit and then press Ctrl+E. If you can't remember keyboard shortcuts, in the Customer Center, click Edit Customer (or Edit Job).In the Edit Customer dialog box, you can make changes to all customer fields—that is, all except for the customer balance. QuickBooks pulls the customer balance from the opening balance (if you provide one) and shows any unpaid invoices for that customer. Once a customer exists, creating invoices (Section 8.1.3) is your only option for reproducing the customer's current balance. Similarly, all the fields in the Edit Job dialog box are editable, except for the customer balance. Remember that the changes you make to fields on the Address Info, Additional Info, Payment Info, and Job Info tabs apply only to the job, not the customer.Unless you have revamped your naming standard for customers, don't edit the value in a customer's Customer Name field. Because the Customer Name field uniquely identifies your customers, you might customize QuickBooks based on the Customer Name field. For example, if you created a customized report filtered by a specific customer name, the report isn't smart enough to take on the new customer name. If you do modify the Customer Name, make sure to modify any customization to use the new name.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Adding Notes About Customers
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterAttention to detail. Follow through. These are a few of the things that keep customers coming back for more. Following up on promises or calling if you can't make your meeting is good business. But sending reorder brochures after customers have made purchases can just make them mad. If you use another program for customer relationship management, you can track these types of details there. On the other hand, if you prefer to use the smallest number of software programs, stay in customers' good graces by using QuickBooks notes to keep track of personal information and customer to-do lists.In the Customer Center, select the customer to which you want to add a note. Click Edit Notes to open the Notepad window shown in Figure 3-8.To-do items are handy little reminders of what you want to do for a customer and when. In the Notepad window, click New To Do. In the New To Do dialog box, type the text for your to-do item. If you want QuickBooks to remind you when it's time to take action, choose a date in the Remind Me On box. The to-do item shows up on the QuickBooks Reminder List on the date you asked QuickBooks to remind you. Of course, QuickBooks reminders work only if you open QuickBooks on that day and you remember to look at the Reminders List.
Figure 3-8: Keep track of when conversations occur by clicking Date Stamp before you begin typing a note. If you're adding a note about something that happened on another day, you have to type in the date.Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Merging Customer Records
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterSuppose you remodeled buildings for two companies run by brothers: Morey's City Diner and Les' Exercise Studio. The brothers conclude that their businesses have a lot of synergy—people are either eating or trying to lose weight, and usually doing both. To smooth out their cash flow, they decide to merge their companies into More or Less Body Building and All You Can Eat Buffet. You have to figure out how to create one customer in QuickBooks from the two businesses, and you also want to retain the jobs, invoices, and other transactions that you created when the companies were separate.If you don't use a standard naming convention as recommended on Section 3.2.1, you could end up with multiple customer records representing one real-life customer, such as Les's Exercise Studio and LesEx. You can merge these doppelgangers into one customer just as you can merge two truly separate companies into one.Merging customers in QuickBooks results in one customer that retains the entire transaction history for the two original customers. You don't so much merge two customers as turn one customer's records into those of another's. If your customers have jobs associated with them, you have to move all the jobs to the customer you intend to keep before you start the merge. Subsume the customer with fewer jobs so you don't have to move as many jobs. If you don't use jobs, subsume whichever customer you want.Merging customers in QuickBooks won't win any awards for best intuitive process. You merge two customers by renaming one customer to the same name as another. But that's not all. The customer you rename can't have any jobs associated with it. Finally, if you work in multiuser mode (described in Chapter 23), you must switch to single-user mode for the duration of the merging operation. (Warn your fellow QuickBooks users and then choose File → Switch to Single-user Mode. When you're done, switch back to multiuser mode and tell your colleagues they can work in QuickBooks once more.)To merge customers with a minimum of angry outbursts, follow these steps:Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing! - Hiding and Deleting Customers
- Content preview·Buy PDF of this chapter|Buy reprint rights for this chapterHiding customers isn't about secreting them away when the competition shows up to talk to you. Because you can delete customers onl