QuickBooks 2009: The Missing Manual

Chapter 2. Getting Around in QuickBooks

You have enough to do running your business, so you don’t want bookkeeping to take any longer than necessary. The QuickBooks Home page is a visual roadmap to the bookkeeping tasks you use regularly. It has panels for tasks related to vendors, customers, and employees, giving you quick access to the commands and financial info you use most often. Click an icon, and the corresponding window or dialog box appears. The Home page has other icons that open the windows you use all the time. The Vendors, Customers, and Employees buttons on the left side of the window open centers that let you manage those groups. This chapter explains how to use the workflow icons and the centers.

You’ll also learn how to review your company finances in the Company Snapshot window and access QuickBooks commands from the menu bar and icon bar. Finally, you’ll learn how to work with all the windows you open during a rousing session of QuickBooks bookkeeping.

Getting Around the QuickBooks Home Page

The QuickBooks Home page (Figure 2-1) is a slick way to work through your company’s bookkeeping tasks. When you create your company file, what you tell QuickBooks during the EasyStep Interview determines what you see on the Home page. For example, if you invoice customers and send statements, the tasks for invoicing and preparing statements appear in the Customers panel. But if you run a one-person shop and don’t have employees, the Employees panel is nowhere to be seen.

The ...