QuickBooks 2014: The Missing Manual

Chapter 27. Customizing QuickBooks

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. For example, if 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. The box on Customizing the Desktop describes several ways you can customize the QuickBooks desktop. 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 you have to blast out some invoices. But when you finally find a few spare minutes, you can create templates that show the information you want, formatted the way you want, and laid out to work with your letterhead. You can even create as many versions as you want. For example, you can make one invoice ...