QuickBooks Online For Dummies, 7th Edition

Introduction

I get it: Small-business owners have many other things they’d rather be doing with their time than accounting. We’re legally mandated to maintain a set of accounting records for our businesses, so avoidance isn’t an option — but working smarter is. This book will help you get there. What’s more, certain tasks, such as reporting earnings and paying employees, are markedly more difficult if you don’t use accounting software.

Accounting programs such as QuickBooks Online help take the pain out of accounting, and in some cases, they even make it easy. In this book, I explore QuickBooks Online, which is aimed at business users, and QuickBooks Online Accountant (QB Accountant), which is aimed at — you guessed it — accountants and bookkeepers. Both programs are web-based products that offer mobile versions, so your accounting records are at your fingertips no matter which device you have at hand. The benefit of an online accounting system such as QuickBooks is that it enables you to access your books from anywhere and share access with your accountant as well. QB Accountant helps accountants streamline various aspects of supporting multiple clients who use QuickBooks Online.

Intuit, the maker of QuickBooks Online and QB Accountant, also offers QuickBooks Desktop, which is a version of the software that you must purchase a license for and then install on individual computers. In the appendix, I discuss migrating QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online. But if you’re looking ...