QuickBooks History and Features in 40 Characters

INTRODUCTION- HISTORY
In 1998, QuickBooks was launched by California-based Intuit.
QuickBooks was intended to offer small business owners the
flexibility of an easy-to-use software package and the structure
and compliance that are needed to manage a profitable
business.
QuickBooks isn’t hard to learn. Many of
the features that you’re familiar with
from other programs work the same way
in QuickBooks—windows, dialog boxes,
drop-down lists, and keyboard shortcuts,
to name a few.

WHAT’S NEW IN QUICKBOOKS 2016
The changes in QuickBooks 2016 are mostly small tweaks and
subtle improvements, but some of them might be just what
you’ve been waiting for:
• Updating a QuickBooks file to a new
QuickBooks version.
• Bill Tracker
• Updated Insights tab
• This Fiscal Year-to-Last Month date
range
• Comment attributions in reports
• Column-search feature in the Modify
Report dialog box

WHEN QUICKBOOKS MAY NOT BE THE ANSWER
QuickBooks helps you perform basic financial tasks, track your
financial results, and manage your business to make it even
better. But before you read any further, here are a few things
you shouldn’t try to do with QuickBooks:
• Work with more than 14,500 unique
inventory items or 14,500 contact
names.
• Track personal finances.
• Track the performance of stocks and
bonds.
• Manage specialized details about
customer relationships.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT EDITION
QuickBooks Pro handles the basic needs of most businesses,
whereas Enterprise Solutions (the most robust and powerful
edition of QuickBooks) boasts enhanced features and speed
for the biggest of small businesses.

SETTING UP QUICKBOOKS-CREATING A
COMPANY FILE
You can create a company file from scratch or convert
records that you previously kept in a different small-business
accounting program, Quicken, or even another edition of
QuickBooks like QuickBooks for Mac.
This chapter begins by explaining how to
launch your copy of QuickBooks. Then, if
you need to create your company file
yourself, you'll learn how to use the
QuickBooks Setup dialog box or the
EasyStep Interview to get started.

OPENING QUICKBOOKS
Here are the easiest ways to open QuickBooks:
• Desktop icon. Double-click the desktop shortcut that
QuickBooks created during installation.
• Windows taskbar. Click its icon on the Windows taskbar
Start menu. You can also launch
QuickBooks from the Start menu.
The first time you launch QuickBooks,
you're greeted by the QuickBooks Setup
dialog box, whose sole purpose is to help
you create a company file in one way or
another.

START DATE
To keep your entire financial history at your fingertips, you
need to put every transaction and speck of financial
information in your QuickBooks company file.
The more realistic approach is to enter
your financial data into QuickBooks
starting as of a specific date and, from
then on, add all new transactions to
QuickBooks. The date you choose is
called the start date.

CREATING A COMPANY FILE
QuickBooks makes it easy to create a company file from
scratch. You can opt for a short and sweet process, which asks
you for the bare minimum of info before it creates your file.
The three basic approaches to creating a
company file are covered by the
QuickBooks Setup dialog box's two
buttons:
• Start Setup.
• Advanced Setup.
• Other Options.

USING QUICKBOOKS SETUP
When you click Start Setup in the QuickBooks Setup dialog
box, the program gets you going as quickly as possible by
asking for the minimum amount of info (you can fill in the
details later).
To use it, choose File→ New Company
and then, in the QuickBooks Setup dialog
box, click Start Setup.
The “Glad you're here!” screen appears,
and you can begin entering info. This
section explains what the program needs
to know to create your company file.

USING THE EASYSTEP INTERVIEW
To access the EasyStep Interview, choose File→New Company
and then, in the QuickBooks Setup dialog box, click the Other
Options button, and then, from the drop-down menu, choose
Advanced Setup.
As you enter the following info, click
Next to proceed to each new screen:
• Name and contact info.
• Industry.
• Type of company.
• First month of fiscal year.
• Administrator password.

CREATING YOUR COMPANY FILE
When you're ready to create the file,
on the “Create your company file”
screen, click Next to wrap up the
creation process by specifying the
filename and location. QuickBooks
opens the “Filename for New
Company” dialog box, which is really
just a Save As dialog box.
After you set the administrator password and click Next, the
“Create your company file” screen appears.

CUSTOMIZING YOUR COMPANY FILE
Click Next on the “Customizing QuickBooks for your
business screen” to see a series of EasyStep Interview
screens that ask questions about your business.
Your answers to these questions help
QuickBooks decide which features to turn
on, what to include on your Home Page,
and so on.
Adding Details to Your Company File :
After you create your company file with
the EasyStep Interview, you'll see the
“Get all the details into QuickBooks”
screen

OPENING AN EXISTING COMPANY FILE
After you've opened a company file in one QuickBooks
session, the next time you launch the program, it
automatically opens that same company file.
If you keep the books for only one
company, you might never have to
manually open a QuickBooks company
file again.
you can open another company file in
QuickBooks anytime, and the program
automatically closes the previous one.

OPENING A RECENTLY OPENED COMPANY FILE
The easiest way to open a recent file is to choose File→Open
Previous Company, and then choose the file you want to
open as shown in Figure.

MATERIAL MANAGEMENT MODULE
The Materials Management module (RHR MM) consists of
all master data, system configuration, and transactions to
complete the Procure to Pay process.
(RHR MM) Module:
• Purchasing
• Inventory Management
• Logistics Invoice Verification
• Physical Inventory
• Material Valuation
• Material Requirements Planning
(MRP)
• External Services Management

OPENING ANY COMPANY FILE
Here's how to open any company file, no matter how long it's
been since you last used it:
Choose File→“Open or Restore Company.”
If the No Company Open window is
visible, you can click “Open or restore an
existing company” instead.
In the “Open or Restore Company” dialog
box, select the “Open a company file”
option, and then click Next.
You can also click the filename and then
click Open.

MODIFYING COMPANY INFO
When you use the basic setup process or the EasyStep
Interview, QuickBooks gets the basic facts about your
company in small chunks. But after you create your company
file, you can easily view and edit any of this information.
• Choose Company → My Company or
click the My Company entry in the
icon bar.
• To edit your company info, click the
edit icon at the window's top right .
• To edit your company's contact info,
in the Company Information dialog
box, click the Contact Information
category on the left.

GETTING AROUND IN QUICKBOOKS- INTRO
Another way to get your accounting done quickly and
efficiently is by accessing features via the QuickBooks
Home Page.
This page not only provides a visual
roadmap of the bookkeeping tasks you
perform regularly, but it also gives you
quick access to tasks and information
related to vendors, customers, and
employees, along with the features and
overall financial info you use most often.

MENUS AND THE ICON BAR
The menu bar at the very top of the QuickBooks window is a
convenient way to launch different activities. It’s handy
because it’s always visible and serves up every feature the
program has to offer.
The icon bar is the fastest way to launch
your favourite features. You can
customize the icon bar to add features,
memorized reports, and windows you
open often—and remove features you
don’t use.
The left icon bar (View→Left Icon
Bar),appears the first time you launch
QuickBooks 2016.

THE HOME PAGE
The QuickBooks Home Page is a slick way to work through
your company’s bookkeeping tasks in the right order. Vendors,
customers, and employees each have their own panel on the
Home Page.
The settings you chose when you
created your company file determine
what initially appears on the Home
Page. Depending on your choices, you’ll
see several panels— Vendors,
Customers, Employees, Company, and
Banking—that each contain various
icons.

THE INSIGHTS TAB
Clicking the Insights tab displays a dashboard that provides a
50,000-foot view of your company’s financial status. You can
change date ranges and click various parts of the dashboard
to get a closer look:
Graphs: Initially, the tab’s top panel
displays a Profit & Loss graph.
Income: This section at the tab’s bottom
left looks like the bars in the Income
Tracker window—and for good reason.
Expenses: The Expenses section in the
tab’s bottom right shows where you
spend the most money.

WORKING WITH WINDOWS
You can have any number of windows open within
QuickBooks at the same time— whether you display only one
full-size window at a time or keep several in view
simultaneously.
Switching among Open Windows:
If you tend to work on one bookkeeping
task for hours on end, you can set Quick-
Books up to display one full-size window
at a time by choosing View→One
Window.

TRANSACTION WINDOW RIBBONS
When QuickBooks switched to ribbons, it pulled features
that had been scattered throughout the window up onto
the ribbon, such as the Print Later and Email Later
checkboxes, so they’re easier to find.
The tabs that appear depend on the
transaction window, various tabs :
• Main tab
• Formatting tab
• Send/Ship tab.
• Reports tab.
• Payments tab.

RESIZING DROP-DOWN LISTS AND COLUMNS
Throughout QuickBooks, you can resize drop-down lists to
change their heights and widths.
To resize a drop-down list, open it, and
then put your cursor over the dots in the
list’s lower-right corner.
To change the widths of columns in a
table, place your cursor over the vertical
dots between two column headings, and
then drag left or right to shrink or widen
the column to the left.

CUSTOMERS, JOBS AND VENDORS-INTRO.
Real-world customers are essential to your success, but do you
need customers in your QuickBooks company file? Even if you
run a primarily cash business, creating customers in
QuickBooks could still be a good idea.
If your business revolves around
projects, you can create a job in
QuickBooks for each project you do for
a customer. To QuickBooks, a job is a
record of a real-life project that you
agreed (or perhaps begged) to perform
for a customer—remodeling a kitchen,
designing an ad campaign, or whatever.

WORKING WITH THE CUSTOMER CENTER
The Customer Center is a one-stop shop for customers and
jobs; you can create, modify, and view their records, as well as
create transactions for them. QuickBooks gives you four easy
ways to open the Customer Center window:
1. From anywhere in the program, press
Ctrl+J.
2. On the QuickBooks Home Page, at the
top of the Customers panel, click
Customers.
3. On the QuickBooks menu bar, choose
Customers → Customer Center.
4. In the icon bar, click Customers.

CREATING A NEW CUSTOMER
Here’s the short and sweet method of creating one customer
in QuickBooks:
In the Customer Center toolbar, click New Customer &
Job→New Customer (or press Ctrl+N).
• In the Customer Name field, type a
unique name or code for this
customer, following the naming
convention you’ve chosen.
• To save this customer’s record and
close the New Customer window, click
OK.

ENTERING CONTACT INFORMATION
If you plan to bill your customers, ship products to them, or call
them to make them feel appreciated, address and contact
information is important. You record this info on the New
Customer window’s Address Info tab.
Here’s a guide to what you enter on
this tab:
• Company Name
• Full Name.
• Invoice/Bill To.
• Ship To.

ENTERING PAYMENT INFORMATION
The Payment Settings tab is the place to indicate how the
customer pays and how much credit you’re willing to extend.
You can use the following fields to specify
the customer’s payment info:
• Account No.
• Payment Terms.
• Preferred Delivery Method.
• Preferred Payment Method.
• Credit Card Information.
• Credit Limit.
• Price Level.

SPECIFYING SALES TAX INFORMATION
The Sales Tax Settings tab appears whether or not you turn on
QuickBooks’ Sales Tax preference. However, if sales tax isn’t
turned on, the fields on this tab are grayed out.
If the customer pays sales tax, choose
Tax in the Tax Code drop-down list.
Then, in the Tax Item drop-down list,
choose the option that specifies the
tax rate the customer pays.

SPECIFYING ADDITIONAL CUSTOMER INFO
The New Customer window’s Additional Info tab serves up a
few fields that let you categorize your customers. Here are
the fields and some ways to use them:
• Customer Type. Customer Type List.
• Rep. Choosing a name in this field
links a customer to a sales
representative.
• Custom Fields. QuickBooks offers 15
custom fields, which you can use to
store important info that QuickBooks
doesn’t include fields for out of the
box.

ADDING MORE CUSTOMER CONTACTS
When you create a customer, you can specify information
about one contact (typically the primary contact) on the New
Customer window’s Address Info tab. After you finish creating
the customer’s record, you can then add more contacts to it.
When you select a customer in the
Customer Center’s Customers & Jobs
list, you see contact info for that
customer on the right side of the
window.
Click the Contacts tab in the window’s
lower-right pane.

CREATING JOBS IN QUICKBOOKS
In QuickBooks, jobs cling to customers
like baby possums to their mothers. A
QuickBooks job always belongs to a
customer. In fact, if you try to create a
job before you create a customer, you’ll
see a message box telling you to create
a customer first.
QuickBooks’ job-tracking features to analyze financial
performance by project (known as job costing).

CREATING A NEW JOB
Because jobs belong to customers, you have to create a
customer before you can create any of that customer’s jobs.
Once the customer exists, follow these steps to add a job to
the customer’s record:
In the Customer Center’s Customers &
Jobs tab, right-click the customer you
want to create a job for, and then choose
Add Job from the shortcut menu.
In the Job Name box, type a name for the
job.
After you’ve filled in the job fields, click
OK to save the job and close the New Job
window.

WORKING WITH THE VENDOR CENTER
The Vendor Center is the best place to create, edit, and view
what’s going on with your vendors and vendor-related
transactions.
To open it, click the Vendors button at the
top of the Home Page’s Vendors panel or
choose Vendors → Vendor Center.
Create a new vendor. In the Vendor
Center toolbar at the top of the window,
click New Vendor → New Vendor and the
New Vendor window opens so you can
create a new vendor record.

CREATING VENDORS IN QUICKBOOKS
The methods for creating vendor records are similar to
those for creating customers:
One at a time. The New Vendor window lets you create one
vendor at a time.
Copying data. You can also create
multiple vendor records with the
Add/Edit Multiple List Entries feature,
which lets you paste data from Excel or
copy values from vendor to vendor.
Importing data. This method is another
fast way to create oodles of vendor
records.

CREATING A VENDOR
You create a new vendor from the Vendor Center window by
pressing Ctrl+N or, in the Vendor Center menu bar, by
clicking New Vendor → New Vendor.
Many of the fields in this window should
be familiar from creating customers in
QuickBooks. For example, the Vendor
Name field corresponds to the Customer
Name field, which you might remember is
actually more of a code than a name.

ADDRESS INFO
If you print checks and envelopes to pay your bills, you’ll need
address and contact information for your vendors.
The New Vendor window’s Address Info
tab has fields for the vendor’s address
and contact info, which are almost
identical to customer address and
contact fields.

PAYMENT SETTINGS
The fields related to payments reside on the Payment Settings
tab. Here are the fields and how you fill them in:
Account No. When you create customers,
you can assign account numbers to them.
Payment Terms. Choose the payment
terms that the vendor extended to your
company.
Print Name On Check As.-QuickBooks fills
in the payee field with the contents of this
box.
Credit Limit . Billing Rate Level.

ACCOUNT SETTINGS
The Account Settings tab of the New Vendor (and Edit Vendor)
window lets you tell QuickBooks which accounts you typically
use.
There’s an easier approach to filling in
expense accounts than selecting
accounts on this tab: telling
QuickBooks to automatically recall
your previous transactions.

ADDITIONAL INFO
This tab is rather sparse—it contains only one field: Vendor
Type. However, if you associated custom fields with your
vendors:
Vendor Type. If you classify vendors or
generate reports based on their types,
choose an entry in this drop-down list or
choose <Add New> to create a new type
in the Vendor Type List.
Custom Fields. If you want to track
vendor information that isn’t handled by
the fields that QuickBooks provides, you
can add up to seven custom fields here.

MODIFYING CUSTOMER, JOB, AND VENDOR
INFORMATION
Edit a customer or job: In the Customer
Center (choose Customers → Customer
Center), on the Customers & Jobs tab,
double-click the customer or job you want
to tweak.
Edit a vendor: In the Vendor Center (choose
Vendors → Vendor Center), on the Vendors
tab, double-click the vendor you want to
modify.
QuickBooks gives you a few ways to open the edit windows
for these records (Edit Customer, Edit Job, and Edit Vendor).
Here are your options:

you might categorize vendors to track
what you spend with companies versus
individual contractors or to classify
vendors by geographic location. You can
add and assign customer, job, and
vendor types anytime.
If you want to report and analyze your financial performance
to see where your business comes from and what you spend
your money on, categorizing your QuickBooks customers, jobs,
and vendors is the way to go.
CATEGORIZING CUSTOMERS, JOBS, & VENDORS

UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER, JOB, AND
VENDOR TYPES
Categorizing a customer, job, or vendor is as easy as choosing
from the Customer Type, Job Type, or Vendor Type lists. Here
are some suggestions for using customer, job, and vendor types
and other QuickBooks features to analyze your business:
• Customer business type.
• Nonprofit “customers.”
• Job type.
• Vendor type
• Location or region
• Services.
• Products.
• Marketing.

You can create these types when you set up your QuickBooks
company file or at any time after setup. Here’s how to see the
different type lists:
• Customer types: Choose Lists →
Customer & Vendor Profile Lists →
Customer Type List.
• Job types: Choose Lists → Customer &
Vendor Profile Lists → Job Type List.
• Vendor types: Choose Lists →
Customer & Vendor Profile Lists →
Vendor Type List.
CREATING A VENDOR, CUSTOMER, OR JOB TYPE

HIDING RECORDS
Hiding old records is better than deleting them because
QuickBooks retains the historical transactions for those
customers, jobs, and vendors so you can reactivate them if
you renew the relationship.
To hide a customer or job, in the
Customer Center’s Customers & Jobs tab,
right-click the customer or job and then,
from the shortcut menu, choose Make
Customer : Job Inactive. The customer
and any associated jobs disappear from
the list.

DELETING RECORDS
You can delete customers, jobs, or vendors only if there’s no
activity for them in your QuickBooks file. If you created a
customer, job, or vendor by mistake and the record has no
transactions associated with it, here’s how to delete it:
In the Customer Center, on the
Customers & Jobs tab (or in the Vendor
Center, on the Vendors tab), select the
customer, job, or vendor you want to
delete.
Press Ctrl + D (or choose Edit → Delete
Customer : Job or Edit → Delete Vendor.)

MERGING RECORDS
If you want to merge two customers’ records into one, the
secret is to rename one customer to the same name as
another. Likewise, if you want to merge two jobs’ or vendors’
records into one, you rename one job or vendor to the same
name as another.
To merge customer, job, or vendor
records with a minimum of frustrated
outbursts, follow these steps:
If you work in multi-user mode, switch to
single-user mode for the duration of the
merging process.
Open the Customer Center or Vendor
Center.

PAYING FOR EXPENSES- INTRODUCTION
This chapter explains your choices for paying bills (now or later)
and describes how to enter bills and record your bill payments.
QuickBooks is happy to help you
through every step of the process:
entering bills you receive if you want to
pay later, setting up bill payments, and
even printing checks you can mail to
vendors.

WHEN TO PAY EXPENSES
When it comes to handling expenses, you can pay now or pay
later; QuickBooks has features for both options.
Pay now.: In QuickBooks, paying right
away means writing a check, entering a
debit card transaction, entering a credit
card charge, making an online payment,
or using money from petty cash.
Pay later.: Once you decide whether
you’re going to pay bills now or later, use
that method consistently.

VIEWING PAYABLES WITH BILL TRACKER
Bill Tracker is new in QuickBooks 2016. (To open it, choose
Vendors → Bill Tracker or click Bill Tracker in either icon bar. If
multicurrency is turned on, Bill Tracker is disabled; it doesn’t
appear on the Vendors menu or in either icon bar.)
Here’s what each part of the Bill Tracker
window shows you:
Purchase Orders, Open Bills, Overdue.
Paid In Last 30 Days, The transaction
table, Filter transactions, Group
transactions, Sort transactions, Take
action and Print transactions in batches

ENTERING BILLS
To get started, open the Enter Bills window using any of the
following methods:
On the Home Page, in the Vendors panel, click Enter Bills.
Choose Vendors → Enter Bills.
In the Vendor Center, select the vendor
on the Vendors tab icon bar. Then, in the
center’s toolbar, click New Transactions →
Enter Bills. When you do that, the Enter
Bills window opens with your selected
vendor already filled in.

Write a check, enter a credit card charge, or use another
payment method to pay the deposit. Choose the vendor’s
name in the “Pay to the Order of,” “Purchased From,” or other
corresponding name field, depending on the transaction you’re
recording.
In the Write Checks or Enter Credit Card
Charges window, click the Expenses tab; in
the first Account cell, choose your
Accounts Payable account.
In the Memo field, type a note to remind
yourself that this transaction is for a
vendor deposit.
RECORDING A DEPOSIT TO A VENDOR

There are two ways to track reimbursable expenses, and
QuickBooks can handle them both:
HANDLING REIMBURSABLE EXPENSES
1. As income. With this method,
QuickBooks posts the expenses on a
bill you record to the expense
account you specify.
2. As expenses. Tracking
reimbursements as expenses doesn’t
change the way QuickBooks handles
bills—

SETTING UP REIMBURSEMENTS AS INCOME
If you want to track reimbursable expenses as income,
choose Edit → Preferences→ Time & Expenses. Then, on the
Company Preferences tab, turn on the “Track reimbursed
expenses as income” checkbox.
whenever you create or edit an expense
account (in the Add New Account or Edit
Account window), QuickBooks adds a
“Track reimbursed expenses in Income
Acct.” checkbox and drop-down list to
the bottom of the window.

RECORDING REIMBURSABLE EXPENSES
As you enter bills or make payments with checks or credit
cards, you add designated expenses as reimbursable.
When you choose a customer or job in
the Customer : Job column, QuickBooks
automatically adds a checkmark to the
“Billable?” cell. Be sure to type a note in
the Memo cell to identify the expense,
because QuickBooks uses the text in
that cell as the description of the
reimbursable expense on your invoice.

PAYING YOUR BILLS
Pay Bills is the QuickBooks feature that actually pushes your
money out the door. It lets you select the bills you want to pay;
Selecting Bills to Pay:
Choose Vendors→Pay Bills (or click the
Pay Bills icon on the Home Page).
QuickBooks opens the Pay Bills window
and displays the bills due on or before
the date in the window’s aptly named
“Due on or before” box.

MODIFYING PAYMENT AMOUNTS
Whether you select individual bills or all the bills in the Pay
Bills window’s table, QuickBooks automatically fills in the
selected bills’ Amt.
Paying bills in full means you don’t have
to worry about the next due date or
paying late fees, but making partial
payments can stretch limited resources
to appease more of your unpaid
vendors.

APPLYING DISCOUNTS AND CREDITS TO PAYTS.
Most companies like to use their discounts and credits as soon
as possible. By far the easiest way to deal with discounts and
credits you receive from vendors is to let QuickBooks handle
them automatically.
Choose Edit→Preferences→Bills, and
then click the Company Preferences
tab.
To make QuickBooks apply available
credits automatically, turn on the
“Automatically use credits” checkbox.

SETTING THE PAYMENT METHOD & ACCOUNT
Method. In this drop-down list, choose how you want to pay
the bills: Check, Credit Card, or (if you subscribe to QuickBooks’
online bill-payment service) Online Bank Pmt.
Account. If you specified a default
account for the Pay Bills window to use,
QuickBooks automatically selects that
account here. To use a different one, in
this drop-down list, choose the account
you use to pay bills, such as a checking
or credit card account.

PAYING SELECTED BILLS
Most companies like to use their discounts and credits as soon
as possible. By far the easiest way to deal with discounts and
credits you receive from vendors is to let QuickBooks handle
them automatically.
When you’re done setting up bills to
pay, it’s time to pay them. Here are the
steps:
Click the Pay Bills window’s Pay
Selected Bills button.
In the Payment Summary dialog box,
click the button for the action you
want to take next.

RECORDING VENDOR REFUNDS AND CREDITS
Recording Vendor Refunds
Here’s how to deposit a vendor’s refund check or credit card
refund: Choose Banking → Make Deposits or, in the Home
Page’s Banking panel, click Record Deposits.
If the “Payments to Deposit” window
appears, turn on the checkmark cell for
each payment you want to deposit
along with the refund check, and then
click OK to open the Make Deposits
window.

15 A/P AGING AND VENDOR BALANCE REPORTS
A/P Aging Summary. This report shows all the vendors you
owe money to and how old your balances are for each one.
Double-click a value to see a report of the transactions that
produced the amount owed.
A/P Aging Detail. Run this report to see
each unpaid bill sorted by its billing
date and grouped into bills that are
current, 1 to 30 days overdue, 31 to 60
days overdue, 61 to 90 days overdue,
and more than 90 days late.

REPORTS ABOUT PURCHASES
Purchasing reports (Reports → Purchases) tell you how much
you’ve spent by vendor or item. And if you create purchase
orders for items you buy, you can review all your open
purchase orders.
Here are a few of the purchasing
reports you can use:
• Purchases by Vendor Summary.
• Purchases by Item Summary.
• Open Purchase Orders

INVOICING- INTRODUCTION
Although businesses use several different sales forms to bill
customers, the invoice is the most popular, and,
unsurprisingly, customer billing is often called invoicing.
Finally, you’ll find out how to handle a
few special billing situations, like
creating invoices when products you
sell are on backorder and how to handle
products you sell on consignment.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT TYPE OF FORM
In QuickBooks, you can choose from three different sales
forms to document what you sell, and each form has
strengths and limitations.
Invoices can handle any billing task you
can think of, so they’re the best choice
if you have any doubts about which one
to use.

SALES RECEIPTS
The sales receipt is the simplest sales form that QuickBooks
offers, and it’s also the shortest path between making a sale
and having money in the bank (at least in QuickBooks).
When you create and save a sales receipt
in QuickBooks, the program immediately
posts the money you receive to the
undeposited Funds account or to the bank
account you choose.
Sales receipts can handle sales tax,
discounts, and subtotals—or any other
item in your Item List.

STATEMENTS
Businesses often turn to statements when they charge the
same amount each month, such as a fixed monthly fee for
Internet service or full-time work as a contract programmer.
Although statements work for these fixed
fees, you can also use memorized invoices
and QuickBooks’ batch invoice feature to
do the same thing just as easily.
The statement shows the customer’s
previous balance, any payments that the
customer has made, any invoices that she
hasn’t paid, and any new charges on the
account.

INVOICES
If statements or sales receipts don’t work for your situation,
don’t be afraid to use invoices. They accept any item you’ve
created in your Item List and they track what customers owe
you.
An invoice is also the only type of
QuickBooks sales form you can generate
from an estimate.
If statements or sales receipts don’t work
for your situation, don’t be afraid to use
invoices. They accept any item you’ve
created in your Item List and they track
what customers owe you.

SALES FORMS AND ACCOUNTS
An invoice or other sales form is the first step in the flow of
money through your company. QuickBooks posts income and
expenses from your invoices to the accounts in your chart of
accounts.

CREATING INVOICES
Invoices tell your customers everything they need to know
about what they purchased and what they owe you. There are
three features for creating invoices:
Create Invoices can handle everything you
throw at it.
Create Batch Invoices lets you select all
the customers to which you want to send
the same invoice .
Invoice for Time & Expenses, available
only in QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise
editions, can do everything that the
Create Invoices feature can do,

CHOOSING THE CUSTOMER OR JOB
Once you select a customer or job, the panel on the right side
of the Create Invoices window shows a summary of the
customer’s account and recent transactions.
The selection you make in the Customer :
Job field is your most important choice on
any invoice.
To set online payment options for the
customer, click the “Edit customer Prefer-
ences” link.

CHOOSING AN INVOICE TEMPLATE
The option you invoice choose in the Template drop-down list
near the top of the Create Invoices window determines which
fields appear on your invoices and how they’re laid out.
QuickBooks remembers which template
you chose when you created your last
invoice.
• Intuit Product Invoice.
• Intuit Service Invoice.
• Intuit Professional Invoice.
• Progress Invoice.
• Fixed Fee Invoice.
• Time & Expense Invoice.

THE OTHER HEADER FIELDS
QuickBooks can fill in most of the remaining header fields for
you. Although the following fields don’t appear on every
invoice template, here’s how to fill in any empty fields:
Class. Categorize your income and
expenses in different ways, choose a
class for the invoice.
Date. Out of the box, QuickBooks fills in
the current date here, which is fine if you
create invoices when you make sales.
Invoice #. When you create your first
invoice, type the number that you want
to start with.

ENTERING INVOICE LINE ITEMS
The order of columns in the line-item table varies from
template to template. This section lists the columns in the
order they appear on the Intuit Product Invoice template:
Quantity. For products, type a quantity.
Item Code or Item. The label for this
column depends on the template you
choose.
Description. If you set up items with
standard descriptions, QuickBooks auto-
matically puts them in this cell.
Price Each (or Rate). Depending on the
type of item you’re adding to the invoice,

MODIFYING LINE ITEMS
if your customer changes his mind, you can insert or delete a
line item. You can also copy and paste line items. Here’s how to
modify lines in the line-item table:
Insert a line. Right-click the line above
which you want to add a line, and then
choose Insert Line from the shortcut
menu.
Delete a line. Right-click the line you
want to get rid of and choose Delete Line
from the shortcut menu, or press Ctrl +
Delete.
Copy a line and Paste a line.

APPLYING SUBTOTALS, DISCOUNTS, AND
PERCENTAGE CHARGES
Adding a Memo to Yourself :
The Create Invoices window includes a
Memo box, which works just like Memo
boxes throughout QuickBooks.
Choosing How to Send the Invoice:
On the Create Invoices window’s Main
tab
if you want to apply a percentage calculation like a discount or
a shipping fee to several items, you’ll need one or more
Subtotal items to make the calculation work.

CREATING BATCH INVOICES
Setting Up a Batch Invoice
Here’s how to create a batch invoice for
several customers:
Choose Customers→Create Batch
Invoices to open the Batch Invoice win-
dow.
Before You Create Your First Batch Invoice : Batch invoices use
the payment terms, sales tax rates, and send methods you
specify for each customer, so be sure to fill in these fields in
customers’ records before your first batch invoice.

DEPOSITS, DOWN PAYMENTS, AND RETAINERS
Prepayment account. Because unearned
money from a customer is like a loan,
create an Other Current Liability account
in your chart of accounts to hold
prepayments.
Prepayment item. Create a Prepayment
item in your Item List.
Deposits, down payments, and retainers are all prepayments.
Setting Up QuickBooks for Prepayments : If you accept
prepayments of any kind, you need an account in your chart of
accounts to keep that money separate from your income.

RECORDING PREPAYMENTS
QuickBooks opens the Enter Sales
Receipts window to a blank receipt.
QuickBooks fills in some of the fields,
such as the customer’s address in the
Sold To box, with information from the
customer’s record.
When a customer hands you a check for a deposit or a down
payment, the first thing you should do is wait until she’s out of
earshot to yell, “Yippee!” The second thing is to record the
prepayment in QuickBooks.

APPLYING A DEPOSIT, DOWN PAYMENT, OR
RETAINER
Create the invoice as you normally would with items for the
services, products, charges, and discounts.
QuickBooks transfers the money from your prepayment
account to reduce the customer’s Accounts Receivable balance.

REFUNDING PREPAYMENTS
Create an invoice for the customer or job
by choosing Customers → Create
Invoices, and then, in the Customer: Job
box, choosing the customer.
Deposits and down payments don’t guarantee that your
customers will follow through with their projects or orders.

PRODUCING STATEMENTS- INTRODUCTION
Most accounting departments process
only vendor invoices and credit memos
for payments, so statements end up in
the wastebasket. So if you do business
only with other businesses, you’re better
off turning off QuickBooks’ statements
feature.
Statements are the perfect solution for businesses that charge
individuals for time and other services in bits and pieces, such as
law offices, cellphone service providers, and astrology advisors

GENERATING STATEMENTS
If you use statements simply to show
invoices, payments, and the resulting
balance, you can skip this step.
Generate statements for your customers.
In QuickBooks, creating statements is a simple process:
If you want to charge your customers directly on statements, in
the Accounts Receivable account register, enter statement
charges (explained in a moment) for the services or other items
you delivered to your customers.

CREATING STATEMENT CHARGES
Here are the types of items that you can
use to create statement charges:
• Service items
• Inventory Part items
• Inventory Assembly items (if you use
QuickBooks Premier or Enterprise)
• Non-inventory Part items
• Other Charge items
Statement charges are charges for services and items you
deliver to your customers that you add directly to the Accounts
Receivable account.

GENERATING CUSTOMER STATEMENTS
To begin creating statements, choose
Customers → Create Statements or, in the
Home Page’s Customers panel, click the
Statements icon.
The statements you generate appears in
the Create Statements window, including
the date range for the statements, the
customers you want to send statements
to, the template you’re using, printing
options, and finance charges.
The statements it generates include only the statement charges
and other transactions you’ve entered.

CHOOSING THE DATE RANGE
Statement Date. In this field, type the
date that you want to appear on the
statement.
Statement Period From _ To _. Select this
option to create statements for a period
of time.
All open transactions as of Statement
Date. Choosing this option adds every
unpaid statement charge.
Statements typically cover a set time period, like a month.
In the Create Statements window’s Select Statement Options
section, you can adjust the following settings:

SELECTING CUSTOMERS
Here are your other options and the
reasons you might choose each one:
• Multiple Customers
• One Customer.
• Customers of Type.
• Preferred Send Method.
• View Selected Customers.
In the Create Statements window’s Select Customers section,
QuickBooks initially selects the All Customers option because
most companies send statements to every customer.

SETTING ADDITIONAL OPTIONS
QuickBooks adds to statements and which
statements it should skip:
• Create One Statement.
• Show invoice item details on
statements.
• Print statements by billing address zip
code.
• Print due date on transactions.
• Assess Finance Charges.
In the Create Statements window’s Template box, QuickBooks
automatically selects Intuit Standard Statement, but you can
choose your own customized template instead.

PREVIEWING STATEMENTS
• In the Create Statements window, click
Preview
• Click “Prev page” or “Next page” to
view the other statements in this
batch.
• To return to the Create Statements
window and print or email your state-
ments, click Close.
• Generating Statements
Before you print statements on expensive letterhead or email
them to your customers, it’s a good idea to preview them to
make sure you’ve chosen the right customers and that the
statements are correct.

EMAILING STATEMENTS
If you set up QuickBooks to use a web-
based email service instead, the Send
Forms dialog box opens, showing the
statements you’re about to email.
There you can select additional
statements, turn off statements you don’t
want to send, and click a statement to
preview its content.
To email statements directly from QuickBooks, in the Create
Statements window, click E-mail. If you use Microsoft Outlook,
QuickBooks creates email messages in Outlook and
automatically fills in the customers’ email addresses.

PRINTING STATEMENTS
Select one of the “Print on” options.
In the “Number of copies” box, type the
number of copies of each statement you
want to print.
Click Print.
Here’s how to print statements:
In the Create Statements window, click Print.
QuickBooks opens the Print Statement(s) dialog box.
Choose the printer you want to use.

MANAGING ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE- INTRO
In contrast to invoices, sales receipts are
the simplest and most immediate sales
forms in QuickBooks.
QuickBooks posts the money from the
sale into your bank account (in
QuickBooks, anyway) or the Undeposited
Funds account.
In addition to performing work, invoicing customers, and
collecting payments, you also have to keep track of who owes
you how much (known as Accounts Receivable) and when the
money is due.

RECEIVABLES AGING
With QuickBooks’ Income Tracker,
Company Snapshot, Customer Center, and
built-in reports, you have four ways to
check the state of your Accounts
Receivable.
Accounts Receivable—they’re the by-product of invoicing your
customers. But receivables that are growing long in the tooth
are the first signs of potential collection problems.

VIEWING RECEIVABLES WITH INCOME
TRACKER
Income Tracker also offers time-saving
features for invoicing customers and
collecting the money they owe you.
Tracker window shows you:
Estimates, Sales Orders, Time &
Expenses, Open Invoices, Overdue, Paid
Last 30 Days, The transaction table etc.
It provides the big picture of your unbilled, outstanding, and
paid income and lists the transactions that contribute to
those high-level numbers.

VIEWING RECEIVABLES DETAIL IN THE
CUSTOMER CENTER
The window’s Customers & Jobs tab lists
your customers and jobs and the balance
owed by each one.
The list, you can see the invoices or other
sales transactions that generated the
open balance on the right side of the
window.
Yet another way to view your Accounts Receivable is in the
Customer Center (choose Customers → Customer Center or,
on the Home Page, click Customers).

ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE AGING REPORTS
QuickBooks includes two built-in aging
reports: A/R Aging Summary and A/R
Aging Detail. These reports show how
much your customers owe for the current
billing period.
Aging reports tell you how many days have passed since you
sent each open invoice, and viewing them is the first step in
keeping your Accounts Receivable from growing overly ripe.

SEEING WHAT CUSTOMERS OWE WITH REPORTS
Customer Balance Summary. This report
shows the balances for each job and the
customer’s total balance.
Customer Balance Detail. This report
shows every transaction that makes up
customers’ balances.
Open Invoices. This report includes
unpaid invoices and statement charges.
To see all the reports associated with customers and what they
owe, choose Reports→Customers & Receivables. Here’s an
overview of when it makes sense to use these reports:

RECEIVING PAYMENTS FOR INVOICED INCOME
Here are the windows that can record
payments and when to use them:
• Receive Payments.
• Create Invoices.
• Enter Sales Receipts.
To record a payment, click Receive Payments on the Home Page
or choose Customers → Receive Payments. QuickBooks opens
the Receive Payments window, which handles full and partial
payments, early payment discounts, credits, and downloaded
online payments.

APPLYING CREDITS TO INVOICES WHEN YOU
RECEIVE PAYMENTS
In the Received From drop-down list, choose the customer or
job you want. In the Payment Amount box, type the customer’s
payment amount, and to the right of this box, click the button
for the payment method the customer used.
To apply the credit to the invoice you
selected, at the top of the Receive
Payments window, click Discounts And
Credits.
Click Save & Close to apply the credit to
the invoice.

WRONG INVOICE, RIGHT CUSTOMER OR JOB
Choose Customers → Customer Center or,
on the Home Page, click Customers. On
the Customer Center’s Customers & Jobs
tab, click the customer or job whose
payment you misapplied.
On the Transactions tab, click the Show
box’s down arrow, and then choose
Received Payments.
If you simply selected the wrong invoice for a customer or job
when you applied a payment, it’s easy to set things straight.
Here’s how:

WRONG INVOICE, WRONG CUSTOMER
If you already deposited the misapplied
payment, on the Home Page, click Record
Deposits (or choose Banking→Make
Deposits). If you haven’t deposited the
payment.
In the window’s toolbar, click Payments. In
the “Payments to Deposit” window, click
the checkmark cell for the payment you
created in step 1, and then click OK.
When you apply a payment to the wrong customer’s invoice,
you can’t use the steps in the previous section.

DELETE THE ORIGINAL, MISAPPLIED PAYMENT
Double-click the payment you misapplied
to open it in the Receive Payments
window. At the top of the Receive
Payments window, click Delete, and then,
in the message box, click OK.
In the Customer Center, click the Transactions tab on the
window’s left, and then click Received Payments. .

MAKING JOURNAL ENTRIES-INTRODUCTION
In the accounting world, these direct
manipulations are known as journal
entries.
The steps for creating a journal entry are
deceptively easy; it’s assigning money to
accounts in the correct way that’s
maddeningly difficult for weekend
accountants.
When you write checks, receive payments, and perform many
other tasks in QuickBooks, the program creates transactions
that unobtrusively handle the double-entry accounting for you.

BALANCING DEBIT AND CREDIT AMOUNTS
When you move money between
accounts, you may increase the balance in
one account and decrease the balance in
the other—just as shaking some money
out of your piggy bank decreases your
savings balance and increases the money
in your pocket. These changes in value are
called debits and credits.
In double-entry accounting, both sides of any transaction have
to balance.

SOME REASONS TO USE JOURNAL ENTRIES
• Reassigning accounts.
• Correcting account assignments.
• Reassigning jobs.
• Reassigning classes.
• Depreciating assets.
• Recording transactions for a payroll
service.
• Recording year-end transactions.
Here are a few of the more common reasons that businesses
use journal entries:
• Setting up opening balances in accounts.

ENTRIES
Choose Company→Make General Journal
Entries.
In the Make General Journal Entries
window, choose the date you want as-
sociated with this journal entry.
If you want to change the number that
QuickBooks automatically assigned to this
journal entry, specify a different number
by typing it in the Entry No. box.
Creating Journal Entries
In essence, every transaction you create in QuickBooks is a
journal entry.

CHECKING JOURNAL ENTRIES
Those savvy in the ways of accounting
can visualize debits and offsetting credits
in their heads, but for novices, thinking
about the changes you expect in your
profit and loss report or balance sheet is
easier.
If you stare off into space and start mumbling, “Debit entries
increase asset accounts” every time you create a journal entry,
it’s wise to check that the journal entry did what you wanted.

RECLASSIFICATIONS AND CORRECTIONS
Expense accounts are also prone to
change—like when you split the Home
Office account into separate accounts
for utilities, insurance, and repairs, for
example.
As you work with your QuickBooks file, you might realize that
you want to use different accounts. You might switch from one
top-level income account to several specific income accounts.

RECLASSIFYING ACCOUNTS
The benefit to this type of journal entry is
that you have to think hard about only
one side of the transaction—as long as
you pick the first debit or credit correctly.
The debits and credits you choose are the
opposite for income and expense ac-
counts.
Whether you want to shift funds between accounts because
you decide to categorize your finances differently or because
you simply made a mistake, you’re moving money between
accounts of the same type.

REASSIGNING JOBS
Here’s how the two journal entries work:
• Transfer the credit from the first job to
the holding account.
• Transfer the money from the holding
account to the second job.
If you need to transfer money between different jobs for the
same customer, journal entries are the answer. QuickBooks
allows only one AR account per journal entry, you need two
journal entries to transfer the credit completely.

RECORDING DEPRECIATION WITH JOURNAL
ENTRIES
Depreciation is an accounting concept, intimately tied to IRS
rules, that reduces the value of the machine and lets your
financial reports show a more accurate picture of how the
money you spend on assets links to the income company earns.
The credit account is a fixed asset
account called something like
Accumulated Depreciation.
For a depreciation journal entry, you want
to reduce the value of your fixed assets
and add value to the Depreciation
Expense account.

QuickBooks History and Features in 40 Characters

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