Tips To Improve Your Quickbooks Experience
Quickbooks is the world’s most popular business accounting software, and for good reason: it’s versatile, inexpensive, easy to use, and it comes with TONS of helpful features to make accounting a breeze. Whether your business is small, medium or large, Quickbooks can handle your accounting needs. There are several different versions of the software, some of which are designed for small businesses while others are designed for larger ones. Here we’re going to take a look at some simple tips to improve your Quickbooks experience.
Tip #1 – Increase Font Size
One of the most common questions Quickbooks users have is how to increase the font size. Depending on your current setup, you may find it difficult to read the small text and numbers in your Quickbooks account. Unfortunately, you can search in every setting available without locating the font size adjustment. This is especially frustrating when you are trying to perform business accounting work and are unable to read the text on your account. So, how do can you increase the font size so it’s easier to read? Instead of looking in your Quickbooks account, you actually need to adjust your operating system settings. Assuming you are using Windows 7 or 8, right click on the desktop and choose personalize. From here, choose display and adjust the text size from small to large.
Tip #2 – Use Shortcuts
Familiarizing yourself with the various shortcuts will make your accounting work ten times easier in Quickbooks. All of the shortcuts work in conjunction with the CTRL key. For instance, CTRL-I automatically creates an invoice; CTRL-F is a transaction finder. If you haven’t done so already, memorize and learn all of the shortcuts available in Quickbooks.
Tip #3 – Cloud Backups
Losing all of your Quickbooks data due to a hard drive crash or system failure could spell disaster for a business. Thankfully, Quickbooks users can back their data up on cloud servers to prevent this from happening. Instead of simply backing your data up on a disk or CD, you should take advantage of the cloud feature. Setting it up is quick and easy thanks to the company’s built-in Wizard program. Just follow the given instructions and it will walk you through backing up your account on the cloud. The 10 minutes or so it takes to complete the cloud setup could save you countless hours of work in the event of a system crash.
How To Use Quickbooks For Personal Finance
Quickbooks is the most popular type of business accounting software on the market with thousands of small, medium and large-sized companies placing their trust in it. It’s broad range of features and clean yet sophisticated interface allow people with little-to-no accounting experience to perform all of their bushiness’s accounting needs. In addition, however, Quickbooks can also be used to manage personal finances. If you are looking for a way to keep track of your personal finances, keep reading to learn how Quickbooks can do the job for you.
Some people might be thrown off by Quickbooks’ labeling. If you’ve ever come across this software in a store or online, it’s usually described as “business” accounting software; therefore, common sense would leave you to believe that it’s a poor choice for personal accounting. The truth, however, is that Quickbooks can be used for either business or personal finance managing. Just because it’s labeled as business accounting software doesn’t mean you can’t use it for personal finances as well.
When you are ready to start your personal finance accounting, fire up Quickbooks on your personal computer. The process of using the software for your personal accounting needs is pretty much the same as business accounting, only with a few minor differences. Once Quickbooks has loaded, use the built-in setup Wizard to walk you through the rest of the steps. If you have a checking account, savings account or any other bank account, you use the setup Wizard to connect this information to your Quickbooks. Alternatively, you can also enter this information in by hand if you aren’t comfortable connecting your financial accounts to Quickbooks. Either way is perfectly acceptable, but using the setup wizard will save you both time and energy.
Next, click on the “Vendor Center” tab at the top of your Quickbooks account and select “New Vendor.” This may be somewhat confusing at first, but vendors in a personal finance account are any bills that you must pay. For instance, your rent, electric bill, cable bill, car payment and even groceries can be labeled as a vendor. It’s important to note, however, that you’ll need to create a new vendor for each type of bill.
With your vendors set up, you can now add transactions to account for any payments you’ve sent out. The key thing to remember is that each transaction needs to have a specific vendor associated with it. Continue doing this throughout the month and you’ll be able to better keep up with your personal finances thanks to Quickbooks.
Quickbooks Reconciliation Tips and Tricks
Bank and financial reconciliations are an important part of managing a Quickbooks account. Whether you operate a small, medium or large-sized business, you’ll need to perform reconciliations to ensure all the transactions are correct and everything is setup properly. No matter how hard you try to prevent it, accidents and typos are bound to happen. The good news, however, is the reconciliations are designed to find and fix these common problems. Keep reading and we’ll go over some simple tips and tricks for reconciling your Quickbooks account.
First, let’s go over what exactly reconciliations are used for, as some people are hearing this term now for the first time. In short, it’s a process similar to balancing a checkbook. You’ll check the balance on your Quickbooks account to the balance on your bank statement to see if they match. If they match, you know everything is correct and entered in properly. On the other hand, a mismatching balance is a sign that something isn’t right, and you must go back to find out what’s causing the two numbers to be off.
Tip #1 – Using The Reconciliation Feature
If you’ve never reconciled a bank account through Quickbooks before, you might be surprised at just how easy the process is. Before you start, though, you’ll need to have access to your most recent bank statement. Next, launch your Quickbooks account and click the “Banking” tab at the top left corner of the page. From here, you can select “Reconcile” to start the process. It’s literally that easy to start the reconciliation process of a bank account through Quickbooks.
Tip #2 – Check Balances First
The very first thing you should do after starting the bank account reconciliation process is to compare your balances. Check the balance on your Quickbooks account to see if it matches with the balance on your bank statement. Hopefully, it matches up and you can close out of the process. If it doesn’t, however, you’ll need to find out what transaction is causing the problem. Checking the balances first will make the reconciliation process ten times easier.
Tip #3 – Save The Larger Accounts For Last
When you reconcile accounts through Quickbooks, it’s usually best to start with the smaller ones and gradually work your way to the larger accounts. Doing so will get some of the easier accounts out of the way first, allowing you to focus your time and energy on the harder accounts. Of course, some people may have their own preferred method, but I’ve found this is generally helpful when reconciling bank accounts through Quickbooks.