Quickbooks

What do you do when you need to get information in QuickBooks about customers or about payments they’ve made in QuickBooks? Fortunately, you have several options.

You could, for example:

• Create a report
• Go to their Customer pages
• Click on Receive Payments on the Home Page and use the Findarrows (not very elegant or fast, but would be an easy way to find recent payments).

One of QuickBooks’ strengths is its flexibility. It helps you find the exact information you’re looking for in a variety of ways. Which one you choose at any given time depends on what screen you’re working on at the moment and precisely what slice of data you need.

A Home Base

The desktop version of QuickBooks doesn’t have a “dashboard,” like web-based financial applications do. Dashboards are like home pages on steroids. Rather than just providing navigational tools and menus,Snapshots display charts and grids and lists representing the data that you’d most likely want to see when you first log on, such as account balances, summaries of income and expenses, and high-priority tasks, with links to related activity screens. You can usually customize these.

QuickBooks’ Reminders tell you what needs to be done either today or very soon. But they don’t reveal anything about your financial status.Snapshots do. There are three versions: Company, Payments, andCustomer.

Figure 1: The QuickBooks Customer Snapshot sums up each customer’s activity and history in a one-page view.

Many Sections

Let’s look at the Customer Snapshot to see how these work. To find it, click on Snapshots in the left vertical navigation pane. When the window opens, make sure that the Customer tab is active; if not, click on it. Click on the arrow next to the CUSTOMER field in the center of the very top to select a customer.

You’ll see three columns of information here. The left pane displays some commonly sought numbers (like Total Sales) and some numbers that you might have trouble finding any other way (Average days to pay, etc.). In the middle, you’ll see Recent Invoices and Recent Payments. And the right section (not shown in the screen shot) includes two customizable graphs, Sales History and Best Selling Items.

This is the default layout, the information boxes you’ll see when you first open the Company Snapshot. To remove any of them, click on the X in the upper right corner. You can restore them at any time by clicking the arrow next to Add Content in the upper left and then clicking the +Addbutton next to the one you want.

You can also move the blocks into different positions on the page. Grab one by clicking on its header and holding it, dragging it to the preferred position, and releasing it.

Personalized Pages

Figure 2: You can add, delete, and move blocks of data around in theCustomer Snapshot.

Users who have been assigned access to the data that each Snapshotcontains can customize their own views by adding or deleting sections and rearranging them. So each employee can have his or her own unique-looking Snapshots, though the real-time data in all of them will be the same.

Note: If you’ve given employees besides yourself access to QuickBooks, it’s important that you assign permission levels to them. You probably don’t want everyone to be able to see and modify everything in your file. Call if you need help setting these up.

Other Snapshots

The other two Snapshots are more complex, containing more data options. They can, however, be customized in the same ways that you personalized the Customer screen. The Payments Snapshot can give you a quick update on things like Recent Transactions and A/R by Aging Period.

The Company Snapshot lets you display up to 12 lists and charts, including:

• Account Balances,
• Customers Who Owe Money,
• Expense Breakdown, and,
• Vendors to Pay.

This would be a good page to use as your dashboard (home page), especially since it can also show you your Reminders. With theCompany Snapshot open, go to Edit | Preferences | Desktop View | My Preferences and click on the button in front of Save current desktop. Remove the checkmark in front of Show Home page when opening company file if one is there.

QuickBooks’ Snapshots can get you up to speed quickly on critical elements of your accounting file, but there are other reports that you should run regularly, including complex standard financials reports that require expert analysis. Don’t hesitate to call if you need help interpreting these reports that in turn, help you to make smarter, more informed business decisions.

• By Leon Clinton
• April 28, 2016

These days, some of us find ourselves updating multiple calendars. There’s the Outlook calendar or other web-based solution for scheduling and task management. Or, maybe a smartphone app to track a “to-do” on the road with a paper calendar as backup.

But where do you keep track of your everyday financial tasks? Including these in your scheduling calendars and/or task lists will make for very crowded screens, not to mention how inconvenient it can be to keep switching between applications.

Consider adding one more tracking tool: the QuickBooks calendar. This graphical screen isn’t designed for data entry (except for the to-do list); rather, it’s designed to give you a quick overview of your financial activity, both historically and in the future.

Figure 1: The QuickBooks calendar consists of two parts. The graphical calendar itself displays one of three types of entries: Entered, Due, orTo Do. The number in parentheses refers to the number of each type that occurred or will occur that day. Details of each entry appear below; double-clicking on one opens the original form.

Calendar Setup

Before you start using the QuickBooks calendar, you should designate your display and content options. Open the Edit menu and selectPreferences | Calendar. Make sure that the My Preferences tab is active.

Click on the arrows to the right of every field to open the menu that displays your choices. The first of these are:

• Calendar view. Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Or do you want QuickBooks to remember the last view that was open?
• Weekly view. Should the calendar only display the primary workdays or all seven?
• Show. What items would you like to have displayed on the calendar? It defaults to All Transactions, but you can filter it by transaction type.

You can also specify whether you want past due and upcoming entries to be included, and for how many days.

Tracking your “To-Do”

Figure 2: You can create to-do items and have them appear on the QuickBooks calendar.

The QuickBooks calendar also offers tools for creating a to-do list of several types (call, fax, email, meeting, appointment, or task). These will appear on the calendar unless you filter them out.

Tip: The link that opens the to-do window is somewhat hard to find, but is located in the lower right corner of the graphical calendar.

Click on Add To Do to get started. The window pictured above opens. Click the arrow to the right of the field under TYPE and select the type of to-do that you want to define. You can also select a PRIORITY level if you’d like.

Below those two fields is a small box to the left of WITH. If you want to connect that activity to a customer, vendor, or employee, click in the box and select the type. Then click the arrow next to the field below it and choose the correct individual or company.

You aren’t required to create this link; you can simply designate your to-do type and enter a DATE, TIME, and DETAILS. The activity will still appear on your QuickBooks calendar. But if you do associate it with a specific entity, like a customer, it will appear in that customer’s record when you click on the To Do tab.

A Word About Reminders

Figure 3: You can get advance notice of scheduled financial activities by setting up Reminders. Go to Edit | Preferences | Reminders | Company Preferences.

The QuickBooks calendar is not really a reminder tool. You’ll need to use QuickBooks’ Reminders to get help with advance notice of due dates.

But the calendar will display the actual due dates for transactions. If you’ve entered a bill that’s due on February 28, for example, the wordDue will appear on that date in the graphical calendar; the number of transactions due will appear in parentheses after it. All entries for that day appear in a list below. To see the original form, you’d double-click on the one you want to see.

Using Reminders in conjunction with the QuickBooks calendar can help you stay current with sales and purchases – if you have you due dates established in a way that will be good for your cash flow. Call the office if you need help scheduling incoming and outgoing payments in a way that will work to your advantage.

• By Leon Clinton
• March 28, 2016

You could call QuickBooks a “green” computer program. It can conserve reams of paper by storing customer and vendor records, for example, emailing transaction forms, and accepting online payments.

Most small businesses are a long way from being “paperless offices,” despite the predictions so many people made when PCs became commonplace. Even though you’re making an effort to be as digital as possible with your accounting files, not everyone else is yet. So you still have to deal with paper.

And you’re probably still consulting paper documents or stored computer files or scanned images that relate to your accounting data. QuickBooks makes it possible to keep this information close at hand, easily accessible from the software itself.

The Doc Center

QuickBooks provides a centralized area for managing the documents you want to keep close at hand. The Doc Centercontains tools you’ll need to work with your documents. From here, you can:

• Add them by locating them in your storage device or scanning them in directly,
• See their details and add to them,
• Search for them, and,
• Either remove or detach them.

Figure 1: You’ll use the tools in the QuickBooks Doc Center to work with the documents you want to have available from within the program.

There are probably times when you have supporting documentation for invoices or customer and item records, for example. In these cases, you can attach those background documents to the related QuickBooks forms.

Easy Operation

It’s not difficult to work with documents in QuickBooks. But if you don’t have much experience working with file attachments or scanning paper forms, we can walk you through the process.

To get started, click on the Docs tab in the left vertical pane or open the Company menu and select Documents | Doc Center. You’ll see a screen that looks like the one pictured above.

Let’s say you have a special price list you often need to consult. Click the Add icon. A window then opens that contains a directory of all of the folders and files on your PC and any external storage areas. Browse to the pricing document you created earlier and double-click it. QuickBooks will return you to the main Doc Centerscreen, and you’ll see the name of your file and the time added in the first row of the data table there.

Deeper Descriptions

Figure 2: Once you’ve added files to the Doc Center, you can view and add details or open the original document.

Click in the box in front of the file name, and buttons in the lower right of the screen will light up. Click on View Details, and a small window opens. You can enter information in fields here to add aTitle, Description, Keywords, and Comments. Click Save & Close when you’re done. Other buttons here let you Open the file or Remove it.

Note: To bring in documents, you can also drag and drop them from Outlook, folders, or your desktop. We can help you learn how to do this.

Scan a Document

You can also scan documents directly from your scanner into QuickBooks. Click Scan. The QuickBooks Scan Manager should open and locate your printer or scanner. After you’ve selected it and your other Scan Options, click the Scan button. If you’ve opted to see a preview, that page will appear for your approval.

Click Done, and you’ll have several options for working with the image. When you’ve finished, click Done Scanning and enter any desired descriptive details. Click OK, and the Doc Center will display again with your new scanned document in the list.

Attach to Forms

Figure 3: Many QuickBooks forms display the Attach File icon.

If you have supporting documentation for an invoice, for example, you can easily make it available from the form itself. Click theAttach File icon and select your file using the Doc Center’s tools. Once you’ve added an attachment to a form, the icon will display the number of documents that are available there.

Your computer’s storage space may be well organized, but you can still waste time trying to hunt down the document you want right when you want it. QuickBooks’ Doc Center can minimize your search time and ensure that important documentation is at hand.

• By Leon Clinton
• February 29, 2016