13 April 2021

If you are new to QuickBooks online and haven’t had the chance to thoroughly study all of their resources, it can be a bit overwhelming. To help you get started here are some simple tips and tricks to navigate QuickBooks successfully.

Using the Dashboard

With updated features provided by QBO the dashboard has become a great resource for your business. You can find the dashboard on the main page of your QuickBooks account. It can be utilized to review your bank accounts, get an overview of your business, it provides shortcut features to jump to other areas of your QuickBooks account and provides you with a setup guide that will help complete tasks to make your company more efficient.

• The shortcuts feature gives you the option to access certain areas of your QuickBooks without having to navigate the entire site. It allows you to add customers, estimates, invoices etc. at the click of a button. It is a great way for new users of QuickBooks to be able to access specific areas with limited understanding of the website. One downside of the dashboard feature is it will not currently allow you to customize the shortcuts to your business, so you are stuck with what QBO provides at this time.

• The dashboard also allows you to get a quick look at your banking and credit card accounts. This is great when you want to get a quick glimpse at where your accounts currently stand and any potential issues with your financials.

• One other great feature about the Dashboard is that there is a tab to look at a complete overview of your business. This feature again gives you a quick glimpse at your business. It shows you information about your invoices including, how much money you are currently owed on pending invoices, the number of invoices that are currently overdue, and also the number of invoices that have been paid in the past thirty days. It also gives you a quick overview of your expenses. It tells you how many expenses your company has incurred, in the past week, month or year depending on the filter you set. Two other great features of the overview is the Profit and Loss and Sales sections. The P & L section gives you a quick snapshot of your Net Income, your Revenue and your expenses and the sales section will give you a snapshot of your overall sales for the set timeline.

Search Function

The search function is a great tool when you are looking for a specific transaction. Instead of going through each account line by line, you can access the search function to locate the specific transaction you are looking for. Within the search function there are three filters that you can utilize to narrow down the specific transaction. This includes transaction types, Specifics about the transaction, (I.E Reference #, Amount Display Name) and whether the transaction contains, does not contain, Equals or Does not Equal the information entered into the reference field. Once all the information has been entered a small list of transactions will appear narrowing down your choices for a much easier search process.

Linking banking and CC to QBO

When setting up a QuickBooks account it is a wise idea to set up all your bank and credit card accounts so that they link directly to your QBO account. This will allow for any transactions to be automatically added to QuickBooks. Once they have been added you can then simply review the listed transactions added and match them to the specific accounts, they belong in. Once you have matched these transactions, they will automatically start suggesting the accounts that these transactions should be added to. This saves a lot of time for you or your accounting team when it comes to inputting the transaction and reconciling your books.

Help Feature & Contact Us

No matter your skill level, when it comes to QuickBooks online there is always something new to learn with their endless features and constant updates. That being said we don’t always have the time to sit down and learn about every aspect of QBO, which is why the Help Feature and the Contact Us feature are very important. The help feature allows you to ask any question that you may have regarding QuickBooks functions or accounting questions. An answer will be generated from their database of information, or from their previously answered questions that other QBO clients had asked. If there is a question asked that cannot be answered then the next step is to utilize the Contact Us Feature. This allows the QBO Client to reach out direct to a QBO professional with any questions that cannot be found in the Help Feature. The professional will then get back to you with the necessary information that you had requested.