There are lots of people and businesses out there that use QuickBooks, but not everyone uses the software as effectively as possible. Some users understand specific facets of the software extensively and other aspects they don't understand at all. Follow these five essential QuickBooks tips and get the most out of the software.
Reconcile All Accounts
Many QuickBooks users understand that they can reconcile their bank accounts, but they stop there. Any account that receives a statement with a closing date, beginning balance and ending balance can be reconciled.
Make sure to reconcile all of your credit cards, loans and lines of credit on a monthly basis. Many users also don't use the QuickBooks reconciliation feature the way it is intended.
I have had numerous new clients tell me their books are completely up to date, but when I check the reconcile window the accounts have never been reconciled. It is important to actually reconcile each account to an ending balance and statement date
Import And Export
Importing and downloading activity into QuickBooks can be a big time saver and also increases accuracy. In addition to downloading banking and credit card transactions you can also import information into QuickBooks such as outsourced payroll transactions and sales journals from your external sales software.
Exporting information to excel or pdf's is a great way to communicate information to customers and vendors and financial reports to internal team members.
QuickBooks Memorized Transactions
Using QuickBooks memorized transactions is great feature that many users fail to take advantage of. I recommend people use memorized transactions for all sorts of things from bills and checks to sales journal entries. Recurring bills or payments are good things to memorize. Monthly bills such as mortgages and utilities are obvious candidates for memorizing.
I also really like memorizing sales journal entries to mirror my daily sales report. That way data entry becomes easier and by memorizing the sales entry you will ensure that everything consistently ends up in the correct account.
Remember when memorizing transactions you can have the entry automatically populate in QuickBooks or you can set it to never enter, which basically means you can manually enter it by selecting it from the memorized transaction list.
Customize The QuickBooks Icon Bar
One of the first things I do when I start a new QuickBooks file it to customize the QuickBooks icon bar. Some must-have icons are the find feature, enter bills, write checks, create invoices, help and backup.
I feel that these are crucial shortcuts but you may find yourself using other features more often and you should add them to your icon bar. The QuickBooks find feature is one of my most used icons.
This feature allows me to quickly find a particular transaction in QuickBooks if I only have some of the information on the particular transaction.
Use QuickBooks For All Aspect Of Your Business Accounting
Nothing is more frustrating than a client that only does half the work in QuickBooks. If you use external software for billing and invoicing you still need to record the income in QuickBooks. That may mean recreating the invoices, linking your external billing software with QuickBooks or at least recording the income properly.
If your bookkeeper or CPA has to reference multiple software programs in order to give you a clear look at your financials or taxes it is going to cost you more due to increased time on their behalf to extract the information you are looking for.
Use QuickBooks for all aspects of your accounting regardless of other software programs you may be using.
These are just five essential QuickBooks tips you should be using in your bookkeeping system. All businesses are a little different so you will want to tailor QuickBooks to your specific business. If you need help dialing in your bookkeeping system you know how to reach us.