QuickBooks Quick Tips

QuickBooks is an amazing program packed with tons of features designed to make your bookkeeping simple and efficient. What I've found through the years, however, is that most of my clients are so busy working their business they have little time to dedicate to learning this important tool. As a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, I thought I'd create this Quick Tips page and post helpful hints to make your QuickBooks experience more tolerable. If you have any questions, please e-mail me at pmerica@aplusbookkeeping.biz and I'll be happy to assist!

HOT!! Alert From QuickBooks!

How to Delete Invoices in QuickBooks

A client of mine recently asked me how to delete some QuickBooks invoices that he had erroneously sent to clients. "Nothing seems to work! You need to put this on your website!" he exclaimed. In actuality, deleting an invoice is quite simple.

Try these steps to delete an invoice:

From the main page, click on Customer Center
Select the customer whose invoice you want to delete. All of the invoices for that customer will be listed in the pane on the right.
Select the invoice you want to delete by double-clicking on it.
Verify that it is the correct invoice and when ready to delete, hit CTRL-D on your keyboard. Confirm and the invoice record is gone.

Now, wasn't that easy?

How to Log Meals and Gas and Control "Vendor Bloat"

Many of my clients fill up at many different gas stations and eat at many different restaurants. As they diligently try to keep track of all their expenses, they quickly find a vendor list that is 3 miles long and quite difficult to navigate. It's a problem known as "vendor bloat." Rather than enter each gas station or restaurant as a different vendor, I recommend they keep track of Meals and Gas as a generic vendor instead of adding each corner filling station or diner as a separate vendor.

Try these steps to control the vendor bloat dilemma:

Set up a generic “Gas Station” and “Restaurant” vendors
Then when the information for individual purchase is entered, it can assigned to the generic vendor name
Type in the actual name of the establishment on the memo line of that transaction.
Later, if you need to find the information about which stores you used, run a Quick Report on the expense account for gas or meals, and you will see the name of the establishments in the memo line.

It's as easy as that to control the typical vendor bloat most small businesses get when they try to keep track of all their miscellaneous expenses.

Tips to Fight the "Bookkeeping Slows"

If QuickBooks is taking a long time to load and then open your company file, you may be able to make a few small changes in how you work with QuickBooks files that could speed up the process. The Intuit staff has passed along these three tips to its ProAdvisors which will help you. Although you probably don’t have a lot of companies to work with, you might, unknowingly, have a lot of open windows (see my last QuickTip below)

Key QuickBooks Insight

How you finish your last task in QuickBooks financial software before you exit the program may save you time when next launching QuickBooks. Taking the time to close components within QuickBooks before exiting will often improve startup time the next go.

1. Close All Windows.

Close all windows within the QuickBooks application before closing the file or exiting QuickBooks. Next time you open the same file or launch QuickBooks (with the last file used) it would come up much quicker. You can do it by selecting Close All from the Window menu or by pressing Alt + W and then pressing A.

2. Close Company File.

If you close the company file before exiting QuickBooks, the next time you launch QuickBooks you will be up and running much quicker. On the next time you launch, QuickBooks will display the No Company Open window, and you can then select the file you want to work on. (This a good general approach, since most ProAdvisors work on many files.) Select Close Company... from the File menu or by pressing Alt + F and then pressing C.

3. Where You Keep Your Files

Run from Hard Drive (Not Removable Media). Some users run the company file from removable media like a flash drive or a CD-ROM. This helps them keep companies separate and is one way they juggle multiple clients. However, running the company file from removable media is definitely slower than from the hard drive. In the interest of speed, Intuit recommends moving the company file from the CD to the computer's hard drive for faster operation.

Using these steps will keep your QuickBooks program running at peak speed and prevent the "Bookkeeping Slows".

Recording business expenses paid with personal funds

To make it easier to record business expenses paid with personal funds:

Set up a credit card account named “Due to Shareholder.”

Then, when you spend personal funds, enter the expense in the “Enter Credit Card Charges” found under the Banking dropdown list.

Be sure you choose the “Due to Shareholder” credit card.

When you pay yourself back, apply the payment to the “Due to Shareholder” account.

Using this method will keep a running total of what the business owes you and when you paid yourself back.

Navigating multiple windows in QuickBooks

To make it easier to navigate among your open windows:

Click on the “Open Windows List” found under the View dropdown list. A panel with a white box will open on the left as the main window becomes slightly smaller.

As you open Windows, the names will be listed in the white box on the panel.

To change windows, simply click on the name listed in the white box.

To quickly close all the open windows, click on “Close All” found under the Window dropdown list.

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