Beginning to Use QuickBooks

 

After you create a new company file and click “Go to Setup” in the EasyStep Interview window, the QuickBooks Setup window opens with additional steps you have to complete, such as adding bank accounts and items you sell. If you want step-by step guidance through these processes, click one of the Add buttons. For example, to create items, you can fill in a service or product name,

description, and price; QuickBooks takes care of the rest. You can even copy and paste information from an Excel spreadsheet.

After you finish the additional steps, click “Start working” to open the Start Center window. You can click commands to open the corresponding features, click “Go to setup” to return to the QuickBooks Setup window, or click the X at the top-right of the window to close it so you work directly in the program.

Tip: If you’d rather perform these tasks later on or want more control over setup, click the Close button (the X at the top-right corner of the QuickBooks Setup window).  It tells you where to go in this book for more detailed instructions on the rest of the setup you need. After you close the QuickBooks Setup window, you see the QuickBooks Home page, which includes icons for the features you turned on during the EasyStep Interview.   

Note: You may also see the QuickBooks Learning Center window (you can open this window anytime by choosing Help➝Learning Center Tutorials) with links to tutorials and Help topics about new features. In the window, click a link to watch a video on a topic. To ask a question in the QuickBooks Live Community, choose Help➝QuickBooks Help, and then click the Live Community tab.

Modifying Company Info

In the EasyStep Interview, QuickBooks gets the basic facts about your company in small chunks spread over several screens. But after you create your company file, you can edit any of this information in one dialog box, shown in Figure 1-5. To open it, choose Company➝Company Information. Remember, the legal name and address are the ones you use on federal and state tax forms.

 

Some company information changes more often than others. For instance, you might relocate your office or change your phone number, email, or website. But stuff like your legal name and address, Federal Employer Identification Number, and business type (corporation, sole proprietor, and so on) usually stays the same.

 

Opening an Existing Company File

After you’ve opened a company file in one QuickBooks session, the next time you launch the program, it opens that same company file. If you keep the books for only one company, you might never have to manually open a QuickBooks company file again.

For irrepressible entrepreneurs or bookkeepers who work on several companies’ books, you don’t have to close one company file before you open another. You can open another company file in QuickBooks any time you want. The following sections describe the different ways to do so.

Opening a Recently Opened Company File

If you work on more than one company file, you may frequently switch between them. The easiest way to open a recent file is to choose File➝Open Previous Company, and then choose the file you want to open, as shown in Figure 1-6. If the Open Previous Company menu doesn’t list the file you want to open, follow the steps in the next section instead.

 Opening Any Company File

 Sometimes, a company file you want to open falls off the recent file list. Say your bookkeeping business is booming and you work on dozens of company files every month. Or maybe you want to update a previous version. Here’s how to open any company file, no matter how long it’s been since you last used it:

1. Choose File➝“Open or Restore Company”. If the No Company Open window is visible, you can click “Open or restore an existing company” instead.

To open a company file you’ve worked on recently, select it on the Open Previous Company submenu. If the No Company Open window is visible (you can see part of it here), you can open recent files by double-clicking one of the filenames in the list of recently opened files. (Opening a sample file is the only task that the No Company Open window performs that you can’t do from the File menu.)

2. In the “Open or Restore Company” dialog box, select the “Open a company file” option and then click Next. The “Open a Company” dialog box appears. 3. Navigate to the folder with the company file you want and double-click the file’s name. You can also click the filename and then click Open. 4. If the QuickBooks Login window appears (which it will if you’ve assigned a password to the Administrator user account or set up multiple users), type your user name and password. If the Administrator is the only user, the Password box is the only one that appears. But if you have more than one user for the company file, both the User Name and Password boxes appear. 5. Click OK. The company file opens and you’re ready to keep the books.   â•‰â•‰Opening an Existing Company File

Restoring a Backup File

Backup files are the answer to the adrenaline rush you get when you do something dumb with your company file, your hard drive crashes, or a plume of smoke wafts up from your computer. To restore a backup file, choose File➝“Open or Restore Company”. In the “Open or Restore Company” dialog box, select the “Restore a backup copy” option and then click Next. To learn how to create backup files in the first place, as well as the details on restoring them.ORGANIZATION

 Opening a Portable Company File

Portable files are a special file format that makes QuickBooks company files compact so you can email them more easily. Opening a portable file is similar to opening a regular file:

1. Choose File➝“Open or Restore Company”.

The “Open or Restore Company” dialog box opens.

2. Select the “Restore a portable file” option and then click Next. The Open Portable Company File dialog box appears. QuickBooks automatically changes the “Files of type” box to “QuickBooks Portable Company Files (*.QBM)”.

3. Navigate to the folder with the portable file and double-click its name. QuickBooks opens your file ASKED QUESTION

Converting from Another Program to QuickBooks

 If you launched your small business from your basement and kept your records with Quicken Home & Business Edition, your accountant has probably recommended that you make the leap to using QuickBooks. On the other hand, you may have used another accounting program like Peachtree or Small Business Accounting and have decided to move to QuickBooks. Regardless of which other program you used, the command to convert your records to QuickBooks is the same: Choose File➝Utilities➝Convert. Then choose From Quicken, From Peachtree, or From Microsoft Small Business Accounting or Microsoft Office Accounting. The rest of this section explains what to do after that.

Converting from Quicken Home & Business

Quicken doesn’t report your business performance in the way that most accountants want to see, nor does it store your business transactions the way QuickBooks does. If you want the conversion to proceed as smoothly as possible, do some cleanups in your Quicken file first.   from Another Program to QuickBooks

For example, you have to record overdue scheduled transactions and send online payments before you convert your Quicken file. Also, delete accounts you don’t want in QuickBooks because, once they’re in QuickBooks, you can’t delete accounts that have any transactions. And make sure that customer names are consistent and unique. QuickBooks doesn’t support repeating online payments, so you also have to send an instruction in Quicken to delete any repeating online payments you’ve set up. In addition, you need complete reports of your past payroll because Quicken payroll transactions don’t convert to QuickBooks.

 Intuit publishes a detailed guide to help you prepare for a Quicken conversion, but finding it isn’t easy. If you try searching the QuickBooks support site, keywords like “quicken quickbooks convert” or “Quicken to QuickBooks Conversion Guide” don’t return the answer you need. Go to http://tinyurl.com/qn-qbconversion, and then click the “Quicken to QuickBooks Conversion Guide” link.

Converting from a Non-Intuit Program

To convert files created in other accounting programs like Peachtree or Small Business Accounting, you have to download a conversion tool from the Quick- Books website. Choose File➝Utilities➝Convert and then choose the program you want to convert from. In the dialog box that opens, click Yes to tell QuickBooks to go online to download the QuickBooks Conversion Tool. Then scroll down to the bottom of the web page that opens and click the “Get free downloadable Conversion Tool” link. Fill in the boxes for your name, company name, and email address and then click Submit.