The Company Snapshot

 
The Company Snapshot window (choose Company➝Company Snapshot to open it) is a financial dashboard that shows important aspects of your company’s financial state like account balances, income breakdown (by top-level income accounts), customers who owe money, and best-selling items, as you can see in Figure 2-4. In QuickBooks 2011, you can choose from 12 different views

to see the financial information you care about most.    ╉╉╉Using Menus and the Icon Bar

Not only can you quickly scan your company’s financial status in this window, you can also double click entries here to dig into the details. You can even add or remove items from the Snapshot or drag items to rearrange them.

Switching Between Open Windows

If you tend to work on one bookkeeping task for hours on end, you can set Quick- Books up to display one full-size window at a time. That way, when you open additional windows, they get stacked on top of each other so you see only the last one you opened. If you go with the one-window approach, you can view another window by choosing it in the Open Window List or by going to the menu bar and clicking Window, and then choosing the name of the window you want to see. (If the Open Window List isn’t visible, choose View➝Open Window List.)   Every command that QuickBooks has is always within reach via the menu bar. Choose a top-level menu like Customers (shown here), and then choose a command from the drop-down menu or a submenu. For one-click access to your favorite commands, use the icon bar, which you can customize to include the features and reports you use the most

If you focus on one window, you can switch to another window by going to the Window menu at the top of your screen and then choosing the window you want to display from the drop-down list. When you display multiple windows, the Window menu includes commands for arranging windows such as Cascade and Tile Vertically. Commands to arrange windows Drag sides and corners to resize windows Click to bring window to the front

If, on the other hand, you flit between bookkeeping tasks like a honeybee in an alfalfa field, you probably want to see several windows at a time. QuickBooks can display several windows at the same time, as shown on the right in Like windows in other programs, simply click a window to bring it to the front. You can reposition windows by dragging their title bars, or resize windows by dragging their edges and corners. To learn how to tell QuickBooks which window setup you prefer, see 

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