QuickBooks Online For Dummies

Elaine Marmel is President of Marmel Enterprises, LLC., an organization that specializes in technical writing and software training. She has worked on projects to build financial management systems for New York City and Washington, D.C., training more than 600 employees to use them. Elaine has authored or coauthored more than 90 books.

Introduction 1


About This Book 1


Foolish Assumptions 3


Icons Used in This Book 3


Beyond the Book 4


Where to Go from Here 4


Part 1: Getting Started with Qbo and Qboa 5


Chapter 1: Introducing QBO and QBOA 7


QBO for the Client and QBOA for the Accountant 7


Comparing interfaces 8


Taking a look at QBO Desktop and QBO Mobile 10


Understanding the Cloud 13


Should You Move to the Cloud? 14


System Requirements 15


Chapter 2: Embracing the QBO/QBOA Format 19


It’s All about Subscriptions 19


The Self-Employed version 20


The Simple Start version 21


The Essentials version 22


The Plus version 23


Essentials and Plus with Payroll 23


What Does It Cost? 24


Addressing Payroll Needs 25


Switching from QuickBooks Desktop 27


Where Add-On Apps Fit In 27


Part 2: Managing the Books for the End User 31


Chapter 3: Creating a Client Company in QBO 33


Signing Up for QBO 34


Setting Up a New Company 35


Understanding the Dashboard Page 37


Establishing Company Settings 41


Examining company preferences 41


Examining billing and subscription settings 42


Setting sales preferences 43


Taking a look at expense preferences 49


Examining options to receive customer payments 49


Reviewing advanced preferences 50


Working with Multiple Currencies 52


How the Multicurrency feature changes QBO 53


Turning on the Multicurrency feature 54


Setting up currencies 55


Using multiple currencies 56


Updating the Chart of Accounts 59


Taking Advantage of QuickBooks Labs 64


Signing In to and Out of QBO 65


Chapter 4: Managing List Information 67


Importing People into a List 67


Adding New People to a List 73


Searching Lists for People 75


Working with a particular person 75


Sorting a list 78


Exporting a list to Excel 79


Working with a batch of people 80


Changing Settings for People Lists 80


Working with Products and Services Items 82


Establishing categories 83


Adding service and non-inventory items 85


Creating an inventory item 87


Working with bundles 89


Changing item types 91


Adjusting inventory item information 93


A Look at Other Lists 98


Chapter 5: Dealing with the Outflow of Money 99


Writing a Check 101


Assigning a check to accounts or items 101


Writing a check for an outstanding bill 104


Creating an Expense 105


Entering a Purchase Order 107


Turning on the purchase order feature 108


Creating a purchase order 109


Working with partial purchase orders 110


Entering and Paying Bills 114


Entering a bill 114


About recurring transactions 115


Recording a vendor credit 119


When a vendor issues a refund check 121


Paying bills 123


Chapter 6: Managing the Inflow of Money 125


Customizing Forms to Handle Subtotals 127


Preparing an Invoice 129


Recording a Customer Payment 132


Managing Invoice Status 135


Working with Estimates 137


Preparing an estimate 138


Copying an estimate to a purchase order 140


Converting an estimate to an invoice 142


Copying an existing estimate 144


Working with Sales Receipts 145


Entering a sales receipt 145


Printing sales receipts and packing slips 146


Giving Money Back to a Customer 147


Recording a credit memo 148


Issuing a refund to a customer 149


Creating Billable Time Entries 151


Entering a single time activity 151


Using a timesheet to record time 152


Adding a billable expense to an invoice 153


Managing Projects 155


Chapter 7: Working in Registers 159


Understanding Registers 159


Entering and Editing Transactions 164


Entering a transaction 165


Editing a transaction 168


Other Things You Can Do in a Register 168


Sorting transactions 168


Filtering transactions 169


Printing a register 171


Chapter 8: Handling Bank and Credit Card Transactions 173


Controlling the Appearance of Bank Accounts 173


Connecting QBO Accounts to Financial Institutions 174


Connecting or not connecting 175


Connecting Bank or Credit Card accounts 176


When you can’t connect directly 180


Handling Downloaded Activity 185


Excluding transactions 187


Including transactions 188


When QBO guesses correctly 188


When QBO doesn’t know 188


Establishing rules to accept transactions 191


Fixing mistakes 196


Making a Bank Deposit 197


Reconciling a Bank Account 200


Chapter 9: Paying Employees 205


Understanding the Payroll Process 206


Getting Started with QBO Payroll (QBOP) 206


Turning on QBOP 206


Setting payroll preferences 212


Setting up payroll taxes 214


Preparing Payroll 216


Recording payroll information 217


Reviewing and generating payroll checks 217


Correcting payroll exemptions (without calling Tech Support) 219


Printing payroll reports 222


Managing Payroll Taxes 223


Paying payroll taxes 224


Preparing payroll tax forms 226


Chapter 10: How’s the Business Doing? 229


Quickly Review Income and Expenses 229


Finding the Report You Want 231


Examining recommended reports 231


Looking at frequently run reports 232


Finding reports you customize 232


Taking a look at management reports 232


Exploring all QBO reports 234


Searching for a report 234


Printing a Report 235


Customizing a report 236


Saving a customized report 239


Part 3: Managing the Books for the Accountant 243


Chapter 11: Setting Up Shop in QBOA 245


Signing Up for and into QBOA 246


Examining the QBOA Interface 248


Working with the Your Practice view 249


Working with the Your Books view 251


Setting Up Your Team 252


Controlling the Appearance of the Client List 256


Understanding and Using the Free QBOA Company 258


Working with the Sample Company 259


Closing Companies and QBOA 260


Working with Wholesale Billing 260


Signing up for Wholesale Billing 261


Adding existing clients to your Wholesale Billing subscription 262


Removing clients from your Wholesale Billing subscription 265


Working with your Wholesale Billing history 267


Stop using Wholesale Billing 267


Chapter 12: Adding Companies to the QBOA Client List 269


Adding a Client’s Company to the Client List 269


Having a client invite you to be the accountant user 270


Inviting a client to your practice 273


Transferring master administrator rights back to your client 275


Importing Desktop QuickBooks Information 280


General conversion considerations 280


Importing a QuickBooks Desktop company 282


After converting 287


Switching between Client QBO Companies 288


Chapter 13: Exploring a Client’s Company from QBOA 289


Opening a Client’s Company 289


Reviewing a Client QBO Company 290


Examining company setup information 290


Taking a look at the Chart of Accounts 293


Reviewing list information 296


Exporting and importing bank feed rules 297


Chapter 14: Working in a Client’s Company 299


Making Navigation Easy 299


Using keyboard shortcuts 299


Opening multiple windows 300


Working in two companies simultaneously 302


Examining Available Transaction Types 303


Searching for Transactions 304


Making Client Notes 305


Communicating with a Client 306


Communicating about a specific transaction 307


Communicating on any subject 310


Chapter 15: Using Accountant Tools 313


Reporting and Paying Sales Taxes 314


Facilitating Accountant Activities 315


Managing your practice 316


Understanding the Trial Balance page 321


Reclassifying transactions 323


Examining voided and deleted transactions 324


Writing off invoices 325


Closing the books 326


Reviewing reports 327


A brief look at other accountant tools 328


Part 4: The Part of Tens 329


Chapter 16: Almost Ten Things about the Chrome Browser Interface 331


Understanding Users 332


Windows and Tabs 333


Using the Omnibox to Visit a Web Page 334


Using the Omnibox to Search the Web 334


What’s the Star? 334


Examining the Chrome Menu 335


About Signing In to (and Out of) Chrome 336


Creating a Google account 336


Signing In to Chrome 338


Signing Out of Chrome 339


Using the Chrome Web Store 340


Selecting a Theme 342


Chapter 17: Ten Ways to Use Chrome Effectively 343


Setting a Home Page 343


Chrome and Security 345


Chrome and Privacy 346


Handling cookies 346


Chrome and JavaScript 346


Allowing plug-ins 347


Working in Incognito mode 347


Deleting browsing history 348


Reviewing miscellaneous privacy settings 349


Using Google tools to manage privacy 350


Using Bookmarks in Chrome 351


Creating a bookmark 351


Displaying the Bookmarks bar 352


Importing bookmarks 353


Managing bookmarks 354


Duplicating and Pinning Tabs 356


Using Chrome on Multiple Monitors 356


Setting Up Chrome Users 357


Zooming In and Out 361


Downloading Files 361


Appendix A: QBO, QuickBooks Desktop, and Data Conversion 363


What Doesn’t Import 364


Features Not Fully Available in QBO 365


Looking at List Limitations 365


Chart of Accounts 366


Customers and jobs 366


Group Items 367


Inactive list elements 367


Other names 367


Recurring transactions 368


Sales tax items 368


Ship Via list 368


Subtotals 368


Types for customers, jobs, and vendors 369


Vendors 369


Exploring Payroll Conversion 369


Completing payroll setup 371


Special payroll notes 372


Examining Inventory and the Items List 372


Examining Other Special Cases 373


Bills 373


Bill Payments 373


Budgets 373


Closing Date 373


Credit card charges 374


Custom fields 374


Discounts 374


Documents 374


Finance charges 374


Invoices 375


Journal entries 376


Customized sales form templates 376


Merchant account service 376


Multicurrency 376


Online Bill Payment 377


Pending sales 377


Print mailing labels 377


Purchase orders 377


Receive items 377


Reimbursable expenses 377


Reports 378


Report customization 378


Sales Rep 378


Tax support 379


Terms 379


Write letters 379


Index 381