QuickBooks 2019 For Dummies

Stephen L. Nelson, MBA, CPA, MS in Taxation, provides accounting, business advisory, tax planning, and tax preparation services to small businesses. His more than 100 books, including all editions of QuickBooks For Dummies, have sold over 5 million copies.

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 3

Where to Go from Here 3

Part 1: Quickly Into Quickbooks 5

Chapter 1: QuickBooks: The Heart of Your Business 7

Why QuickBooks? 7

Why you need an accounting system 8

What QuickBooks does 9

Why not QuickBooks online? 10

What Explains QuickBooks’ Popularity? 11

What’s Next, Dude? 12

How to Succeed with QuickBooks 13

Budget wisely, Grasshopper 13

Don’t focus on features 14

Outsource payroll 15

Get professional help 16

Use both the profit and loss statement and the balance sheet 16

Chapter 2: The Big Setup 17

Getting Ready for QuickBooks Setup 17

The big decision 18

The trial balance of the century 19

The mother of all scavenger hunts 22

Stepping through QuickBooks Setup 23

Starting QuickBooks 23

Using the Express Setup 25

The Rest of the Story 32

Should You Get Your Accountant’s Help? 32

Chapter 3: Populating QuickBooks Lists 35

The Magic and Mystery of Items 35

Adding items you might include on invoices 37

Creating other wacky items for invoices 45

Editing items 48

Adding Employees to Your Employee List 49

Customers Are Your Business 51

It’s Just a Job 55

Adding Vendors to Your Vendor List 58

The Other Lists 62

The Fixed Asset Item list 63

The Price Level list 64

The Billing Rate Levels list 64

The Sales Tax Code list 64

The Class list 64

The Other Names list 65

The Sales Rep list 65

Customer, Vendor, and Job Types list 66

The Terms list 66

The Customer Message list 66

The Payment Method list 67

The Ship Via list 67

The Vehicle list 67

The Memorized Transaction list 68

The Reminders list 68

Organizing Lists 68

Printing Lists 69

Exporting List Items to Your Word Processor 69

Dealing with the Chart of Accounts List 70

Describing customer balances 70

Describing vendor balances 70

Camouflaging some accounting goofiness 71

Supplying the missing numbers 77

Checking your work one more time 79

Part 2: Daily Entry Tasks 81

Chapter 4: Creating Invoices and Credit Memos 83

Making Sure That You’re Ready to Invoice Customers 84

Preparing an Invoice 84

Fixing Invoice Mistakes 91

If the invoice is still displayed onscreen 91

If the invoice isn’t displayed onscreen 91

Deleting an invoice 92

Preparing a Credit Memo 92

Fixing Credit Memo Mistakes 96

Printing Invoices and Credit Memos 97

Loading the forms into the printer 97

Setting up the invoice printer 97

Printing invoices and credit memos as you create them 100

Printing invoices in a batch 102

Printing credit memos in a batch 103

Sending Invoices and Credit Memos via Email 104

Customizing Your Invoices and Credit Memos 105

Chapter 5: Reeling in the Dough 109

Recording a Sales Receipt 110

Printing a Sales Receipt 114

Special Tips for Retailers 116

Correcting Sales Receipt Mistakes 117

Recording Customer Payments 118

Correcting Mistakes in Customer Payments Entries 122

Making Bank Deposits 123

Improving Your Cash Inflow 126

Tracking what your customers owe 126

Assessing finance charges 128

Dealing with deposits 132

Chapter 6: Paying the Bills 133

Pay Now or Pay Later? 133

Recording Your Bills by Writing Checks 134

The slow way to write checks 134

The fast way to write checks 140

Recording Your Bills the Accounts Payable Way 142

Recording your bills 143

Entering your bills the fast way 146

Deleting a bill 148

Remind me to pay that bill, will you? 149

Paying Your Bills 150

Tracking Vehicle Mileage 154

Paying Sales Tax 155

Chapter 7: Inventory Magic 157

Setting Up Inventory Items 158

When You Buy Stuff 159

Recording items that you pay for up front 159

Recording items that don’t come with a bill 159

Paying for items when you get the bill 161

Recording items and paying the bill all at once 163

When You Sell Stuff 163

How Purchase Orders Work 164

Customizing a purchase order form 165

Filling out a purchase order 165

Checking up on purchase orders 168

Receiving purchase order items 168

Assembling a Product 169

Identifying the components 169

Building the assembly 170

Time for a Reality Check 172

Dealing with Multiple Inventory Locations 173

Manually keep separate inventory-by-location counts 174

Use different item numbers for different locations 174

Upgrade to QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 174

The Lazy Person’s Approach to Inventory 175

How periodic inventory systems work in QuickBooks 175

The good and bad of a periodic inventory 176

Chapter 8: Keeping Your Checkbook 177

Writing Checks 177

Writing checks from the Write Checks window 178

Writing checks from the register 179

Changing a check that you’ve written 181

Packing more checks into the register 181

Depositing Money in a Checking Account 183

Recording simple deposits 183

Depositing income from customers 184

Transferring Money between Accounts 186

Setting up a second bank account 187

Recording deposits into the new account 187

About the other half of the transfer 188

Changing a transfer that you’ve already entered 189

Working with Multiple Currencies 189

To Delete or to Void? 190

Handling NSF Checks from Customers 192

The Big Register Phenomenon 192

Moving through a big register 193

Finding that darn transaction 193

Chapter 9: Paying with Plastic 195

Tracking Business Credit Cards 195

Setting up a credit card account 196

Selecting a credit card account so that you can use it 197

Entering Credit Card Transactions 198

Recording a credit card charge 199

Changing charges that you’ve already entered 201

Reconciling Your Credit Card Statement and Paying the Bill 202

So What about Debit and ATM Cards? 203

So What about Customer Credit Cards? 203

Part 3: Stuff You Do From Time to Time 205

Chapter 10: Printing Checks 207

Getting the Printer Ready 207

Printing a Check 210

A few words about printing checks 211

Printing a check as you write it 211

Printing checks by the bushel 213

What if I make a mistake? 215

Oh where, oh where do unprinted checks go? 216

Printing a Checking Register 216

Chapter 11: Payroll 219

Getting Ready to Do Payroll without Help from QuickBooks 219

Doing Taxes the Right Way 220

Getting an employer ID number 220

Signing up for EFTPS 221

Employees and employers do their part 221

Getting Ready to Do Payroll with QuickBooks 221

Paying Your Employees 223

Paying Payroll Liabilities 226

Paying tax liabilities if you use a full-meal-deal payroll service 226

Paying tax liabilities if you don’t use a full-meal-deal payroll service 226

Paying other nontax liabilities 227

Preparing Quarterly Payroll Tax Returns 227

Using the Basic Payroll service 228

Using a full-meal-deal payroll service 228

Using the QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll service 228

Filing Annual Returns and Wage Statements 229

The State Wants Some Money, Too 230

Chapter 12: Building the Perfect Budget 231

Is This a Game You Want to Play? 231

All Joking Aside: Some Basic Budgeting Tips 232

A Budgeting Secret You Won’t Learn in College 233

Setting Up a Secret Plan 234

Adjusting a Secret Plan 237

Forecasting Profits and Losses 237

Projecting Cash Flows 237

Using the Business Planner Tools 238

Chapter 13: Online with QuickBooks 239

Doing the Electronic Banking Thing 239

So what’s the commotion about? 239

A handful of reasons to be cautious about banking online 240

Making sense of online banking 242

Signing up for the service 243

Making an online payment 243

Transferring money electronically 245

Changing instructions 246

Transmitting instructions 246

Message in a bottle 247

A Quick Review of the Other Online Opportunities 248

Part 4: Housekeeping Chores 249

Chapter 14: The Balancing Act 251

Balancing a Bank Account 252

Giving QuickBooks information from the bank statement 252

Marking cleared checks and deposits 254

Eleven Things to Do If Your Non-Online Account

Doesn’t Balance 259

Chapter 15: Reporting on the State of Affairs 263

What Kinds of Reports Are There, Anyway? 264

Creating and Printing a Report 266

Visiting the report dog-and-pony show 268

Editing and rearranging reports 269

Reports Made to Order 273

Processing Multiple Reports 275

Your Other Reporting Options 275

Last but Not Least: The QuickReport 276

Chapter 16: Job Estimating, Billing, and Tracking 279

Turning On Job Costing 279

Setting Up a Job 280

Creating a Job Estimate 281

Revising an Estimate 284

Turning an Estimate into an Invoice 284

Comparing Estimated Item Amounts with Actual

Item Amounts 286

Charging for Actual Time and Costs 287

Tracking Job Costs 288

Chapter 17: File Management Tips 289

Backing Up Is (Not That) Hard to Do 289

Backing up the quick-and-dirty way 291

Getting back the QuickBooks data you backed up 295

Using the Accountant’s Copy 298

Working with Portable Files 299

Using an Audit Trail 300

Using a Closing Password 300

Chapter 18: Fixed Assets and Vehicle Lists 303

What Is Fixed-Assets Accounting? 303

Fixed-Assets Accounting in QuickBooks 305

Setting Up a Fixed Asset List 306

Adding items to the Fixed Asset list 306

Adding fixed-asset items on the fly 308

Editing items in the Fixed Asset list 309

Tracking Vehicle Mileage 310

Identifying your vehicles 310

Recording vehicle miles 312

Using the vehicle reports 313

Updating vehicle mileage rates 313

Part 5: The Part of Tens 315

Chapter 19: Tips for Handling (Almost) Ten Tricky Situations 317

Tracking Depreciation 317

Selling an Asset 318

Selling a Depreciable Asset 319

Owner’s Equity in a Sole Proprietorship 320

Owner’s Equity in a Partnership 320

Owner’s Equity in a Corporation 321

Multiple-State Accounting 322

Getting a Loan 322

Repaying a Loan 323

Chapter 20: (Almost) Ten Secret Business Formulas 325

The First “Most Expensive Money You Can Borrow” Formula 326

The Second “Most Expensive Money You Can Borrow” Formula 328

The “How Do I Break Even?” Formula 328

The “You Can Grow Too Fast” Formula 331

How net worth relates to growth 331

How to calculate sustainable growth 332

The First “What Happens If .?” Formula 333

The Second “What Happens If .?” Formula 335

The Economic Order Quantity (Isaac Newton) Formula 337

The Rule of 72 338

Part 6: Appendixes 341

Appendix A: Installing QuickBooks in Ten Easy Steps 343

Appendix B: If Numbers Are Your Friends 347

Keying In on Profit 347

Let me introduce you to the new you 347

The first day in business 348

Look at your cash flow first 348

Depreciation is an accounting gimmick 349

Accrual-basis accounting is cool 350

Now you know how to measure profits 351

Some financial brain food 352

In the Old Days, Things Were Different 352

What Does an Italian Monk Have to Do with Anything? 355

And now for the blow-by-blow 357

Blow-by-blow, Part 2 360

How does QuickBooks help? 362

Two Dark Shadows in the World of Accounting 363

The first dark shadow 363

The second dark shadow 364

The Danger of Shell Games 364

Appendix C: Sharing QuickBooks Files 367

Sharing a QuickBooks File on a Network 367

User permissions 367

Record locking 369

Installing QuickBooks for Network Use 370

Setting User Permissions 371

User permissions in Enterprise Solutions 371

User permissions in QuickBooks Pro and Premier 373

Specifying Multiuser Mode 375

Working in Multiuser Mode 375

Index 377