www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info QuickBooks 2011 The book that should have been in the box ® www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info QuickBooks 2011 Bonnie Biafore Beijing | Cambridge | Farnham | Köln | Sebastopol | Tokyo The book that should have been in the box ® www.it-ebooks.info QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore Copyright © 2011 O’Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the Unites States of America. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly Media books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles: http://my.safaribooksonline.com. For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com. Printing History: November 2010: First Edition. Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, the O’Reilly logo, and “The book that should have been in the box” are registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual, The Missing Manual logo, Pogue Press, and the Pogue Press logo are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. ISBN: 978-1-449-39245-1 [M] www.it-ebooks.info v Table of Contents Missing Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Part One: Getting Started Chapter 1: Creating a Company File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Opening QuickBooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Before You Create Your Company File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Start Date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Account Balances and Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 About the EasyStep Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Starting the EasyStep Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Company Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Creating Your Company File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Customizing Your Company File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Beginning to Use QuickBooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Modifying Company Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 What’s Next? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Opening an Existing Company File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Opening a Recently Opened Company File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Opening Any Company File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Restoring a Backup File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Opening a Portable Company File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Converting from Another Program to QuickBooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Converting from Quicken Home & Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Converting from a Non-Intuit Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Chapter 2: Getting Around in QuickBooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 The QuickBooks Home Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Customers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 www.it-ebooks.info vi Employees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Banking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 The Company Snapshot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Using Menus and the Icon Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Switching Between Open Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Chapter 3: Setting Up a Chart of Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Acquiring a Chart of Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Importing a Chart of Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Naming and Numbering Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Setting Up Account Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Standardizing Account Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Creating Accounts and Subaccounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Viewing Account Names and Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Creating an Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Modifying Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Hiding and Deleting Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Hiding Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Deleting Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Merging Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Chapter 4: Setting Up Customers and Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Creating Customers in QuickBooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Creating a New Customer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Customer Data Entry Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Adding and Editing Multiple Customer Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Importing Customer Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Exporting Customer Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Creating Jobs in QuickBooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Creating a New Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Modifying Customer and Job Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Categorizing Customers and Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Understanding Customer Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Creating a Customer Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Categorizing Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Adding Notes About Customers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Merging Customer Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Hiding and Deleting Customers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Deleting Customers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Hiding and Restoring Customers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Chapter 5: Setting Up Invoice Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 What Items Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 When You Don’t Need Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Should You Track Inventory with Items? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Planning Your Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 www.it-ebooks.info vii Generic or Specific? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Naming Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Subitems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Creating Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Creating Multiple Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Creating Individual Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Service Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Service Items Without Associated Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Service Items with Associated Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Product Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Inventory Part Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Non-Inventory Part Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Other Types of Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Other Charge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Subtotal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Discount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Payment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Setting Up Sales Tax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Sales Tax Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Sales Tax Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Modifying Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Hiding and Deleting Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Hiding Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Deleting Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Chapter 6: Setting Up Other QuickBooks Lists . . . . . . . . . . . 129 The Vendor List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Creating a Vendor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Entering Address Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Additional Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Importing Vendor Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Filling in Expense Accounts Automatically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Categorizing with Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Price Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Creating a Price Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Applying Price Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Customer and Vendor Profile Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Sales Rep List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Customer Type List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Vendor Type List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Job Type List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Terms List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Customer Message List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Payment Method List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Ship Via List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 www.it-ebooks.info viii Vehicle List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Fixed Asset Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Creating and Editing List Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Creating Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Editing Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Merging List Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Hiding and Deleting List Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Hiding Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Deleting Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Finding List Entries in Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Sorting Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Printing Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Blasting Out a Quick List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Customizing a Printed List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Chapter 7: Managing QuickBooks Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Switching Between Multi- and Single-User Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Backing Up Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Choosing Standard Settings for Your Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Backing Up Manually . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Automated Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Restoring Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 Sending Company Files to Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Creating a Portable Company File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Opening a Portable Company File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Verifying Your QuickBooks Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 Running the Verify Data Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Reviewing Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Running the Rebuild Data Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 Cleaning Up Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 Running the Clean Up Company File Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Cleaning Up After Deleting Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Part Two: Bookkeeping Chapter 8: Tracking Time and Mileage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Setting Up Time Tracking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Turning on Time Tracking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Setting Up the People Who Track Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Setting Up Items and Customers for Time Tracking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 Entering Time in QuickBooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Filling in Weekly Timesheets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Entering Time for One Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 www.it-ebooks.info [...]... the answer you’re looking for; then QuickBooks Help can’t help you In addition, QuickBooks Help doesn’t let you mark your place, underline key points, jot notes in the margin, or read about QuickBooks while sitting in the sun; this book does This book takes the place of the manual that should have accompanied QuickBooks 2011 It applies to the Windows version of QuickBooks Pro and Premier (Because the. .. such changes on the website, so that you can mark important corrections into your own copy of the book, if you like (Go to www.missingmanuals com/library.html, click this book’s name, and then click the “View/Submit Errata” link of the left side of the page to see the changes.) We’d love to hear your suggestions for new books in the Missing Manual line There’s a place for that on missingmanuals.com, too... menus are the words at the top of your screen: File, Edit, and so on Click one to make a list of commands appear, as though they’re written on a window shade you’ve just pulled down Some people click to open a menu and then release the mouse button; after reading the menu command choices, they click the command they want Other people like to press the mouse button continuously as they click the menu... QuickBooks isn’t already listed on the menu, choose All Programs QuickBooks QuickBooks Pro 2011 (or QuickBooks Premier Edition 2011) The first time you launch QuickBooks, you’re greeted by the “Welcome to QuickBooks screen You have to create or open a company file, and then you’re ready to dive into bookkeeping The rest of this chapter explains how to create a company file and then how to open company files... industry other than one of the five industryspecific versions, choose General Business.) Some people swear that these customizations are worth every extra penny Others say the additional features don’t warrant the Premier price On the QuickBooks website (http:/ /quickbooks. intuit.com), you can tour the Premier features to decide for yourself Or, you can purchase the Accountant edition, which can run any QuickBooks. .. when to use them Note: Although each version of QuickBooks introduces new features and enhancements, you can still use this book if you’re keeping your company books with earlier versions of QuickBooks Of course, the older your version of the program, the more discrepancies you’ll run across QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual is designed to accommodate readers at every technical level The primary... primary discussions are written for people with advancedbeginner or intermediate QuickBooks skills But if you’re using QuickBooks for the first time, special boxes titled “Up To Speed” provide the introductory info you need 8 quickbooks 2011: the missing manual www.it-ebooks.info Introduction to understand the current topic On the other hand, people with advanced skills should watch for similar boxes labeled... assigning or limiting user permissions, and the ability to delegate administrative functions to the other people using the program The QuickBooks Premier Choices If you work in one of the industries covered by QuickBooks Premier, you can get additional features unique to your industry—for about $150 more than QuickBooks Pro (When you install QuickBooks Premier, you choose the industry version you want to run... from the Start menu 13 www.it-ebooks.info Before You Create ╉ Your Company File Figure 1-1:╇ Windows’ taskbar keeps your desktop tidy It’s easy to reach, because program windows don’t hide the taskbar the way they do desktop shortcuts • Programs menu Without a desktop icon, you can launch QuickBooks from the Start menu Click Start QuickBooks Pro 2011 (or QuickBooks Premier Edition 2011) If QuickBooks. .. edition, from QuickBooks Pro to the gamut of Premier’s industry-specific versions Here are the industries that have their own Premier editions: 4 quickbooks 2011: the missing manual www.it-ebooks.info Introduction FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Nonprofit Dilemma I’m doing the books for a tiny nonprofit corporation I’d really like to avoid spending any of our hard-raised funds on a special edition of QuickBooks . Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, the O’Reilly logo, and The book that should have been in the box” are registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual, The Missing. should have been in the box ® www.it-ebooks.info QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore Copyright © 2011 O’Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the Unites States of. www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info QuickBooks 2011 The book that should have been in the box ® www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info QuickBooks 2011 Bonnie Biafore Beijing | Cambridge | Farnham | Köln | Sebastopol | Tokyo The