QuickBooks Desktop Course PREVIEW: Day 1, Lesson 1: Setup a New Company File & Basic Navigation Tips

hi this is Hector Garcia and this is going to be a video lesson of a class that I normally teach over a few days in a life setting in Miami Florida and I've been asked many many times to make an entire video series of of the live classes so this is what you're going to experience with this video course I really think you're gonna like it you can follow step by step alongside the screen pause and also reference a book I specifically recommend that you work with QuickBooks 2016 missing manual or if it's already 2017 use that one or 2018 whatever but use the missing manual because it's pretty much the best book out there and you can buy it on Amazon for like thirty dollars or so or you can in some cases you can download the PDF for free depending on how you got access to this course from me you probably got a copy of the book whether it's physical or digital so you can use that as a as a reference so the first lesson we're going to do is navigating QuickBooks desktop and setting it up for the first time so if you're using the QuickBooks 2016 missing manual that is going to be chapter one creating a company file and chapter two getting around QuickBooks so let's start the lesson enjoy alright let's get started with QuickBooks so right now I have my QuickBooks desktop open this will be on a Windows machine I'm working on QuickBooks Enterprise Edition however this training will work with QuickBooks Pro QuickBooks premier QuickBooks account and QuickBooks Enterprise any version of QuickBooks that gets installed into a Windows machine it would work in here so when you first open QuickBooks you're gonna see no company open that basically says that QuickBooks is open but no database or company file it's open you're gonna see multiple company files here if you happen to be managing multiple companies through QuickBooks it may also look completely blank if you're opening QuickBooks for the first time so we're gonna create a new company to create in your company we're gonna click here where it says create new company and we'll just go ahead and click on that then it's gonna give us a couple of choices so the big blue button says Express start and if you press that I will show you that real quick if you press that it's gonna ask you a few questions company name industry business type and basically let you move forward however if you're starting QuickBooks for the very first time I recommend that you actually use the detailed start the reason for that is because the details start or the advanced set up is going to ask you a set of multiple questions and these questions are going to guide you step-by-step on how you should set up QuickBooks to match your particular business your particular industry so let's go ahead and set up a company name here so we're going to call this Miami computers so we're gonna go ahead and set up like a computer company and we'll put out dinner Eric address here and the idea behind just putting something here I know it this is just kind of a basic training is so we can actually see that address when we create invoices we should be able to see an address there so make it look as as real as possible now you can skip tax ID or skip phone number email website you don't need that but you could go ahead and put it if you setting up a real company then the next question is what industry now this is not extremely important if you get this wrong it's not such a big deal however QuickBooks is going to customize your chart of accounts in the type of transactions that you work with based on your industry now we're working with a company called Miami computers this is the sample company we're setting up for this training and we're gonna find an industry that matches this one the best so for example there's this industry here called information technology that makes sense is a computer company so we're going to go ahead and pick that now one important tip is if you can't find your industry here because it is a pretty short list just scroll all the way down and pick one of the generic words there's a general product paste there's a general service paste you can pick either one you'll be fine with that for our particular example we're going to go ahead and pick information technology again if you can't find your industry pick one of the general ones the next question is how is your company organized this is kind of a tax question so how does your company file tax returns and you're going to go ahead and pick whether it's a sole proprietorship a partnership LLC corporation etc if you don't know this you should ask your accountant if your accountant doesn't know this you should change accountants or ask a lawyer or whoever helped you set up the business so I'm going to go ahead and pick S corporation which is tends to be one of the most typical ones here for a small company so I'm going to pick s corporation and click Next then it's asking me for fiscal year so if your regular calendar year company where you start January and December and you file your corporate tax returns on March 15 like like all other corporations or most corporations rather you're gonna leave January there but if you happen to close your year let's say June 30th if that's when you actually close your year then you're gonna pick my fiscal year starts July okay that's what you would pick but most companies are gonna be January to December so we're gonna pick the start month so we'll click January and then click Next then I'll ask you to create an an administrative password it's good for you to have a password in there so I'm going to go ahead and put a password in there and you know if you are setting up the company for the first time hopefully you are the admin if not you know we're gonna have to figure out who the admin is and then create a separate user for yourself next question is asking you where in the computer would you like to save this now if you're working in a multi-user environment where we have a server multiple computers that sort of thing maybe you want to get your IT person involved just because if you save it in the wrong place you may not work properly in a multi-user network server environment and also if you you're not in that environment but this is set up in maybe your own laptop don't put it in the desktop because typically in the desktop you'll be sort of inclined to put it in a trashcan or something like that so I'll put it in a folder where it just makes sense to put it I'm gonna go ahead and put it in let's say My Documents folder and I'll put it on the into it I'll create oh I'll put it right there and hit save again you should probably get your IT person involved if you need to really decide what the right place to put this in when it's finished saving is gonna say all right we're gonna go ahead and customize QuickBooks to fit your needs and it's gonna ask you a whole series of questions about what type of company you have and with the type of transactions you'll be working with so I'm going to go ahead and click on next first question is what do you sell products services are both so if you do sell products inventory parts actual things that you're selling and exchanging for money you'd want to pick products if you do mostly services done by your employees or services of renting equipment or renting your facilities labor that sort of thing we're gonna pick Services and if you do both just go ahead a pick both and we'll click Next then it's asking that you charge sales tax again if you sell products you probably charge sales tax you may want to ask an accountant see if I the type of product you're selling are taxable or the clients you're selling to you need to charge sales tax so you may want to ask your accountant I'm gonna pick yes there and then hit next then it says do you create estimates so if you want to give somebody a quote the proposal basically like a free invoice very organized with a total then you want to pick yes therefore estimate so we'll hit next then it says do you track customer orders now for our sort of a first couple of videos we're not gonna be doing sales orders so I'm gonna go ahead and click you know however if you are working with QuickBooks premier accountant or enterprise and you have inventory and you take orders for things you don't have and you want to take that order and then sort of remind you and have a mechanism to go order the product through your vendor that's what a sales order will be and then in that case you would hit yes but for the first couple of videos I'm gonna have here the first couple of lessons we're gonna do we're not gonna do sales order so I'm gonna pick no I'll hit next then it says do you use billing statements basically do you want to give a client a statement monthly quarterly that shows all the payments all the invoices it's like an invoice of invoices okay doesn't contain details of the products and services you're selling it contains all your invoices and all your payments so if you want that you will hit yes and then hit next do you use progress invoicing now I'm gonna hit no because on this example company called Miami computers we're not gonna do a project based building or milestone based building however if you are in the construction industry if you sell projects are sort of a long term if your contract says you know the whole thing is a hundred thousand and if you meet condition a B and C you can build your first 25% and then if you hit meet condition C D and F then you can build another 30% that sort of building is called progress invoicing so if you need that you will hit yesterday but for the exercises we're gonna do we're gonna hit no and then we'll hit next then it says do you manage the bills you owe in other words do you want to track accounts payable do you want to put vendor bills that you want to pay later set them in QuickBooks now recognize the expense now pay them later track how much money you owe in the future that would be a bill someone hit yes because I like that feature very much we'll hit next then it says do you track inventory again if you purchase product you've stock it you put it in the warehouse you maintain it you make sure that it doesn't break you make sure you don't lose it you count it you are just inventory if the counts are missing then you do track inventory if everything you buy you resell but you're never stuck in your warehouse it's all basically order the man if if it's if it's sort of small materials that you don't account for you do charge the client for them more or less but not item by item just sort of in a lump sum then possibly you don't track inventory for our example this company called Miami computers we are gonna use inventory so we're gonna hit next then I'll click I mean we'll hit yes and then we'll click Next then it says do you track time so that's only if I'm gonna have time sheets and those time sheets are gonna be used to understand how much our employees time is worth in each project or maybe I want to generate a paycheck with it or maybe I just want to build my client the hours that I spent on the project so if you get if any of those apply you're gonna hit yes for our couple of examples on this first videos we're not gonna track time we're gonna have a whole video on payroll and we'll include all the time elements in there so for this example we're gonna hit no and then I'll hit next then it says do you have employees again we'll have an entire video series on payroll but for for this company called Miami computers we're gonna go ahead and just have subcontractor so we're gonna hit yes and 1089 subcontractors but we're not gonna hit yes on w-2 employees and then we'll hit next then it says ok we're gonna set up your chart of accounts but before we get there I need to know what your start date is we'll talk about that in a second and then after we settle the whole concept of start date then it's gonna suggest a couple of income and expense accounts so I'm going to go ahead and hit next and the question essentially is do you want to start your accounting at the beginning of this fiscal year like for example let's say you're in the middle of July and you're setting up your QuickBooks file and you're trying to decide whether or not you should go all the way to the beginning of the year that way when you close out the year you sort of have a clean year so you can file a tax return and that's very very common but you don't have to if you want to just start your accounting today August 1st 2016 and forget about January through July and not really worry too much about the history of the mid-year then you can just pick whatever date you want keep in mind whatever your start date is you're probably gonna have to bring all the beginning balances right as of that day beginning bank balances beginning credit card balances loans and we'll talk about that when we talk about the chart of accounts so I'm gonna go ahead and pick beginning of the fiscal year because that's the most common especially for companies have already been open before we started our QuickBooks file alright we're gonna go ahead and click Next then it's gonna suggest account based on the category is that based on the options and questions that it asks and these are the categories so we're gonna see all the different options here I can turn turn them on by hitting the check box so I'm gonna go ahead and turn on subcontractor expense I'll turn on business and license and permits business license the premise I'm gonna leave charity contributions out let's say I'm never gonna deal with that let's say equipment rental we'll turn that one on and then we'll scroll down and then we see that insurance expense it's already suggesting a couple of other insurances and you see a little gap or a little sort of tab there under that that means these are sub accounts so this is suggesting a major category called insurance expense but then it's additionally suggesting other subcategories or sub accounts so I'm gonna pick general liability and health insurance as the two sub accounts and you can see kind of how those look in the chart of accounts briefly on the next lesson I'm gonna keep scrolling down and let me turn on janitorial expense and miscellaneous expense I'll leave that one out I hate that account I find it when somebody has the miscellaneous expense account there that becomes basically they go to account for everything so I typically suggest my clients to leave that one out I'll turn on postage and delivery that one's good scroll down repair some maintenance that's pretty good we'll turn that one on property taxes I'd say they don't have any building so we'll leave that out of the options there and you see a bunch of options there ask my accountant really good leave that one on that way if I you're an accountant that you're setting this up for a client then the client knows to put everything they don't know there and if you're if you're an end-user and hopefully you have an accountant the things you don't know put them there that way once a month or once a quarter however often you meet with your accountant you can review the transactions that went in that category okay so once we're done reviewing these we can hit next and then it says congratulations you can click on go to setup and the first screen you're gonna see is this QuickBooks setup screen now this screen only shows up when you first turn QuickBooks on and create a new file so because I'm never gonna get this screen back I'm just gonna hit close and we'll create customers products and bank accounts but we'll do them in their own screens where they're supposed to be going so I'll click on the little X there or click start working now the first thing you'll see is the home screen okay you're gonna see the home screen there with a whole bunch of icons we'll get to that in a second and these icons have arrows or going all over the place and and what really is happening here it's QuickBooks is trying to with each icon represent a transaction and each transaction is sort of an accounting event and it's kind of walking you through the typical accounting events that you have and we'll discuss those later on now the other piece of big information you see other than the icons there is this big blue bar in the left now this bar can be collapsed by clicking on that little arrow and then you don't get done anymore however what's in here are shortcuts shortcuts view valances I mean there's a couple of interesting things here if you don't like this left navigation bar that you can collapse and open you can just click on the View menu and you can just turn it off by clicking on Left navigation bar or you can click on top navigation bar and see that same bar on the top but it's slightly static so you can't close it and open it now a lot of people like to have these icons there just because they're pretty good shortcuts however everything and these icons can be also accessed through the menu so if you don't want any of them at all just click on hide icon bar and then you won't see a top bar or a left icon bar I like having at least one either a top bar or left icon bar but if you are going to have the left icon bar just have it collapsed and in the shortcuts just in case I want to click my shortcuts and have access to the shortcuts there now the other obvious sort of thing here is this little tab here called insights when you click on insights it's going to show you sort of a graphical interface which is sort of a dashboard of my sales my expenses and they're good to have although this there's a whole reports menu and a whole dashboard menu there it's right there as a tab and the home page so just know that it's right there and once we have more transactions those are going to be pretty obvious there the other thing is if you be used in QuickBooks on older versions typically you're used to having the top icon bar like this and then having this thing called the open window list so I'm going to kind of show you what that is some people actually prefer that so basically if you have multiple windows open let's say I have a bill open and I also have an let me just go ahead and click on a purchase order and let's say I also have a purchase order open and also have an estimate open and then also have an invoice up and so what ends up happening is you have all these windows and they're kind of a mess because they're sort of behind each other on top of each other see that that will make it very difficult to navigate so this open window list here on the Left what it makes it really easy because you can just quickly go to the window you want so you can click enter bill and then under this view you can just click on the maximize button and just have it maximized and then you don't have to worry about making it smaller or bigger just because you're gonna have the open window list here so that's a really important navigation piece but before we get started with QuickBooks is important to know that that's there now if you like the left icon bar I'm gonna click here left icon bar and you click on this little tiny icon here where is it this one open windows it's gonna be a little bit similar than left navigation party if I expand it you're gonna see it here is a lot bigger for some people that's better because it's easier to read but I think it takes a lot more real estate but what's nice is that even well it's collapsed and you see that big label there's open windows I can click that and briefly open it and switch see that I can quickly switch across different windows so I like that very much now it's really important to know that the Escape key in QuickBooks will close a window so I don't have to go all the way to this little X here close although that's a way to close so I'm going to click on the X that closes the window be careful not to hit the big X or X all the way in the top that will close QuickBooks all together anyway so I'm gonna keep pressing escape and they just keep closing the windows and showing the window that's right behind it however if you just want to close every single window all in one shot just click on window close all and that will get rid of it and just get you into a completely grey and blank screen which I like a lot I like that very much I'm gonna go ahead and expand that the navigation bar again so these are sort of the most basic navigation tips of QuickBooks it's important to kind of get accustomed to that before actually starting to create transactions a couple of things keyboard shortcuts so if you click on any of these menus here so I click on the Edit menu for example you're gonna see a button there called a use register so by seeing use register there you see control are next to it or for example fine control F next to it so it's giving you sort of a hint of that you can use a keyboard shortcut if I go to the list menu for example you see the chart of accounts has a control a shortcut but the item list does not so there is an a control I or something that can get you to the item list however that I mentioned control I control I actually gets you into an invoice now don't despair if there's a if there's a transaction there that you would love to have a keyboard shortcut to that you don't actually see the control letter next you actually can access almost every not every but almost every function in QuickBooks using the Alt key so for example if I wanted to get to the item list which has no keyboard shortcut with the control menu I can actually follow if you see under L the L is highlighted or it's underlined and then you see the eyes it's underlined basically that says that if I hit the Alt key and then I hit L first that's gonna open the list menu and then if I hit I it's gonna open the item list okay so that's kind of an interesting shortcut to know all L I will open the item list just like for example if I wanted to open my vendor Center which doesn't have a control letter shortcut Customer Center does ctrl J gets me to the customer center but the vendor Center does not have one but if I hit o and then V so alt Oh V opens up the vendor Center says another really kind of interesting shortcut to know hit escape close all windows alright that's the first lesson setting up a new QuickBooks file and basic navigation

Channel: Hector Garcia CPA

Views: 66,072

Keywords: quickbooks, tutorial, 2018, desktop, online, pro, premier, enterprise, accountant, bookkeeping, accounting

Id: xLNlHkEry_o

Length: 23min 20sec (1400 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 31 2018