Company File Setup

Picking up where we left off in Chapter 1, Getting Started with QuickBooks Online, we will show you how to customize your QuickBooks Online (QBO) account through the company preferences. Company preferences allow you to establish how sales and expenses are recorded, how payments are handled, and other advanced settings, such as selecting the start of your fiscal year and which accounting method to use.

Before we dive into company preferences, we will spend some time discussing key information and documents that you need to have handy. This will help you to include as much information as possible; otherwise, you will be missing key details that should appear on customer invoices, documents, and forms that can be produced in QuickBooks. In addition, we will show you how easy it is to edit information in this section whenever you need to.

In this chapter, we’ll cover the following topics:

• Key information and documents required to complete...

Key information and documents

Before we get into the mechanics of creating your company file, you will need to gather some key documents and answer a few questions first. This information is necessary so that you can customize QuickBooks for your business. Plus, having this information at your fingertips will help you to complete the company setup a lot faster.

The information you will need to know includes the following:

• Company name: This needs to be the legal name or the business name that should appear on all legal documents and payroll forms.
• Company contact information: This will include the mailing address, business telephone number, business email address, and website address of the company.
• Industry: In QuickBooks, you will select the industry that your business falls into. Using this information, a default chart of accounts list will be created for you.
• Federal tax ID number: A nine-digit number that identifies your business to the IRS....

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Picking up where we left off in Chapter 1, Getting Started with QuickBooks Online, we will show you how to customize your QuickBooks Online (QBO) account through the company preferences. Company preferences allow you to establish how sales and expenses are recorded, how payments are handled, and other advanced settings, such as selecting the start of your fiscal year and which accounting method to use.Before we dive into company preferences, we will spend some time discussing key information and documents that you need to have handy. This will help you to include as much information as possible; otherwise, you will be missing key details that should appear on customer invoices, documents, and forms that can be produced in QuickBooks. In addition, we will show you how easy it is to edit information in this section whenever you need to.In this chapter, we’ll cover the following topics:

• Key information and documents...

Summary

In this chapter, we have covered key information and documents required to set up a QBO account. We have also shown you how to customize the company settings, which include billing and subscription, usage limits, sales, expenses, payments, time, and advanced settings. Taking the time to set up your company file will help you save time in the long run because you won’t have to do it later on. Plus, you won’t have to worry about customer invoices or vendor bills missing key information because your company file wasn’t set up properly.

Remember, you can always edit these settings whenever you need to. While it is ideal to complete this setup now so that when you are ready to start recording transactions in QBO, many of the fields on invoices and bills will automatically populate for you, at some point, if your contact information or business entity changes, you can always make any necessary updates.

In the next chapter, we will take a look at what...