Customizing QuickBooks for Your Business

Whether you created your QuickBooks Online (QBO) account from scratch or transferred your details from another accounting software program, there are some additional areas that you need to set up to further customize QBO for your business.

In this chapter, we will show you how to add, edit, and delete accounts to customize the chart of accounts for your business. We will walk through the process of connecting your bank and credit card accounts to QBO so that transactions will automatically be downloaded. By connecting your bank accounts to QuickBooks, you will reduce, if not eliminate, the need to manually enter these transactions into QuickBooks. If you need to give other users access to your QuickBooks data, you can easily do so; we will show you how to give your bookkeeper, accountant, and other users access.

The following are the key topics that will be covered in this chapter:

• Customizing the chart of accounts list
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Customizing the chart of accounts list

As we saw in Chapter 1, Getting Started with QuickBooks Online, the chart of accounts is a list of accounts that is used to categorize your day-to-day business transactions. It is the backbone of every accounting system, and if it is not set up properly, it can result in inaccurate financial statements. One of the benefits of using QuickBooks is that you don’t have to create a chart of accounts from scratch. Based on the industry that you selected when you created your QBO account, QuickBooks will include a preset chart of accounts list. You can customize the chart of accounts by adding, editing, or deleting accounts to fit your business needs. In this section, we will show you how to add, edit, delete (inactivate), and merge accounts on the chart of accounts list.

Adding a new account to the chart of accounts list

The default chart of accounts list will include a generic list of accounts used by most businesses, with a few custom...

Connecting bank accounts to QBO

One of the best features of using cloud accounting software such as QBO is the ability to connect your bank account to the software, so that your books are always up to date with the most recent deposits and withdrawals that have been made to your bank accounts.

There are two ways in which you can update QuickBooks with your banking activity. You can connect your bank account to QuickBooks so that transactions are imported automatically into QuickBooks, or you can upload transactions from an Excel spreadsheet. We will walk you through each of these processes in more detail now.

Importing banking transactions automatically

There are several benefits to importing your banking transactions automatically. First, you will save a ton of time because you won’t have to enter transactions manually. Second, QuickBooks will be updated on a daily basis with the most recent banking activity on your account. And finally, it will be a breeze to...

Connecting credit card accounts to QBO

Similar to bank accounts, you can connect your credit card accounts to QBO. There are two ways that you can update QuickBooks with your credit card activity. You can connect your credit card account to QuickBooks so that transactions are imported automatically into QuickBooks. The other option is to upload transactions from an Excel spreadsheet. We will walk you through each process in more detail in the following sections.

Importing credit card transactions automatically

There are several benefits to importing your credit card transactions automatically. First, you will save a lot of time because you won’t have to manually enter transactions. Second, QuickBooks will be updated on a daily basis with the most recent credit card activity on your account. Third, it will be much easier to reconcile your credit card accounts.

Listed below are the steps required to import credit card transactions automatically into QBO:

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Giving other users access to your QuickBooks data

The ability to give other users access to your data is one of the many benefits of using QBO. With the exception of QBO Advanced, which includes three accountant users, the other QBO subscriptions include access for two accountant users and access for one or more additional users. There are five types of users that you can create in QBO:

• Standard user
• Company administrator
• Reports-only
• Time tracking
• Accountant

We will discuss each of these in more detail in the following subsections.

Standard user

You can give the standard user full or limited access to your QBO data, excluding administrative privileges. You can choose to give the standard user full access, access to customers and vendors, access to customers only, or access to vendors only.

Go through the following steps to create a standard user:

1. From the gear icon, select Manage users in the YOUR COMPANY column,...

Summary

In this chapter, we showed you how to customize the chart of accounts by adding, editing, deleting, and merging accounts. We covered how to connect your bank and credit card accounts to QuickBooks so that transactions are automatically downloaded into QuickBooks. We also covered how to import banking transactions into QuickBooks from a CSV file.

Finally, we showed you how to give other users, such as a bookkeeper, business partner, or CPA, full or limited access to your QuickBooks data. By now, you should know how to manage your chart of accounts, bank, and credit card accounts, and how to add additional users as well as delete users.

In the next chapter, we will show you how to manage customers, vendors, and products and services in QBO. This will include how to add, edit, and inactivate customers, vendors, and products and services.

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