I love my iPhone – it’s the one thing that I own that is never more that arm’s reach. I love my iPad as well, and I wish there was a great QuickBooks app for it. While I wait, I found this great blog post from Michelle Long that explains different ways to access QuickBooks from your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
http://longforsuccess.com/2011/03/23/how-to-access-quickbooks-from-an-ipad-iphone-or-ipod-touch/
QuickBooks stores data pertaining to Customer:Jobs, Vendors, Employees, Other Names, Accounts and Items, as well as other things, in lists. A particular Customer or Employee or Item is an element of a list. Your lists can become damaged.
How to fix it
Re-sorting your lists can fix the list damage. A re-sorted list is more or less a refreshed list. There might not be any changes on the screen, but QuickBooks is working in the background on the changes. When you have successfully resorted your lists, close and reopen your company data file.
Re-sorting your lists affects the following:
Important: Back up your company data file before re-sorting your lists.
Re-sort the Customer list, Vendor list, or Employee list from a Center (QuickBooks 2006 and later):
Re-sort the Master Name list from the Banking menu:
Re-sort the Master Name List from the Find window (If you do not have Banking permissions):
Re-sort the Master Name List from the Journal Entry window (If you do not have Banking permissions):
Re-sort any other List (Chart of Accounts, Item List, Payroll Item List, etc.):
Important: After re-sorting your lists, close your company data file and reopen it to be sure the changes to your lists are completed.
If you have questions on this or any other QuickBooks feature, call or email me. I’m your partner and I’m here to make your business better.
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April 15 is getting uncomfortably close.
QuickBooks, of course, can’t do your taxes for you. But it helps you lay some of the groundwork. Following up on last month’s column on customizing reports, I’ll look at the program’s tax-related reports and its powerful report-filtering options.
But first, you’ll need to make sure that this output will be accurate.
Describe your company accurately
Your tax entity setting should have been established when you first set up QuickBooks, but verify that you’ve specified the correct one. Go to Company | Company Information. Your Report Information is in the lower left corner. Click the arrow next to Income Tax Form Used to see what’s active.
Figure 1: Make sure that QuickBooks is set up for the correct tax entity.
QuickBooks automatically assigns some of your accounts to their matching lines on the 1040 and assorted forms and schedules; this is called tax line mapping. So when you create tax reports, related transactions will be grouped by these designations.
This can be a real time-saver – as long as you’ve specified the correct entity. If:
• <OtherNone> was selected
• This setting is incorrect
• You’re starting a business and don’t know which to choose…
… please contact me. If you switch entities, your existing tax line mapping will disappear and will have to be reassigned.
Dedicated tax reports
Many of QuickBooks’ general financial reports provide tax-related information. But there are some that specifically relate to the numbers that will go on your return. Go to Reports | Accounting & Taxes | Income Tax Preparation. Here’s an excerpt of what you’ll see:
Figure 2: QuickBooks automatically assigns many accounts to the appropriate tax form lines, based on your specified tax entity.
Here, QuickBooks shows you which tax lines have been pre-assigned to your accounts. You can specify a tax form line for unassigned accounts, but this is something you should not attempt on your own. This report, though, will give you an idea of how useful your report output will be and where you’ll need our assistance.
Other reports provide tax-related data. You can access them by going again to Reports | Accountant & Taxes and clicking:
• Income Tax Summary. This displays totals for each tax line that’s relevant to your particular tax entity. Double-click on any number, and the Tax Line By Account report appears, detailing every transaction related to every tax-related account (you could add a column for Tax Line in Display options and make this quite a useful report).
• Income Tax Detail. This lists all individual transactions by tax form/schedule line assignment.
Paring it down
Some tax reports can be very lengthy; you may want to filter them to look at various “slices.” Click Customize Report | Filters:
Figure 3: This window displays a powerful set of filtering options.
The options listed under Choose Filter are available on other reports; they help you set up incredibly complex searches using multiple filters.
Let’s say you want a report that displays your installation labor costs on new residential construction from the last year (you could also throw other variables in). You’d simply choose the filters from the left pane and then select related options in the next pane (usually a list). You’d want to also click on the Display tab to make sure that the appropriate columns appear.
Figure 4: You can apply multiple filters to your reports.
QuickBooks reports can shave time off of tax preparation, and filtered views help you scrutinize your data in quite creative – and very useful – ways. The program’s boilerplate reports have their place in simple examinations of your financial status, but filters are potent tools. They can facilitate the kind of deep analysis that helps you make critical business decisions.
If you have questions on this or any other QuickBooks feature, call or email me. I’m your partner and I’m here to make your business better.
If you’ve found this blog post to be useful, please sign up for my newsletter. No marketing – just great content.
Last week I shared the keyboard shortcuts that help you quickly edit dates. Today I will show you a few general shortcuts.
It always makes me sad to see QuickBooks users slowly entering data using the little calendar. Here are the keyboard shortcuts for entering dates -
The easy trick to memorizing the shortcuts is that each shortcut corresponds to the word – W is the first letter in the word week, K is the last letter in the word week and so on.
When you take your car to the repair shop, do the guys show you how to do your own repairs? When the plumber comes to your house to unclog your drain, does he train you how to handle your own small plumbing problems? No, he doesn’t and the reason is it would be bad for his business.
It would not be good business for your CPA to give you the tools you need to be an excellent do-it-yourself bookkeeper because he would lose the money he makes every year from cleaning up your QuickBooks before he does your taxes. I have seen business owners spend up to $1000 on clean up before the taxes were even started!
I offer several QuickBooks training packages for the do-it-yourself bookkeepers, and I offer QuickBooks support by phone, email and remote access. If you would like to learn more, visit my website at http://www.bookkeepingguru.com/.
Modifying QuickBooks Reports Gives You Better Insight Into Past, Future: Part 1
If you make one resolution about improving your accounting procedures in 2012, it should be this: Make extensive use of the tools that QuickBooks offers for report modification. Comprehensive, meticulously-shaped reports that flow out of your carefully-constructed records and transactions are your reward for pounding on the keys every day, conscientiously recording income and expenses.
QuickBooks supplies you with a wide variety of pre-formatted reports whose modification options can help you do focused, critical analysis of your financial data. The right set of numbers will help you understand your history and plan for the future more effectively.
Note: The reports discussed and pictured here shows only one possible set of customization options. There are many variations. I can answer your questions.
Check your preferences
When you created your company file in QuickBooks, you chose between reporting on a cash (income and expenses are recorded when money changes hands) or accrual (recorded when you invoice or receive a bill) basis. This affects summary reports, but not those that break out individual transactions or are simply lists.
If you want to change this, click Edit | Preferences | Reports & Graphs | Company Preferences and click the desired button:
Figure 1: You can establish a preference for your summary reports’ basis here.
You can set other preferences in this window that will affect your report output here, too, as you can see.
Altering the display
Open the Income by Customer Summary report (Reports | Company & Financial). Change the dates to reflect a range you’d like to see. Want the data displayed by different time increments – like week or quarter – instead of just the total? Click the arrow next to Columns and select Four week.
Figure 2: You can do some report display alterations from this toolbar; the options it offers vary by report.
By default, your report rows display alphabetically. If you want to view a column by total in ascending or descending order, select the column by hovering over the top number until the magnifying glass appears, and click on it. Click the arrow next to Sort by and choose Total, then click the AZ [down arrow] icon (in some reports, there will be other options here).
Additional options in this toolbar let you:
• Memorize the report
• Print, email or export it to Excel
• Hide or Show the Header
• Collapse or Expand the columns
• Refresh the report if you’ve made changes that will alter data
More display options
Click Customize Report to open this window:
Figure 3: This window outlines your report’s content options.
Some of the options here duplicate what you saw in the toolbar. In addition, you can switch between Accrual and Cash for just this report, and add subcolumns in some. The latter is a complicated operation, one that you must understand well in order to glean any insight from it. I can help you with this.
Sometimes the subcolumns are generic, as shown in the screen above. In other reports, they’re very specific to that group of data.
Clicking on Revert takes you back to the default format, and Advanced opens additional options specific to the current report.
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More customization = more insightful results = more informed financial choices
Transaction reports have many similarities and two major differences: You can change the column order by hovering your cursor over the column label until a hand appears. Click, hold and drag the column to the desired spot and let go. You can also add or delete columns by clicking Customize Report and checking or unchecking labels.
Figure 4: In transaction – or detail – reports, you can alter the column structure.
Learn the mechanics of report display modification well, and your company’s finances will come into much sharper focus, improving the wisdom of future choices. Up next month: filtering your reports for additional clarity.
If you have questions on this or any other QuickBooks feature, call or email me. I’m your partner and I’m here to make your business better.
Do you know that QuickBooks has a Year-End Guide? You access it from the Help menu.
A nice young woman come by my Auburn QuickBooks Meetup. She had a new Mac laptop and she had QuickBooks for Mac installed on her new laptop. Her CPA sent her a portable company file, which she couldn’t open.
I copied it and opened it up on my laptop, and saved it into a QuickBooks for Mac backup. I put it on her laptop and she couldn’t open it, it said she needed an older version of QuickBooks for Mac.
So I have older versions of QuickBooks on my laptop, and I tried to open the portable company file with the older version, but it wouldn’t open.
I think what I need is a Mac user with an older version to open this file and create a regular backup for her that she could open in her newer version. Or, someone really smart with a work around.
This is the file information -
Follow these instructions to have QuickBooks automatically back up your company file when you close the file.
If you prefer, you can schedule backups daily or on specific days and times.
To do this task
1.If not already displayed, open the automatic and scheduled backup window in the backup wizard.
a. From the File menu, click Create Backup to open the backup wizard.
b. Click Backup Copy, then click Next, then click Local Backup.
c. If you haven’t already done so, click Options to set your backup defaults (such as where you want to save your local backup) then click Next.
d.Click Only schedule future backups (to create a schedule without running a backup) and click Next.
2.Select the first checkbox and enter 1 in the field provided.
The backup is stored in the location you specified in the Backup Options window. To view or change this location, click the Options button.
To cancel automatic backups, clear the checkbox.
3. Click Finish to close the wizard.
