Bookkeeping and Accounting Articles

February 11 2023

How to Use Report Groupings in QuickBooks Online

The information provided by reports can impact an owner’s important business decisions that affect continued operations. They can provide management with a more detailed understanding of the figures. These reports are also used as part of management's annual report to the stockholders.

January 14 2023

How to Use Reports in QuickBooks Online

The greatest benefits of using QuickBooks Online to manage a business is the reporting capability of the program. The setup, recording of financial entries and reconciliation of accounts results in the ability to create reports that provide valuable insights into the financial position of a business, results of operations for a specific time period and statistical information.

December 3 2022

How to Reconcile Bank Credit Card and Other Accounts in QuickBooks Online

Some organizations consider the bank reconciliation to be so important that they conduct one every day, which they accomplish by accessing the latest updates to the bank's records on the bank's secure website. This is of particular importance if a company is operating with minimal cash reserves, and needs to ensure that its recorded cash balance is correct. A daily reconciliation may also be necessary if you suspect that someone is fraudulently withdrawing cash from the bank account.

August 26 2022

How to use Rules and Batch Actions in QuickBooks Online Bank Feeds

Matching and adding transactions from a bank feed is pretty straightforward, and an important part of keeping QuickBooks Online registers in line with the activity recorded by the bank. In this article, we’ll look at how setting up a simple bank rule can allow QuickBooks Online to take the strain and help manage transactions automatically.

July 29 2022

How to Troubleshoot QuickBooks Online Bank Feed Transactions

QuickBooks Online’s Banking Center is the link between transactions in QuickBooks and the client’s bank and credit-card activity, represented in their bank feed data. In an ideal world, both would match seamlessly. But this is not always the case. Some clients can get behind with entering payments for bills and invoices and be faced with lots of potential matches, only one of which is the correct one. Or sometimes QuickBooks Online can’t find a match and needs some help. Sorting out matches that are already in QuickBooks Online can also take some work to resolve, and adjustments may need to be made so that reconciliations work as they should. Given that some clients may run into difficulties, how do we approach problems with matching in QuickBooks Online?

June 15 2022

How To Work with The Data in The QuickBooks Online Bank Feeds

QuickBooks Online has a smart learning system that learns from bank feed activity. This can minimize and automate over time as you categorize and match transactions! As you work with it, it’ll help more and more, automatically recognizing transactions. For example, repeated transactions with similar bank detail will be recognized by bank feed, and a category will be suggested. You are still in control, and will get to approve recognized transactions. You can see that a lot of the hard work gets done for you.

May 27 2022

An Overview of QuickBooks Online Bank Feeds

The workflow in bank feed is one area where ProAdvisors are invaluable, since clients are likely to inadvertently make mistakes. Although you always have control over what goes into QuickBooks Online from the bank feed details that are imported, you will need to match and accept to approve transactions already in the books, or add and accept to expedite categorizing transactions. QuickBooks Online has a smart learning system that learns from bank feed activity.

May 13 2022

How to Create Estimates in QuickBooks Online

Create an estimate. Select the Plus icon (+) at the top, then Estimate. Add the Customer's name. Verify the Estimate Date and enter the Expiration Date (optional). Enter the Service Date, Product/Service, Qty, Rate, Description, Amount & Customer message. Under the Customer's name is the Status drop-down arrow, choose a status (optional). Select Save.

April 15 2022

How to Create Customer Statements in QuickBooks Online

Customer statements are notices you send to customers that allow you to summarize things like all the invoices and payments for a customer between two dates in a single view. There’s also an Open Invoice type that just shows your open invoices, with the total amount of the invoice and a column for Open Amount. The third type is a Transaction Statement, which shows your sales transactions for a chosen time period with a column for the amount of the sales transaction and a column for the amount received against each transaction. Send a statement to your customers if they have more than one invoice outstanding, or if they want to see all invoices and payments. Because they can easily see the total invoices outstanding that they still must pay and it also displays an overview of all transactions between you and the customer and encourages them to make any outstanding payments.

April 1 2022

How to Create Deposits in QuickBooks Online

In QuickBooks Online you can easily categorize income like refunds so that it’s not confused with sales income, and so that taxable and nontaxable income are separate and in the right place.

March 18 2022

How to Create Delayed Charges and Delayed Credits

Remembering to record charges to be invoiced at a future date when the work is done is a great habit to get into. Encourage clients to do it and it will save everyone time—just let QuickBooks Online remind you what you need to include when it’s time to invoice.

March 4 2022

How to create credit memos and refund receipts in QuickBooks Online

Credit memos create a credit in accounts receivable that can be used against future invoices. Refund receipts are used if the customer you are refunding the money has no outstanding accounts receivable balances.

February 22 2022

How to Receive Payment in QuickBooks Online

When you receive the money from a customer for one or more outstanding invoices, apply the money to the open invoice(s). This closes the invoice(s) in QuickBooks Online

February 19 2022

How to create Sales Receipts in QuickBooks Online

Sales receipts are used when you sell a product or service to a customer and receive payment at the same time. A sales receipt combines an invoice and receive payment transaction into a single sales event. There is no accounts receivable entry involved.

February 16 2022

How to Create Invoices in QuickBooks Online

The Online Invoice is a web page that interacts directly with the invoice in your QuickBooks Online account. It really is a great tool that lets QuickBooks Online take the strain—and removes the pain of invoicing. It lets you see all the information you need to send and track invoices. All of this functionality of Online Invoicing works even if a business owner isn’t signed up to QuickBooks Online payments. They’ll still be able to see that an invoice has been opened and read (and any messaging from the customer)—and they’ll be able to respond. It’ll speed things up even if they still have to wait for the check to arrive!

February 12 2022

How to Create Sales Transactions in QuickBooks Online

There are seven categories within the Sales tab and you can customize each one. QuickBooks Online provides the option to customize a standard template that can be used for all transaction types or create a custom template for specific transactions. Creating a custom template allows you to do advanced customization, but this is only available for invoices, estimates, and sales receipts.

February 8 2022

How to Create Customers In QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online provides a great set of tools for managing customer details. You can start simple, by adding customers individually, or really speed the process up by importing them as a list. When you set up a new customer you can decide how much information you want to record about them. Start by entering the basic customer information, such as name and contact details. In the Customer Information screen, there are five tabs that allow you to add additional details.

February 5 2022

How to create a vendor in QuickBooks Online

Setting up vendors means business owners can do two things. First, quickly enter vendor bills with information such as the remit-to address and the due date. This will then pre-populate this information on the purchase forms. This will also enable business owners to keep track of expenses by vendor and run reports that will provide insight into which vendors she is spending the most money with, and what items or services are purchased.

February 1 2022

How to Pay Bills in QuickBooks Online

The most important thing to remember about bills is if you create one, you must record a pay bill transaction to record the payment of that bill. This article show you how to pay bills in QuickBooks Online.

January 29 2022

How to Create Products and Services in QuickBooks Online

Products and Services in QuickBooks Online is another excellent feature to help get things organized. Listing your items in this way, with details of prices, descriptions (if it is taxable), and purchasing information may take a few minutes to set up, but saves time when it comes to entering transactions.

January 26 2022

How to Create the Chart of Accounts in QuickBooks Online

Proper setup of the Chart of Accounts is essential to produce useful and meaningful reports in QuickBooks Online. When first setting up your QuickBooks company, QuickBooks Online creates a Chart of Accounts based on the industry you choose.

January 22 2022

Why QuickBooks Online is a huge advantage for your business

QuickBooks has been the industry standard for helping business owners stay organized and get paid faster — without all the hassle and headache of manual accounting. Whether you’re starting out, expanding, realigning, or just struggling with your books, count on personalized guidance for your unique financial picture. QuickBooks Online has many features and advantages that QuickBooks Desktop does not offer.

January 18 2021

How to Determine Your Competitive Edge

This article describes how small businesses can determine their competitive edge and use the Live Plan Lean Planning process to document, evaluate and focus on the necessary business information needed to build a financial roadmap.

April 13 2020

How to create a one page business plan using the Lean Planning Process and LivePlan

Lean business planning is a way to optimize your business with focus, specific steps, tracking results, and changing quickly. The principles of lean business planning are to do only what you need, track and review often, expect change, develop accountability, and remember it’s planning, not accounting.

March 6 2020

Three Basic Forms of Business Organization

In the United States, most business enterprises are organized as sole proprietorships, partnerships, or corporations. However, a limited liability company is a business entity type that provides a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability protection of a corporation.

February 25 2020

The Basics of Job Costing

Job order costing is typically used by businesses that tailor their goods and services to the specific needs of individual customers. In job order costing, the costs of direct materials, direct labor, and overhead are accumulated separately for each job.

January 30 2020

The advantages and disadvantages of budgeting

A budget is a comprehensive financial plan setting forth the expected route for achieving the financial and operational goals of your business. Budgeting is an essential step in effective financial planning. Even the smallest business will benefit from preparing a formal written plan for its future operations.

January 22 2020

How to create a budget for your business

A business may need a budget in order to model what its future results and cash flows will look like. Doing so gives management a reasonable idea of how much it can spend, and how much new revenue it should expect.

January 15 2020

Types of budgeting models

There are a number of alternative budgeting models available that include, static budgeting, zero-based budgeting, flexible budgeting, incremental budgeting, the rolling budget, and the rolling forecast.

January 7 2020

The objectives of budgeting

Budgeting helps business to provide structure, predict cash flows, allocate resources, model scenarios and measure performance.

December 17 2019

The difference between a budget and a forecast

The key difference between a budget and a forecast is that a budget lays out the plan for what a business wants to achieve, while a forecast states its actual expectations for results, usually in a much more summarized format.

December 9 2019

How to create a financial plan for your business

Proper financial planning will increase your company’s ability to foresee and address potential problems, and to adapt to any changes that may arise.

December 4 2019

Key steps to planning your cash flow for next year

Making cash flow and other financial projections each year is a vital tool for keeping your business healthy and on a sustainable growth path.

November 26 2019

Key components of the financial and operational planning process for small businesses - Part 6 The Relationships Among Financial Statements

The statement of financial position (balance sheet), the income statement, and the statement of cash flows are all based on the same transactions, but they present different “views” of your business.