QuickBooks For Dummies, Portable Edition E-Book

Stephen L. Nelson

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 228

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Manage your business finances the easy way with QuickBooks Get your small business rolling with great ideas, exceptionalorganization skills, unique products or services -- and atrusted, accessible, accounting system like QuickBooks. Thisfriendly book shows you how to use this popular business accountingprogram to clearly understand your finances and run your businesswith ease. * Start here -- discover what you need to do to be ready forQuickBooks, set up the software, reel in the dough, and pay thebills * Get it together -- learn to enter data, createprofessional-looking invoices, and record and print salesreceipts * Narrow it down -- keep tabs on who needs to get paid andwho owes money * Monitoring made easy -- create financial reports and trackevery dollar coming in and going out * Populate QuickBooks -- enter information about yourproducts, employees, customers, and vendors into lists * Satisfy the IRS -- use QuickBooks to maintain youraccounting records to comply with tax laws Open the book and find: * Steps to setting up and succeeding with QuickBooks * Ways to customize invoices and memos * How to track accounts receivable and payable * Instructions for recording and printing a sales receipt * Advice for tracking vehicle mileage and paying sales tax * Tips for small business owners Learn to: * Organize financial information for your business * Create invoices and credit memos * Prepare a sales receipt and record customer payments * Generate financial reports

Leseprobe

QuickBooks® For Dummies®, Portable Edition

Table of Contents

Introduction

About QuickBooks

About This Book

What You Can Safely Ignore

What You Should Not Ignore (Unless You’re a Masochist)

Three Foolish Assumptions

Chapter 1: Getting Started

Why QuickBooks?

Why you need an accounting system

What QuickBooks does

Getting Ready for the QuickBooks Setup

The big decision

The trial balance of the century

The mother of all scavenger hunts

Stepping through the QuickBooks Setup

Starting QuickBooks

Using the Express Setup

The Rest of the Story

Chapter 2: Populating QuickBooks Lists

The Magic and Mystery of Items

Adding items you might include on invoices

Creating other wacky items for invoices

Editing items

Adding Employees to Your Employee List

Customers Are Your Business

It’s Just a Job

Adding Vendors to Your Vendor List

The Other Lists

The Fixed Asset list

The Price Level list

The Billing Rate Levels list

The Sales Tax Code list

The Class list

The Other Names list

The Sales Rep list

Customer, Vendor, and Job Types list

The Terms list

The Customer Message list

The Payment Method list

The Ship Via list

The Vehicle list

The Memorized Transaction list

The Reminders list

Organizing Lists

Printing Lists

Exporting List Items to Your Word Processor

Dealing with the Chart of Accounts List

Describing customer balances

Describing vendor balances

Camouflaging some accounting goofiness

Supplying the missing numbers

Checking your work one more time

Chapter 3: Creating Invoices and Credit Memos

Making Sure That You’re Ready to Invoice Customers

Preparing an Invoice

Fixing Invoice Mistakes

If the invoice is still displayed onscreen

If the invoice isn’t displayed onscreen

Deleting an invoice

Preparing a Credit Memo

Fixing Credit Memo Mistakes

History Lessons

Printing Invoices and Credit Memos

Loading the forms into the printer

Setting up the invoice printer

Printing invoices and credit memos as you create them

Printing invoices in a batch

Printing credit memos in a batch

Sending Invoices and Credit Memos via E-Mail

Customizing Your Invoices and Credit Memos

Chapter 4: Reeling In the Dough

Recording a Sales Receipt

Printing a Sales Receipt

Special Tips for Retailers

Correcting Sales Receipt Mistakes

Recording Customer Payments

Correcting Mistakes in Customer Payments Entries

Making Bank Deposits

Improving Your Cash Inflow

Tracking what your customers owe

Assessing finance charges

Dealing with deposits

Chapter 5: Paying the Bills

Pay Now or Pay Later?

Recording Your Bills by Writing Checks

The slow way to write checks

The fast way to write checks

Recording Your Bills the Accounts Payable Way

Recording your bills

Entering your bills the fast way

Deleting a bill

Remind me to pay that bill, will you?

Paying Your Bills

Tracking Vehicle Mileage

Paying Sales Tax

Chapter 6: Reporting on the State of Affairs

What Kinds of Reports Are There, Anyway?

Creating and Printing a Report

Visiting the report dog- and-pony show

Editing and rearranging reports

Reports Made to Order

Processing Multiple Reports

Your Other Reporting Options

Last but Not Least: The QuickReport

Chapter 7: (Almost) Ten Tips for Business Owners

Sign All Your Own Checks

Don’t Sign a Check the Wrong Way

Review Canceled Checks Before Your Bookkeeper Does

Choose a Bookkeeper Who Is Familiar with Computers and Knows How to Do Payroll

Regularly Review Your Financial Statements

Choose an Appropriate Accounting System

If QuickBooks Doesn’t Work for Your Business

Keep Things Simple

QuickBooks® For Dummies®, Portable Edition

by Stephen L. Nelson, CPA, MBA (finance), MS (taxation)

QuickBooks® For Dummies®, Portable Edition

Published byJohn Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774

Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone]. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. QuickBooks is a registered trademark of the Intuit Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or Website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax [phone].

For technical support, please visit www.wiley.com/techsupport.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Not all content that is available in standard print versions of this book may appear or be packaged in all book formats. If you have purchased a version of this book that did not include media that is referenced by or accompanies a standard print version, you may request this media by visiting http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit us at www.wiley.com.

ISBN: 978-1-118-31518-7

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Author

Stephen L. Nelson, CPA, MBA (finance), MS (taxation), has a simple purpose in life: He wants to help you (and people like you) manage your business finances by using computers. Oh, sure, this personal mandate won’t win him a Nobel prize or anything, but it’s his own little contribution to the world.

Steve’s experiences mesh nicely with his special purpose. A CPA in Redmond, Washington, his past small business experience includes a stint as an adjunct professor of taxation (S corporations and limited liability companies) at Golden Gate University graduate tax school and a few years working as a senior consultant and CPA with Arthur Andersen & Co. (er, yeah, that Arthur Andersen — but, hey, it was nearly 30 years ago). Steve, whose books have sold more than 4 million copies in English and have been translated into 11 other languages, is also the bestselling author of Quicken 2012 For Dummies.

Dedication

To the entrepreneurs and small business people of the world. You folks create most of the new jobs.

Author’s Acknowledgments

Hey, reader, lots of folks spent lots of time working on this book to make QuickBooks easier for you. You should know who these people are. You may just possibly meet one of them someday at a produce shop, squeezing cantaloupe, eating grapes, and looking for the perfect peach.

First, a huge thanks to the wonderful folks at Intuit who helped me by providing the beta software and other friendly assistance for this and past editions of this book.

Another big thank-you goes to the editorial folks at John Wiley & Sons, Inc., including Kevin Kirschner (project editor), Teresa Artman (copy editor), and Bob Woerner (executive editor). Thanks also to David Ringstrom for his technical assistance and superb attention to detail. Finally, thanks, too, to the composition staff.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax [phone].

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial

Project Editor: Kevin Kirschner

Executive Editor: Bob Woerner

Copy Editor: Teresa Artman

Technical Editor: David H. Ringstrom

Editorial Assistant: Amanda Graham

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees

Layout and Graphics: Carrie A. Cesavice, Melanee Habig, Joyce Haughey, Lavonne Roberts

Proofreaders: Debbye Butler, Susan Moritz

Indexer: Potomac Indexing, LLC

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Kathleen Nebenhaus, Vice President and Executive Publisher

Composition Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Introduction

Running or working in a small business is one of the coolest things a person can do. Really. I mean it. Sure, sometimes the environment is dangerous — kind of like the Old West — but it’s an environment in which you have the opportunity to make tons of money. And it’s also an environment in which you can build a company or a job that fits you. In comparison, many brothers and sisters working in big-company corporate America are furiously trying to fit their round pegs into painfully square holes. Yuck.