After 11+ years of working with QuickBooks I have found a number of shortcuts and tricks to make some processes more efficient and to eliminate some of the more annoying quirks of the program. Here are a few of my favorites.
1. You don’t have to use invoices. If you are running a business on a cash basis (you get paid immediately at time of service) then invoices are probably complicating your bookkeeping unnecessarily. Try using Sales Receipts instead. You can do all the same things that Invoices can do, without needing to Receive Payments, including posting the payment to Undeposited Funds, before making a deposit.
If you don’t see the option for Sales Receipts on your Home Page, you can add it under Preferences. Go to Edit > Preferences > Desktop View > Company Preferences, and click Sales Receipts.
2. Does Spell Checker annoy you every time you go to save an invoice or sales receipt? You can turn it off. Go to Edit > Preferences > Spelling > My Preferences and uncheck the “Always check spelling before printing, saving or sending supported forms.” Or, you can tell QuickBooks to ignore certain categories of “words” such as Internet Addresses, All UPPERCASE, or Mixed Case, as well as a few others.
3. Change the look of QuickBooks to something you like better. Do you like QB 2015 but prefer the way it looked before 2013? You can change it back to the “Classic” look quite easily. Click View > Top Icon Bar and the Icon Bar will move back to the top of the screen and not the left hand side. Also, you can change the colors within QuickBooks, both the overall look, the Company File Color Scheme and the individual registers.
For the Overall look go to Edit > Preferences > Desktop View > Switch to colored icons/light background on the Top Icon Bar. Click OK.
For the Company File Color Scheme go to Edit > Preferences > Desktop View > Company File Color Scheme, and choose the color scheme you want from the drop down list. Click OK.
For the individual registers, go to that register, and click Edit > Change Account Color.You can pick from the Basic Colors or create a Custom Color.This is a good idea if you have multiple checking accounts for your business.Set each account to match the color of the physical checks you print for that account, then you have a nice visual reminder of which account you are working in.
4. Lastly is one of my favorite for when I need to see how QuickBooks posted a specific transaction in order to either reverse or revise it through a Journal Entry. Find the Transaction in the appropriate register, click on the transaction, and click CTRL-Y. That will bring up the Transaction Journal showing how each account was debited and credited.
Have you found a shortcut, tip or trick that makes using QuickBooks easier, faster or just more enjoyable? I’d love to hear about it. Please leave a comment sharing your tricks with me and your fellow readers.
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