Understanding QuickBooks: A Comprehensive Guide 101

Every day, the company works on data related to customers, orders, employees, Marketing, and Advertising costs. Whether you’re a small firm or a large corporation, Accounting for all of this data is critical for keeping your cash flow under control and ensuring your company’s profitability. Moreover, all of this data needs to be gathered into reports in order to acquire a better understanding of the company’s finances and make strategic decisions.

To automate the above tasks, QuickBooks (QB) can help save your day! It is an all-in-one software that is a safe, Cloud-based solution that allows you to access your accounts from anywhere, at any time. You can track invoices and payments on the go and maintain overall financial tasks, from payroll to taxes. In addition, you can monitor all of your finances in one location, get a cash flow projection, and figure out whether projects are lucrative and on schedule.

In this article, you will learn more about QuickBooks and why it is a favorite choice among businesses. You will understand the steps to set up your QB on your Desktop. At the end of this article, you will explore how organizations leverage QB. So, read along to get insights into QB and its products, to help automate and ease your daily tasks.

Table of Contents

• Introduction to QuickBooks
• Key Features of QuickBooks
• Steps to Set Up QuickBooks
  • Step 1: Download QuickBooks Desktop
  • Step 2: Install QuickBooks Desktop
  • Step 3: Activate QuickBooks Desktop
• Explore QuickBooks Use Cases
  • Create and Track Invoices, Bills, and Expenses
  • Manage and Generate Financial Reports
  • Accept Online Payments
  • Track Employee Hours and Run Payroll
• Conclusion

Introduction to QuickBooks

QuickBooks (QB) is a software that assists businesses with Bookkeeping, Accounting, Payroll, Inventory Management, and other financial processes. You can create financial statements and reports using QuickBooks. Intuit, a California-based corporation, designed QB to help automate common operations, saving time for bookkeeping and paperwork.

QuickBooks is a reliable product used by hundreds of thousands of small businesses throughout the world. QB may be adjusted to suit one’s own needs and preferences, making them versatile and adaptable to a wide range of enterprises.

For creating charts, business plans, invoices, and spreadsheets, QB provides ready-to-use templates. It can also save time and effort for business owners by automating their signatures on business checks (which are scanned and uploaded for usage). QB also has a lot of advantages in terms of integration with other applications. It includes an easy-to-use User Interface that can walk users through all of its features.

QB offers various products. The following table can help you to choose your desired QuickBooks product.

	QB Online	QB Self-Employed	QB Pro	QB Premier	QB Enterprise	QB For Mac
Pricing	$25-$180/month	$15-$35/month	$349.99/year	$549.99/year	$1,655+/year	$349.99/year
Business Size	Small-Medium	Freelancer	Small-Medium	Medium	Large	Small-Medium
Number Of Users	1-25	1	1-3	1-5	1-40	1-3
Highlights	Easy to use, cloud-based software, 650+ integrations	Easy to use, designed for freelancers, good tax support	Advanced features, 200+ integrations	Industry-specific features, advanced features	Supports up to 40 users, advanced features, advanced inventory & pricing	Designed for Macs, easy to use, numerous features

Key Features of QuickBooks

QuickBooks (QB) is a tried-and-true Accounting application with several features. A number of key features contribute to its appeal among small businesses, such as:

• Online Banking: When you link your bank account to QB Online, it automatically uploads and categorizes your bank transactions. You won’t have to worry about manual data entry errors because it takes care of everything.

• Accounting Reports: Keeping track of company development has never been easier thanks to the huge array of QB Custom Reports. It saves all of your data in one location and allows you to access it whenever you need it. All transactional information and bank statements will be checked and verified by the Accountant, making the tax filing procedure simple and accurate.

• Multiple Users Access: You may give your staff varying levels of access to QB Online. This improves collaboration among your company’s diverse teams. Users can create QB Custom Reports for their departments with this access.

• Payments and Cash Flow Management: You may use the QB Online Payment System to be paid faster by sending an invoice or statement to your client and allowing them to pay you with a credit card or a bank transfer. QB allows you to pay your bills online. Once you’ve set up your current bank account, you won’t need any envelopes, stamps, or paper checks. For added convenience, you may also download your monthly statement from a participating bank.

• Support: All of your questions are answered by QB Professionals with free limitless assistance. QB provides seminars, videos, an online community, and other tools to help you become a QB expert.

To explore more about QB, visit the homepage here.

3 Easy Steps to Set Up QuickBooks

Now that you have learned about QuickBooks, are you intrigued enough to automate your Accounting and other critical tasks in your business? If yes, in this section you will understand the key steps to set up QuickBooks Desktop.

Read along and follow the steps below to install QuickBooks Desktop:

• Step 1: Download QuickBooks Desktop
• Step 2: Install QuickBooks Desktop
• Step 3: Activate QuickBooks Desktop

Step 1: Download QuickBooks Desktop

Before proceeding further, check the minimum System Requirements for your local machine here.  After checking the system requirements, download your purchased version of QuickBooks Desktop here. Remember to keep your product and license number safe. QuickBooks also allows you to try a 30-day free trial version. You can check it here.

Step 2: Install QuickBooks Desktop

After downloading the QB Desktop software, follow the steps below:

• Go to your folder, where you have downloaded the QuickBooks Desktop software.
• Open the QuickBooks.exe file.
• Next, fill in your Product and License number as shown below and click on Next.

• Now, accept the License Agreement and select Next.

• If you are a first-time user, select the Express Install by clicking on Express as shown below.

• Click on Next and select Install.
• After the installation finishes, click on Open QuickBooks.

Step 3: Activate QuickBooks Desktop

The application invites you to activate QuickBooks the first time you launch it. Activation essentially entails informing QuickBooks of your identity. To learn how can activate your QuickBooks, refer to Activate QuickBooks Desktop.

Explore QuickBooks Use Cases

The QuickBooks product line contains a variety of solutions that may be used by anybody, from a freelancer to a small business. Let’ see how you can leverage QB in your organization:

• Create and Track Invoices, Bills, and Expenses
• Manage and Generate Financial Reports 
• Accept Online Payments
• Track Employee Hours and Run Payroll

1) Create and Track Invoices, Bills, and Expenses

QuickBooks allows you to quickly generate and deliver customized, professional invoices, Sales receipts, and estimates. Invoices are simple to make and can be printed or sent to customers.

QB automatically maintains track of your bills and expenditures by linking your bank and credit card accounts to QB, which downloads and categorizes all of your expenses. If you need to manually monitor a check or cash transaction, you may do so in a matter of minutes.  Furthermore, you may enter vendor bills and just pay them when they are due. To save time, you can also set up recurring payments.

2) Manage and Generate Financial Reports

QuickBooks gives you a 360-degree picture of your Sales, broken down by Customer, Product, Project, and Location. Accounting reports assist small organizations in making informed financial decisions, identifying the most lucrative goods and services, optimizing inventories, collecting timely payments, and recognizing trends. 

QB custom reports can be created based on your company’s needs. It also helps you to create an accurate profit and loss statement, which shows whether the company is profitable or losing money over a given period of time. You may also run and create balance sheet reports to uncover and evaluate patterns in your corporation. In the Company Snapshot, you can also see your income and costs in annual comparisons using various charts.

GSTR reports may be created in QB and then uploaded immediately to the GST site. GST Reports such as GSTR-1, GSRT-2A, GSTR-3B, GSTR-4, GSTR-9, and others may be viewed in QB.  You may also use QB to find GST rates and compute your tax due automatically. This will assist you in precisely calculating your taxes due and avoiding tax filing issues so that you may make timely tax payments.

3) Accept Online Payments

Customers can pay online immediately from their emailed invoice using QuickBooks Payments (previously known as Intuit Merchant Services). Since it’s fully connected with QB, the sale, credit card fee, and cash deposit are all instantly recorded as they take place. You may set up recurring payments for clients that pay you on a regular basis with a QB Payments account. 

4) Track Employee Hours and Run Payroll

QuickBooks provides a payroll option that can automatically calculate and process payroll as often as you need it. The best part about QuickBooks Payroll is that it’s integrated with QB, so your financial statements are always up to date with the most recent payroll run.
Moreover, QB can help you keep track of your workers’ working hours. The monitored hours are subsequently applied to your client bills (if chargeable) as well as your payroll. This guarantees that every hour you pay your staff is accounted for when it comes time to charge a client.

Check out some of the Case Studies, to see how Quickbooks helped companies automate their workflow.

Conclusion

In this article, you acquired knowledge about QuickBooks and its key features. In addition, you learned some important QB products. You understood the steps to set up QuickBooks Desktop. At the end of this article, you understood how QuickBooks is used in the industry.

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