QuickBooks Online For Dummies, 7th Edition

Book Preface

I get it: Small-business owners have many other things they’d rather be doing with their time than accounting. We’re legally mandated to maintain a set of accounting records for our businesses, so avoidance isn’t an option  — but working smarter is. This book will help you get there. What’s more, certain tasks, such as reporting earnings and paying employees, are markedly more difficult if you don’t use accounting software.
Accounting programs such as QuickBooks Online help take the pain out of account-ing, and in some cases, they even make it easy. In this book, I explore QuickBooks Online, which is aimed at business users, and QuickBooks Online Accountant (QB Accountant), which is aimed at — you guessed it — accountants and bookkeepers. Both programs are web-based products that offer mobile versions, so your accounting records are at your fingertips no matter which device you have at hand. The benefit of an online accounting system such as QuickBooks is that it enables you to access your books from anywhere and share access with your accountant as well. QB Accountant helps accountants streamline various aspects of supporting multiple clients who use QuickBooks Online.
Intuit, the maker of QuickBooks Online and QB Accountant, also offers QuickBooks Desktop, which is a version of the software that you must purchase a license for and then install on individual computers. In the appendix, I discuss migrating QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online. But if you’re looking for a QuickBooks Desktop reference, please get a copy of Stephen L. Nelson’s QuickBooks All-in-One For Dummies 2022 (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

About This Book

Everything that can be done in QuickBooks Online can be accomplished in QB Accountant as well. QB Accountant offers additional tools that are useful to accountants who manage multiple clients and/or multiple companies. As you’ll see, QuickBooks Online requires a subscription fee for every set of books you want to maintain, whereas accountants get free access to QB Accountant for overseeing their clients’ books.

QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Online Accountant aren’t for everyone. Before you commit to Intuit’s web-based solution, you need to explore the available edi-tions and examine the requirements for the products. In that regard, I’ve divided the book into five parts:

» Part 1, “Getting Started with QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online Accountant,” helps you get oriented within the respective environments.
» Part 2, “Managing Your Books,” covers the nuts and bolts of getting started with QuickBooks, establishing your books, and carrying out common accounting transactions.
» Part 3, “Reporting and Analysis,” shows you how to run reports within QuickBooks Online, and then how to crunch your numbers in Excel.
» Part 4, “Working in QuickBooks Online Accountant.” helps accountants set up shop in QB Accountant and explore the software’s accountant-specific features.
» Part 5, “The Part of Tens,” covers ten features of the Chrome browser that help you optimize your use of QuickBooks.

Appendix A offers guidance on migrating to QuickBooks Online from QuickBooks Desktop.
As I discuss in Chapter 2, QuickBooks Online offers different subscription levels. I used QuickBooks Online Advanced to write this book because it is the most feature-laden offering.
Before diving in, I have to get a few technical conventions out of the way:

» Text that you’re meant to type as it appears in the book is bold. The exception is when you’re working through a list of steps: Because each step is bold, the text to type is not bold.
» Web addresses and programming code appear in monofont. If you’re reading a digital version of this book on a device connected to the internet, note that you can tap or click a web address to visit that website, like this:
www.dummies.com.
» You can use QuickBooks Online and QB Accountant in a web browser or a mobile app. Example web browsers include Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple’s Safari. QuickBooks and QB Accountant mobile apps are available for Android and iOS. QuickBooks Advanced subscribers and QB Accountant users also have a desktop app available.

» When I discuss a command to choose, I separate the elements of the sequence with a command arrow that looks like this: ➪ . When you see Chrome Menu ➪ Settings, for example, that command means that you should click the Chrome Menu button (on the right side of the screen; see Chapter 18 for a description of Chrome’s screen elements) and then click Settings in the drop-down menu that appears.
» You may be surprised to learn that QuickBooks Online has more than one version of its navigation bar that appears along the left-hand side. Your navigation is mostly likely set to the Business View, which consolidates commands into fewer top-level choices. In this book, I used the Accountant View, which provides more top-level choices. To change your view, click the Settings button at the top right-hand corner of the screen, and then toggle the view setting at the bottom right-hand corner of the menu that displays. However, you don’t have to change to Accountant View to follow along in this book. When necessary, I list the Accountant View commands first, and then parenthetically list the Business View commands. For instance, a reference to the Invoices screen looks like this: Sales ➪ Invoices (Sales &
Expenses ➪ Invoices).
As this book was going to press, Intuit started rolling out yet another tweak to the Business View for users who identify as owners or partners. If you have any problems finding a command that I reference, you can briefly switch to Accountant View to carry out your task and then toggle back to Business View if that’s more your speed.