Quickbooks 2018 for Dummies

QuickBooks 2018 For Dummies is here to make it easier than ever to familiarize yourself with the latest version of the software. It shows you step by step how to build the perfect budget, simplify tax return preparation, manage inventory, track job costs, generate income statements and financial reports, and every other accounting-related task that crosses your desk at work.

Written by highly qualified CPA Stephen L. Nelson, this trusted bestseller shows you how to get the most out of the software that helps over six million small businesses manage their finances. Removing the need to hire expensive financial professionals, it empowers you to take your small business' finances into your own hands.

• Handle your financial and business management tasks more effectively
• Implement QuickBooks and get the most out of its features
• Create invoices and credit memos with ease
• Pay bills, prepare payroll, and record sales receipts

If you're a small business owner, manager, or employee who utilizes QuickBooks at work, this bestselling guide has answers for all of your business accounting needs.

Stephen L. Nelson, MBA, CPA, MS in Taxation holds an MBA in finance and an MS in taxation. He has been an adjunct professor of taxation at Golden Gate University's graduate tax school, and today he is the managing member of a CPA firm. Steve's books on QuickBooks and Quicken have sold more than five million copies and have been translated into 11 languages.

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 3

Where to Go from Here 3

Part 1: Quickly into QuickBooks 5

Chapter 1: QuickBooks: The Heart of Your Business 7

Why QuickBooks? 7

Why you need an accounting system 8

What QuickBooks does 9

Why not QuickBooks online? 10

What Explains QuickBooks’ Popularity? 11

What’s Next, Dude? 12

How to Succeed with QuickBooks 13

Budget wisely, Grasshopper 13

Don’t focus on features 14

Outsource payroll 15

Get professional help 16

Use both the profit and loss statement and the balance sheet 16

Chapter 2: The Big Setup 17

Getting Ready for QuickBooks Setup 17

The big decision 18

The trial balance of the century 19

The mother of all scavenger hunts 22

Stepping through QuickBooks Setup 23

Starting QuickBooks 23

Using the Express Setup 25

The Rest of the Story 32

Should You Get Your Accountant’s Help? 33

Chapter 3: Populating QuickBooks Lists 35

The Magic and Mystery of Items 35

Adding items you might include on invoices 37

Creating other wacky items for invoices 45

Editing items 48

Adding Employees to Your Employee List 49

Customers Are Your Business 51

It’s Just a Job 55

Adding Vendors to Your Vendor List 58

The Other Lists 62

The Fixed Asset Item list 63

The Price Level list 64

The Billing Rate Levels list 64

The Sales Tax Code list 64

The Class list 64

The Other Names list 65

The Sales Rep list 65

Customer, Vendor, and Job Types list 66

The Terms list 66

The Customer Message list 66

The Payment Method list 67

The Ship Via list 67

The Vehicle list 67

The Memorized Transaction list 67

The Reminders list 68

Organizing Lists 68

Printing Lists 68

Exporting List Items to Your Word Processor 69

Dealing with the Chart of Accounts List 69

Describing customer balances 70

Describing vendor balances 70

Camouflaging some accounting goofiness 70

Supplying the missing numbers 77

Checking your work one more time 79

Part 2: Daily Entry Tasks 81

Chapter 4: Creating Invoices and Credit Memos 83

Making Sure That You’re Ready to Invoice Customers 84

Preparing an Invoice 84

Fixing Invoice Mistakes 91

If the invoice is still displayed onscreen 91

If the invoice isn’t displayed onscreen 91

If you need to delete an invoice 92

Preparing a Credit Memo 92

Fixing Credit Memo Mistakes 96

Taking Lessons from History 96

Printing Invoices and Credit Memos 97

Loading the forms into the printer 97

Setting up the invoice printer 97

Printing invoices and credit memos as you create them 100

Printing invoices in a batch 101

Printing credit memos in a batch 103

Sending Invoices and Credit Memos via Email 104

Customizing Your Invoices and Credit Memos 105

Chapter 5: Reeling in the Dough 107

Recording a Sales Receipt 108

Printing a Sales Receipt 112

Special Tips for Retailers 114

Correcting Sales Receipt Mistakes 115

Recording Customer Payments 116

Correcting Mistakes in Customer Payments Entries 120

Making Bank Deposits 121

Improving Your Cash Inflow 124

Tracking what your customers owe 124

Assessing finance charges 125

Dealing with deposits 129

Chapter 6: Paying the Bills 131

Pay Now or Pay Later? 131

Recording Your Bills by Writing Checks 132

The slow way to write checks 132

The fast way to write checks 138

Recording Your Bills the Accounts Payable Way 140

Recording your bills 141

Entering your bills the fast way 144

Deleting a bill 146

Remind me to pay that bill, will you? 147

Paying Your Bills 148

Tracking Vehicle Mileage 152

Paying Sales Tax 153

Chapter 7: Inventory Magic 155

Setting Up Inventory Items 156

When You Buy Stuff 157

Recording items that you pay for up front 157

Recording items that don’t come with a bill 157

Paying for items when you get the bill 159

Recording items and paying the bill all at once 161

When You Sell Stuff 161

How Purchase Orders Work 162

Customizing a purchase order form 163

Filling out a purchase order 163

Checking up on purchase orders 166

Receiving purchase order items 166

Assembling a Product 167

Identifying the components 167

Building the assembly 167

Time for a Reality Check 169

Dealing with Multiple Inventory Locations 171

Manually keep separate inventory-by-location counts 171

Use different item numbers for different locations 171

Upgrade to QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 172

The Lazy Person’s Approach to Inventory 172

How periodic inventory systems work in QuickBooks 173

The good and bad of a periodic inventory 173

Chapter 8: Keeping Your Checkbook 175

Writing Checks 175

Writing checks from the Write Checks window 176

Writing checks from the register 177

Changing a check that you’ve written 179

Packing more checks into the register 180

Depositing Money in a Checking Account 181

Recording simple deposits 181

Depositing income from customers 182

Transferring Money between Accounts 184

Setting up a second bank account 185

Recording deposits into the new account 185

About the other half of the transfer 186

Changing a transfer that you’ve already entered 187

Working with Multiple Currencies 187

To Delete or to Void? 188

Handling NSF Checks from Customers 189

The Big Register Phenomenon 190

Moving through a big register 190

Finding that darn transaction 191

Chapter 9: Paying with Plastic 193

Tracking Business Credit Cards 193

Setting up a credit card account 194

Selecting a credit card account so that you can use it 195

Entering Credit Card Transactions 196

Recording a credit card charge 197

Changing charges that you’ve already entered 199

Reconciling Your Credit Card Statement and Paying the Bill 200

So What about Debit and ATM Cards? 201

So What about Customer Credit Cards? 201

Part 3: Stuff You Do from Time to Time 203

Chapter 10: Printing Checks 205

Getting the Printer Ready 205

Printing a Check 209

A few words about printing checks 209

Printing a check as you write it 209

Printing checks by the bushel 211

What if I make a mistake? 213

Oh where, oh where do unprinted checks go? 214

Printing a Checking Register 214

Chapter 11: Payroll 217

Getting Ready to Do Payroll without Help from QuickBooks 217

Doing Taxes the Right Way 218

Getting an employer ID number 218

Signing up for EFTPS 219

Having employees and employers do their part 219

Getting Ready to Do Payroll with QuickBooks 219

Paying Your Employees 221

Paying Payroll Liabilities 224

Paying tax liabilities if you use a full-meal-deal payroll service 224

Paying tax liabilities if you don’t use a full-meal-deal payroll service 224

Paying other nontax liabilities 225

Preparing Quarterly Payroll Tax Returns 225

Using the Basic Payroll service 226

Using a full-meal-deal payroll service 226

Using the QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll service 226

Filing Annual Returns and Wage Statements 227

The State Wants Some Money, Too 228

Chapter 12: Building the Perfect Budget 229

Is This a Game You Want to Play? 229

All Joking Aside: Some Basic Budgeting Tips 230

A Budgeting Secret You Won’t Learn in College 231

Setting Up a Secret Plan 232

Adjusting a Secret Plan 235

Forecasting Profits and Losses 235

Projecting Cash Flows 235

Using the Business Planner Tools 236

Chapter 13: Online with QuickBooks 237

Doing the Electronic Banking Thing 237

So what’s the commotion about? 237

A handful of reasons to be cautious about banking online 238

Making sense of online banking 241

Signing up for the service 241

Making an online payment 241

Transferring money electronically 243

Changing instructions 244

Transmitting instructions 244

Message in a bottle 245

A Quick Review of the Other Online Opportunities 246

Part 4: Housekeeping Chores 247

Chapter 14: The Balancing Act 249

Balancing a Bank Account 249

Giving QuickBooks information from the bank statement 250

Marking cleared checks and deposits 252

Eleven Things to Do If Your Non-Online Account Doesn’t Balance 256

Chapter 15: Reporting on the State of Affairs 259

What Kinds of Reports Are There, Anyway? 260

Creating and Printing a Report 262

Visiting the report dog-and-pony show 264

Editing and rearranging reports 265

Reports Made to Order 268

Processing Multiple Reports 270

Your Other Reporting Options 271

Last but Not Least: The QuickReport 272

Chapter 16: Job Estimating, Billing, and Tracking 273

Turning On Job Costing 273

Setting Up a Job 274

Creating a Job Estimate 275

Revising an Estimate 278

Turning an Estimate into an Invoice 278

Comparing Estimated Item Amounts with Actual Item Amounts 279

Charging for Actual Time and Costs 280

Tracking Job Costs 282

Chapter 17: File Management Tips 283

Backing Up Is (Not That) Hard to Do 283

Backing up the quick-and-dirty way 285

Getting back the QuickBooks data you backed up 289

Making an Accountant’s Copy 292

Working with Portable Files 292

Using an Audit Trail 293

Using a Closing Password 293

Chapter 18: Fixed Assets and Vehicle Lists 295

What Is Fixed-Assets Accounting? 295

Fixed-Assets Accounting in QuickBooks 297

Setting Up a Fixed Asset List 297

Adding items to the Fixed Asset list 298

Adding fixed-asset items on the fly 300

Editing items in the Fixed Asset list 300

Tracking Vehicle Mileage 302

Identifying your vehicles 302

Recording vehicle miles 303

Using the vehicle reports 304

Updating vehicle mileage rates 305

Part 5: The Part of Tens 307

Chapter 19: Tips for Handling (Almost) Ten Tricky Situations 309

Tracking Depreciation 309

Selling an Asset 310

Selling a Depreciable Asset 311

Owner’s Equity in a Sole Proprietorship 312

Owner’s Equity in a Partnership 312

Owner’s Equity in a Corporation 313

Multiple-State Accounting 314

Getting a Loan 314

Repaying a Loan 315

Chapter 20: (Almost) Ten Secret Business Formulas 317

The First “Most Expensive Money You Can Borrow” Formula 318

The Second “Most Expensive Money You Can Borrow” Formula 320

The “How Do I Break Even?” Formula 320

The “You Can Grow Too Fast” Formula 323

How net worth relates to growth 323

How to calculate sustainable growth 324

The First “What Happens If . . .?” Formula 325

The Second “What Happens If . . .?” Formula 327

The Economic Order Quantity (Isaac Newton) Formula 329

The Rule of 72 330

Part 6: Appendixes 333

Appendix A: Installing QuickBooks in 10 Easy Steps 335

Appendix B: If Numbers Are Your Friends 339

Keying In on Profit 339

Let me introduce you to the new you 339

The first day in business 340

Look at your cash flow first 340

Depreciation is an accounting gimmick 341

Accrual-basis accounting is cool 342

Now you know how to measure profits 343

Some financial brain food 343

In the Old Days, Things Were Different 344

What Does an Italian Monk Have to Do with Anything? 347

And now for the blow-by-blow 349

Blow-by-blow, Part 2 352

How does QuickBooks help? 354

Two Dark Shadows in the World of Accounting 354

The first dark shadow 354

The second dark shadow 355

The Danger of Shell Games 356

Appendix C: Sharing QuickBooks Files 357

Sharing a QuickBooks File on a Network 357

User permissions 357

Record locking 359

Installing QuickBooks for Network Use 359

Setting User Permissions 361

User permissions in Enterprise Solutions 361

User permissions in QuickBooks Pro and Premier 362

Specifying Multiuser Mode 364

Working in Multiuser Mode 364

Index 367

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