QuickBooks Online 2021 account and settings, expenses, payments and advanced tabs. Let’s get into it with Intuit QuickBooks Online 2020. Here we are in our get great guitars practice file, we’re going to be continuing on with what would be similar to the preferences in the desktop version by going up to the cog up top in the upper right, going into the your company column. And taking a look at the account and settings group. We last time looked at the company tab, the billing and subscription tab, the usage tab, the sales tab.
00:35
Now we’re going to be taking a look at expenses payments and advanced tabs, starting with the expenses tab. So we’ll be in the expenses tab, we’re going to hit the little editing pencil up top, we first have the bills and expenses. So we’re talking bills expenses, we’re talking about the payable cycle here with these kind of options. First one says show item table on expense and purchase forms, that’s going to add the product service, which are the items table on expense and purchase forms. So you can itemize products and services. So when we have an expense form like a bill or check, or an expense type of form, we have that product and services tab.
01:12
And that could be useful if they were buying things like inventory, as opposed to just applying to an account in general, that’s going to be on for the default, we’ll keep the default on track expenses and items by customer as a customer column on the expense and purchase forms. So you can track expense items by customer. So meaning when we enter an expense item like a bill or a check, we can add a customer tab so that we can kind of tie that to a particular customer. So we might we might experiment with that in the future, I’m going to keep the default as off at this point in time, make expense and items billable.
01:49
So as a billable column on expense and purchase forms, so you can add billable expenses and items on sales forms. So for example, let’s just turn that on just to give an example of it. If I was to, well, let’s keep it off for now. And then I’ll take a look at if I close this back out. And say we’re going to save this and I take a look at a new item and we take a look at a bill. So let’s open up the bill type form. And then down below, what we talked about before is the fact that we have the category up top this is if you’re going to build it just simply to a category like an expense account, then we have this items one down below.
02:27
And if we were going to buy something like inventory, we would need these items, that’s one of the ones we looked at. Now. Also, if we wanted to make something billable, that we would then build to a potential customer, meaning we’re gonna we’re gonna add it to the bill, we’re going to pay the bill here in and as we pay the bill, we’re going to tick off the customer, then we can make an invoice based on what on that billable item. So in other words, let’s check, let’s check it out.
02:53
I’m going to turn it on just for an example. Go into the cog up top, we’re going to go to the account and settings. So I’m going to go to the account and settings, we’re going to go to the expenses, and then I’m going to go to the pencil up top. And so we’re going to make expense items billable, I’m going to turn that on.
03:12
So we’re gonna have a markup. So if we wanted to make something billable, meaning we’re gonna pay for something, so let’s say we paid for, like we pay for supplies, we could mark it up and say we’re gonna have a percentage markup. So everything we make billable that we’re charging to the client, and we’re gonna construct an invoice with, we can have a standard markup, we’re not going to turn that on in our practice here, we can track the billable expense and items as income.
03:37
So we can do so in a single account or in multiple accounts. So when we have the billable expense, I want to put it in as income. So I’m going to put it in as income and keep the default setting in a single account. And then charge sales tax. If we have these billable items, and we want to charge sales tax upon them, then we can have the sales tax item be checked off as well. So the default bill payment terms, if we want to set the bill payment terms, we could set to like say net 30 for the bill payment term. So now let’s save these settings.
04:07
I’m going to go ahead and save that and take a look at the differences. It says turning on makes expenses and items billable will also turn on track expenses items by customer so I’m going to say okay, let’s close this out. And then I’m going to go to the new again. Let’s open up another bill once again and just see what the change has has taken place now. So now we have an item that’s going to be billable here so we can check this off to be billable. Once it’s billable, then we can assign the customer for it. So it also added the customer field here so that I need to know the customer so that I can then pull over that billable item that we already paid for to an invoice that we would then create an invoice for it or a sales receipt possibly.
04:50
And then we can track over that information that we paid for the billable item to the invoice and charge the customer for it. So I’m going to go back in then I’m going to go back in To our preferences, we’re going to go to the account and settings. Once again, we’re going to go into those expenses. And I’m going to hit that tab again. So notice, as I turned this on it by default turned on the track expenses and items by customer.
05:15
So we see that customer field as well, we do want to have those on because we will touch in on those in our practice problem, we’ll probably talk about them when we do go touching on it again, but it’s good to turn them on now, purchase orders purchase orders, use purchase orders. So lets you enter purchase orders from the Create button on the top of the QuickBooks page, we are going to test out purchase orders, the default is off at this point, but we’re going to put on the purchase orders, you could have then custom fields, which would add custom fields to the purchase order.
05:46
These are the requests for inventory to a vendor, but no financial transaction taking place at the point in time that request happens. So we have the cut, we have the custom transaction number, I’m going to keep the default their default message on the purchase order, I’m just going to save it as blank at this point. So messages then on down below. So default email messages using greeting, here’s the dear full name, email, this is for the purchase order because the purchase order would be something that would be sent out it would be seen by someone else it would be seen by the vendors as we make a request for the inventory.
06:21
Here’s the default method message that you can adjust if you so choose. going to save that we’re going to then go to the payments tab. So payments tab get paid in more ways. So you can learn more about accepting more types of payments, these would typically be add on type of features if you are going to be able to accept more payment ways within the QuickBooks system. So that would depend on the type of company that you are in. For that you can look into those, those options.
06:49
If you already have payment account with Intuit, you may know it has go payment or merchandise service connected to your QuickBooks. So you can look into those options, if you so choose for different kind of payment options and credit card payment options, and so on. And then the advanced settings down here, which has a lot of settings. So we’ll go through these fairly quickly. So we got the first month of the fiscal year. So the fiscal year is going to be the year that you’re going to be running your books for for many people, it’ll be like a calendar year will be the same as the fiscal year meaning the last month will be December.
07:21
And if that’s the case, you want to make sure this has the first month, which would be January, so make sure that you’re This means first month, not last month. So sometimes people put like December they’re thinking it’s a year and just by default for fiscal year, but they want the first month. So first month of income tax year, I’m gonna say it’s the same.
07:38
So if you have some kind of staggered year, meaning your tax year is different than the fiscal year or the calendar year or something like that, then you want to make sure that you’re reflecting that in your QuickBooks system. it’ll it’ll affect the accounting rollover, when they close out when you do that closing entries and whatnot, which QuickBooks kind of helps out with. So the accounting method, I would almost always choose the default as accrual.
07:59
Even if you even if you do your entire bookkeeping system from the bank statement or from Bank feeds, you’re basically on a cash basis system, you still I would still have the default as the accrual system here, however, because that, that we talked about this a little bit in prior presentations, but you want to just because you’re doing a kind of a cash basis way that you’re recording the information, you may still want the accrual option on there in case you have any kind of cruel activity that would take place. So I would keep it a cruel unless you talk to like an accountant or something like that. And your accountant advises you otherwise, and gives you some good reason why it shouldn’t be.
08:37
So then it says that the closing of the books prevents any changes to transactions dated earlier than the closing date. So if you turn this on, and this could be a good thing to do, because it can it can kind of lock the clothes that you have. So you can have your closing date here. And then allow changes after viewing a warning allows changes after viewing a warning and entering password. So you can kind of stop yourself from entering data into like a prior period such as the prior year, which can cause problems. And it could be a good practice to do that.
09:09
So but that would I say so that’s that. So then the company type stuff, I hit the drop down, we have the company type. Once again, we saw this and another option, we have the sole proprietorship, partnership, small business, this would be the type of entity that you are in. So we looked at that before. So I’m going to cancel that one chart of accounts. Let’s hit the edit button on that one, enable account numbers. So account numbers would mean that you’re going to be adding account numbers when you add accounts that can give you more control over the ordering of your accounts within the account types.
09:39
But it can also be confusing if you don’t understand account numbers, therefore the default is off. I’m going to keep the default off at this point. After we do the entire practice problem. We might go into more depth about account numbers and how you can add them you know effectively and well. So then the tips account the account that goes with with this setting if you’re going to turn on The tips. So I’m gonna leave the default as off here, billable expense account, billable expense account, the account that goes with this setting the expenses, bills, expense, track billable expenses and items as income. So these are those billable expenses going to be the account over here to an income type of account for the billable expenses.
10:21
So we’ll keep that as the default as well, I’m going to go ahead and save that, then we’ve got the categories, we’re going to hit the item up top track classes. Now, class tracking is kind of a specialty area. Again, it’s something that we might go into, after the full practice problem here, really a lot of different uses for class tracking. And it’s a really neat feature. So we might talk about it later.
10:43
And then we’ve got the the locations tracking, which is another way that we can kind of sort our data at a location field on forms. So you can assign transactions to different locations like stores, sales, region, and countries. So these are both ways that we can kind of have advanced formatting and format our reports, we may take a look at them in a future presentation. But again, they’re kind of specialty areas, really good to know about, but we’re not going to put them in our standard problem here.
11:10
And then we’re going to go to Edit for the automation, we get the free fill forms with previously entered content automatically fills other fields of the form based on the last save transaction for that customer. So for example, if you enter a bill for one period, and then you enter it to the same vendor for the next month, it’ll save the transaction which will be very good because it’ll save the account that it’s going to, which is effective for you know, trying to be consistent from period to period, that makes the second month of operation a whole lot easier than the first month where you have to determine which account you’re going to be hitting every time second month, you can kind of depend on what happened in the prior period.
11:52
So then we have the automatically apply apply credits automatically applies credit to the next invoice you create for the same customer. So if you have a credit in this term that credit meaning like an overpayment by a particular customer, the next time you assign that particular customer is going to let you know about that credit that you can then want to apply. if you so choose to the invoice automatically invoice unbilled activity automatically creates invoices for customers with unbilled activities.
12:21
So if there’s activity that’s unbilled that it’s going to automatically create the invoice I’m going to keep the default as all for that one, automatically applied bill payments, when when you add bill payments to the register, the set and map setting automatically applies the payment to the oldest existing bill. So it’s going to basically do it in order in that order. So I’m going to save that and then we’ve had the project’s item. So organize all job related activities in one place, lets you see all your sales expense and timesheets by project.
12:51
So it’s another kind of specialty area, that’s project item, we might spend more time on that as well after we go through the the full practice problems, kind of a specialty area, but a very Another useful tool kind of like the class tracking. We’ll save that one, then we have the time tracking. So I hit the pencil for that one add service field to timesheets.
13:14
So when entering timesheets, lets us specify service performed. So we can look at the timesheets, that’s a way to kind of track time within the system. The timesheets will help you then to apply that time possibly to payroll for hourly employees and possibly for billable time. If you’re charging by time, you can kind of charge that out to the billable time.
13:35
And we’re not gonna we’re not going to spend a lot of time with the time tracking here. There’s a lot of different options that people in different businesses use for the time tracking. But it’s a good thing to keep in mind, we may and we might look at it a little bit. So make single time activity billable to customers. So you can we’re going to leave the default as on show billing rate to users entering time. And first day of the week, we’re going to keep on Sunday, we’ll keep that as the default currency information. So we have the home currency for us is going to be the US dollar.
14:06
And then if you have multi currency transactions, you can turn this on. And that means if you have like, you’re going to receive some transactions in a foreign currency. So if we in US dollars, our financials are in US dollars were to receive payments in say some currency other than dollars, then we would have this time value of money issue that we would have to deal with because now we have two different units of currency. And QuickBooks can help you to track that information pretty nicely. It’s pretty nice tool with the multicurrency.
14:36
We won’t do it in the core practice problem. We might look at it more in another section we did for the desktop version, and it was pretty neat. So we might do it here as well if we if we have time for it, but we’ll see. So then we have other preferences. So the other preferences includes the date format, so I’m used to the month day year but whatever preference that you prefer on the date You can then pick your date preference, the number preference, I’m used to the comma, and the period.
15:05
But if you’re used to the period, and then the comma or some other preference, then you can change that there, the custom labels, so the customer label, you can call them clients, customers, donors, guests members. And that’s really nice, especially for not for profit organizations that don’t want to call call they’re trying to avoid the whole point is to try to avoid this profit terminology.
15:25
So you can you can turn that off and use this you know, use it for similar functions for some not for profits, warn of duplicate check numbers are used, I would keep that on because that’s going to be a good internal control, warn of duplicate bill numbers are used, I’ll keep the default as off although you know, and then warn, if duplicate journal numbers are used, same kind of thing, sign me out, inactive for and just on these three, just remember that the check number you really want, because the check number is going to give you a double check on your checks, which should be an external, the checks should be external, whether you print them through QuickBooks or whether you have a checkbook.
16:02
So so you do want to line up that one as an internal control, signing me out as a good internal control as well. So every time you leave the computer, especially if you’re in an office, you really should sign out and then go back into it and whatnot. And if you don’t, then you got the default signing out, you know, within an hour. So that should give you enough time to go get coffee or something or whatever you want to do without getting locked with signed out and have to sign back in and whatnot. So we’ll save that and those are going to be the advanced settings.