QuickBooks Pro Plus desktop 2020 to presentation, customized shortcuts and homepage icons get ready because we bookkeeping pros are moving up the hill top with QuickBooks Pro desktop 2022. Here we are in our free sample file sample rock Castle construction, opening up the open windows by going to the view drop down open windows list opening up the company homepage go into the company drop down and home page, then we’ll maximize that home page to the gray area.
00:31
We’ve been looking over the items in the homepage, it been a great flowchart to help us as we go through the different cycles vendor cycle customer cycle employee cycle, there might be some areas of the homepage that we would like to further customize, or in other words, oftentimes as we select the company type, and the things that we need in the preferences area, it will then create the appropriate flowchart within the homepage. For example, the inventory line item will have this added line item if we have inventory removed, if we don’t, we don’t need to think about that too much, because we’re just going to tell the system that we have inventory or not.
01:10
And then it will customize the homepage for us. However, there’s some other icons in here that we might want to say, hey, look, I’d like to remove something or add something. For example, if we don’t use say estimates, then maybe we want to remove the estimates just to not clutter the homepage and make it look as simple as possible. Or, for example, if we don’t use something like the create sales receipts, we always go through our cycle of having the invoice than the receive payment, we might say, Hey, I would like to remove this icon, because I don’t use it.
01:41
And I don’t want to confuse myself or my staff, for example, and remove those items from the homepage. So look at that, let’s see the drop down for the view for the Edit drop down. And then we’re going to take a look at the company preferences. Just with regards to the customization of the homepage, we’ll look at the desktop view. So if you go to the desktop view, first of all, if the homepage is popping up every time you open the company file, which typically it will by default, I like to have that I still have that checked on it generally is by default.
02:16
But if you’ve gotten used to the system, you like the drop downs, you’ve got your custom items, your favorite items and your shortcuts and whatnot, you don’t need the homepage anymore, you can uncheck that and remove the homepage. So it doesn’t show up every time you don’t have to close it every time you open up the company file. If you go to the company preferences, we have some more information here, including the items which will include some of the items on the homepage.
02:41
So up top in the customer’s area, we’ve got the sales receipts, and the statement, and the statements and statement changes. These are two items where you could say, hey, look they’re on, they’re on the homepage, maybe I want to remove them. I’ll try to do it. Now it might close the windows, I’ll have to open it back up. And so you could say I’m going to just remove those two items to clean up my homepage and say okay, and then it’s going to have to close the homepage, I’m going to say okay, I’ll go back into the company and homepage to open it back up again.
03:15
And so now we don’t have that item up top here as a as an item that we could select on the homepage, making it possibly a little bit cleaner, if we don’t use it. When we’re when we’re working with the homepage, I’m going to add it back. Now what if I want to add it back, edit, drop down preferences, we’re going to go to the desktop, we’re going to go to the company preferences. Let’s add those two items back,
03:37
I’m going to say okay, and they should then close the window and then reappear by going to the company dropped down just like magic. Just like magic. They’re back. So there, there it is. Okay, let’s go back there. Again, let’s go to the Edit, drop down preferences. Other options we have in the company preferences in the desktop view, we have information related to the estimates the sales tax widget, if you want to that sales tax item there, the inventory, whether the inventory is on or off.
04:10
And note the inventory is something that is probably going to be determined by whether or not you turn on inventory. I’ll talk about that in a little later. But the payroll and the time tracking are items. So for example, if I select the estimates, so let’s go into the estimates, we got the information with regards to them. And notice it bounced me down here into the estimates area and the jobs and estimates. So it kind of it kind of took me off from the desktop view because I basically had to turn the feature off in order to change that.
04:38
So if I was to say no, I don’t have the estimates. And then I’m looking at this icon right there should be removed because now we turned off in essence that feature it’s going to close the windows again. I’m going to go to go to the View and and I’m sorry company and homepage, turning it back on or opening the window back up. And now the estimates are are now gone. So let’s go back in, I’m going to go to the View drop down and go to the preferences. And then I’m now in the jobs and estimates, I’m going to go back up to the desktop view, company preferences.
05:12
And now you can see I turned off the estimate. So there’s going to be a similar kind of process. If I go to a sales tax here, then it would jump me down to the sales tax area. And I’d have to say, do you charge sales tax, if I turned it off, it would remove it. If I go back up to the desktop view, the inventory is on. So if I click the inventory, and I uncheck these three items, then this whole top row related to inventory will then be turned off. So you’ll note that these items are basically if I go back up to the desktop, desktop view, these items are basically things that will kind of fix themselves in that we’re going to turn on the preferences or off the preferences,
05:52
whether or not we use them or not. And the homepage will then reflect those those items. Going to go back to the estimate, I’m going to turn it back on and say yes, and say okay, it’ll close everything again. And then I’ll open up my homepage, again, company dropped down homepage, and maximizing the homepage. Now the next thing you might want to use are the shortcuts. So if I open this item up to the left, we have these shortcuts. And so I don’t use these often myself, but they could be a useful thing. And sometimes I see people that use these shortcuts up top, so people that use them a lot might say I want to go to the View tab.
06:30
And I want to say they have the ribbon, basically up on the top and have those nice shortcuts that are appearing up top. To do that, however, you probably want to clean up your shortcuts a lot if that’s a feature that you’d like to use. So I go to the View drop down, I’m going to put them back on the left. And then you can basically customize the shortcuts here the way you could customize, here’s the shortcuts, I can then go to the Edit, drop down. And then I’m sorry, the view drop down.
06:57
And then I want to add homepage icons, no customize the icon bar. So we go to customize the icon bar. And now we got this window that we can add or subtract. And we’re looking at this this thing on the left hand side, and we’re going to add or subtract. And so if I want to add something, I can go to the Add button. And I can add it this way this has has some features, we can also add it as we’ll see later, by basically finding the thing that we want to add opening it up like a bill or something and then adding it once we have it open, which could be a way to get there if you don’t want to sort through this huge list in order to find it.
07:32
So right now I’m going to I’m going to kind of remove most of the stuff, because I think most of stuff isn’t something I really need. Like I wouldn’t need the homepage there. Because it’s in the drop down. So I would delete the homepage. The my company, maybe maybe you want the my company there. But you can find that the drop down too. But I’ll keep that the income tracker, maybe that’s something you might want to find their bill tracker,
07:56
maybe calendar? I don’t think so. Because there’s other ways to get there. So I’m going to close that. I’m going to close out or delete the space, the snapshot maybe that if you use the snapshot, that might be something worth taking a look at customers? I don’t think so cuz you could find that in the drop down. It’s the first thing in the drop down. So I wouldn’t do that same with the vendors. Same with the employees. That’s like the first item in the drop down docks.
08:21
Maybe the docks could be something that would be nice to have their reports? I don’t think so because it’s the first thing and the drop down. So I wouldn’t put that there. Other checks? I don’t think so. user license? I don’t think so space. invoice is pretty easy to find in multiple places. So I wouldn’t get there unless you use it all the time. If you’re invoicing all the time. Item, I could find that pretty quickly in the drop down. So I wouldn’t choose it there checks multiple ways to get into a check form. So I wouldn’t use it there. I would say what the bill, the register? I could find that.
08:54
You know, I might add the register later. But no, I normally I’ll talk about that later. Account. No, the Chart of Accounts reminds maybe the reminds find maybe the find feedback, I don’t think sales base and then services No. And then add payroll? No, because I mean, I could find the payroll if I want to add it credit cards, no space No. And so now that now that would shorten this thing up a lot. So if I say okay, now if I put that up in the top icon, you might like it at the top bar.
09:31
And so now I’ve got a lot, a lot fewer things up there, which can make it a little bit a little bit easier, something that could actually be useful to me and put my number one stuff kind of up top although now I don’t have that open windows list open which I really liked to have personally. Now the other way to add things to here is to find is to try to dig down and find it and then once you find it, you can add it instead of looking in that drop down. So I’m actually going to go to the register but this time when I look at the register like If I go to the banking and go to register,
10:02
sometimes it doesn’t default to the checking register, and it might take me to some other register. And I might want to say I always wants to take me to the check register. So that can make it a little bit easier to go there. The other way to get to the check register possibly is to go to the lists, chart of accounts. And then again, you can go to any register, that’s a balance sheet account will have a register affected. But if you want to specifically go to the checking register, no matter what else is open, you can open that up, and then say, now that I have found this thing,
10:31
I would like to add it then to this item up top, this bar up top. So once you’re in here, then you can go to the View, and you can say add this icon to the icon bar, and I’m going to say, okay, then you could choose a fancy icon over here, I’m not going to I’m not going to, you know, get fancy with the icons, but you could choose an icon, and then boom, there it is on the icon bar.
10:53
So if I was to close this back out, then you can go directly into the register right there. And that, you know, that can be a little bit so anything that you take in multiple steps, or possibly something like like something that you have to go into multiple kind of dropdowns, which might take you more time to get there, then those might be things that you use all the time. I mean, if you work in accounts receivable, and you use like three reports all the time, it might be nice to have them here, or like in your in your favorites drop down, you know, your most used items, I wouldn’t go overboard with it.
11:27
But but that’s the kind of things that I would I would dig out that. So for example, if you use journal entries a lot, that one could be a little bit buried, it’s an you know, you got the company file, you got to go make journal entries, which is kind of far down. And sometimes you might forget, like it’s in the company file. So you know, I don’t put it in in that snapshot. But I could see why you’d say if I do a lot of like journal entries, then maybe I would add that and say, Okay, I’m gonna then go to the View drop down. And then we want to add that to my bar.
11:55
And I’m just gonna choose an icon. So an icon of some kind. And there it is. So now we’ve got the general journal. So if I close this back out, close this back out and just select that general journal, it’ll take me right right to that. So I can enter my journal entries. So I’m going to revert the view back, I’m going to go to the View drop down, I’m going to bring it back to the left, which is the way I kind of like to see it. And then I’m going to go to the View drop down and go back to the open windows, which is what I typically like to see, go back to my home area.
12:26
And just note that it depends on where you’re at. If you’re working at a larger company, then you might be working mainly in like the vendor section, the customer section or the employee II section, in which case, you know, you might you might use those forms you use all the time. I mean, if you’re making invoices all the time, even though they’re fairly easily found in multiple areas, you might put that up top because that’s the form that you’re going to be using all day long, or something or things like that, if you’re in particular type of reports are kind of like that as well.
12:54
So obviously if you work in the accounts receivable area, you’re going to want to get to certain reports with regards to the customers you know, all the time, accounts receivable, aging, cash receivable detail, and so on and so forth. So it makes sense if you’re working on those particular things all the time to put them in in some kind of shortcut setup.