QuickBooks Online 2021 software navigation overview. Let’s get into it with Intuit QuickBooks Online 2021. Here we are in our Google search engine browser, we’re going to be typing in QuickBooks Online test drive to get to our QuickBooks Online at test drive that I’m going to enter into that QuickBooks Online test drive here. Here we are in our Craig’s design and landscaping services Test Drive File, we’re going to start off with a broad overview of how to get around the quickbooks online format. We’ll be doing some comparisons as we do so to the desktop version.
00:37
So this is QuickBooks desktop, I want to do this for a few different reasons, this comparison to the desktop version, because some people might be moving from the desktop version to the online version for number one. Number two, when people talk about QuickBooks, they often talk about it as if it’s one program, and they might be referring to something like on the desktop versus online. So it could be good to have that comparison. And also, if the difference between an online application and a application that you download, we’ll just have some differences in general in terms of how you can navigate and do similar types of things.
01:12
But using different functionality, we just want to show those as we go and look at that comparison between a desktop application QuickBooks desktop, in this case, and the online application, QuickBooks Online. Obviously, the QuickBooks Online, you actually have to be on the internet, in order to do that QuickBooks desktop downloaded onto your system, you’re not, you’re not going to be on the internet in order to you don’t have to be in order to run the QuickBooks desktop program. The first difference I want to look at is how we can have multiple tabs open at the same time.
01:43
So for example, if we want a report open, and we want another data input screen open, we want to be toggling back and forth between the two or even see them at the same time. How can we do that online versus a desktop type of application. So for example, if I went down to the reports, down here, and I’m just going to open up any kind of reports probably going to be our main reports, let’s open up a balance sheet report. And now let’s say I want to do something else. While this balance sheet report is open, I want to have two windows basically open. If it’s an application online, what you can do is duplicate the tab and we’ll be doing this often.
02:18
So we’re going to put our cursor on the tab up top, we’re going to be right clicking on that tab, and then simply duplicate that tab, so I’m going to duplicate the tab. That’s how it’s gonna be done in a Windows based system, at least with the right clicking here, which is what I’m most familiar with. I’m sure there’s a duplication function in Mac version as well. But now we have the two tabs open and I can then go back up to the data input in some other location, this idea of having the tabs open up top is a lot different than what you would see on a desktop version.
02:49
So if I did that same functionality on the desktop version, let’s say I’m down here, I have the home page open, that’s with the View tab drop down, and then the open windows, I got open windows homepage. If I opened up another report, I go to the reports, company and financial, let’s just open up a balance sheet standard on this report, then we can see it here. And obviously the data is not the same. These aren’t the same company files. But you can see here we have the homepage, and I can toggle back and forth on the left.
03:19
So if you’re used to this toggling on the left with the desktop version, or many type of applications, which is going to have to be so more in the same screen, as opposed to an online application, where you’re going to have the toggling that’s going to happen along the top of the screen due to the fact that it’s online. So we can have different windows open at the same time. Now as you have these different windows open at the same time, you could have a little bit more problems, refreshing the screen. So you want to make sure all the screens are refreshed, you have a similar issue with the desktop version whenever you jump back to the report to memorize or make sure that the screen is refreshed.
03:55
But with the online version, you got to make sure that you’d refresh the screen which could just be as simple as refreshing up top here. And that’ll refresh the URLs and whenever you make a change, then the reports will then change up top with it as well. The other thing that’s really nice, it’s good to just understand upfront is that you can you can increase or decrease the size of the screen on the online version a lot more easily than you can the desktop version. In other words, if I go back to the desktop version, and I went to say this report and I want to make these numbers bigger,
04:29
I can’t really just increase the size of the screen very easily I’d have to go change the font or I have to change the settings on my computer. But online you can I can just hold down scroll and then I’m going to use the up scroll on my mouse and now I’m zooming into 110 and so I can see things things a lot more easily once I do that. Note however this being like a website that it does kind of mess up other things meaning it could scrunch up other reports and you know if you’re in a report like a like an invoice or Bill or something like that, I would recommend not doing that. Because it can kind of mess up the functionality of those of those forms.
05:07
But when you’re on the actual reports, like a balance sheet report, it works great. So you want to then scroll in so but if you have any problems with data input, and you notice that you’re at anything other than 100%, then I would scroll back down to 100%, log out of the form that you’re in, go back into the form with it at the standard 100% size, and then see if it the functionality returns to what you would expect it to be. So those are a couple like really big kind of differences if you’re moving from an application to the online version. And once you get used to the online version, it works, it works really well.
05:42
Now then I’m going to go back to the to the first screen, this is kind of like our intro screen when we go into the program. So this we have this intro screen down here, which has some good information to it. But it’s not what you would expect with with if you’re used to the desktop version, the desktop version typically has this home screen, that’s the intro screen that has this navigation chart. I’m not exactly sure why they don’t put this navigation chart in the QuickBooks Online because I think it’s useful to visualize what’s going to happen in each of these sections.
06:11
But one reason I think they don’t do it as much on the online version is that the face of this, this middle part is where every all the activity is going to happen. And you’re not going to be toggling back and forth through the open windows on the left hand side, but rather on top. So it doesn’t make as much sense to have your navigation kind of screens and take you to the actual forms from this middle part of the page, it makes more sense to be having it on the side or up top, because this middle part of the page is not going to be there. And you’re not going to be toggling back and forth between this middle part of the page.
06:43
So actually, in actuality, when you look at this middle part of the page, you would think that’s where like some of your starting navigation would be as it is oftentimes for many people that like to toggle back and forth, as I do to the homepage, and then see this visual chart and then say, Okay, I’m now I’m going to go here, here. And to these forms, when you go online, you’re not once you open something else back up, once I opened, for example, this report, I don’t have that middle page, and I don’t have the home page over here anymore. So that makes this middle screen I’m talking about I went back over here.
07:15
Now, that makes this middle screen less, less relevant for navigation purposes, you have to have more stuff on the side or up top. So that means that you don’t have that kind of flowchart on your intro screen. But you’ll have the same kind of functionality. And it’ll be you know, the in this section, and these little drop downs on the left hand side and and mainly in this cog up top. So now let’s just kind of recap all the all the settings here. So when you first open this up, the main thing you’re going to be working at when you do the data input is this new tab.
07:45
And that’s going to break out customers, vendors, employees and other that’s a similar breakout that you’re used to if you worked with the desktop version in terms of the homepage, which is broken out by vendor, customer and employee, it’ll have some of the same items in there. We’ll compare and contrast those items more in future presentations. You also have the information up top in the cog up top, the cog up top is not the thing that you’re going to be using most of the time for the data input to enter things like invoices, bills, checks, but it could be something that you would use for your settings to set up your settings, which will focus more on and if you shoot presentation to manage users, different users that would be involved in here.
08:25
Custom forms. So if you want to set up custom invoices, your chart of accounts is in here. And then you have your lists. So product lists and service lists. This is one item to go into there. We’ll talk more about that in the future reoccurring transactions, so things that are going to happen multiple times, attachment tags, then we have the tools, you can order checks, if you’re going to be ordering checks, that would be an add on kind of a purchase feature. You can import data import here, import desktop data, export data, reconcile budgeting, audit logs, smart look, and then you’ve got your profile information and your privacy information. So this is the place you’re going to go for those things that you’re not doing just normal day to day input.
09:08
But you’re you’re adjusting kind of the settings in some way shape or form things that happened on a more periodic type of basis. But you have some of the key items as well in here, including the products and services lists, these lists will be important. We’ll talk more about that in the future. Also note that down below, you have this toggle between going between a business view and the accountant view. Now the business view idea with QuickBooks Online is the business view is going to be more I think simplified. They’re trying to streamline it if you don’t know half as much accounting terminology and put the accounting view in there for people that have more accounting terminology. But the two views are very similar.
09:48
And they’re saying that it’s it’s stated that the accounting view has more functionality within it. So I would assume that most people that are working in it if you’re a bookkeeper or even if you’re doing your own company file You’re trying to talk to somebody else, they’re probably going to be using the accounting view. Because there’s more functionality to it. Yeah, you can do, you can do more. So I’m going to leave this on the accounting view, and be working on this through the through the accounting view, you could toggle back and forth and see if the other view is beneficial to you, it should have much of the same functionality,
10:20
I think it would be worthwhile to learn the terms in the accounting view, because when you talk to your accountant, or a bookkeeper or something like that, those are the terms that they’re probably going to be using. We also have the item up top, which is your notifications if you have any notifications. And then we have the help item if you have questions about items. And then on the left hand side, we’ve got these three little dots, that’s what we call our hamburger. So if that’s the thing that’s gonna smash the screen to the left, and then you open the hamburger, and that’ll open up this item to the left. So that just gives you a little bit more real estate most of the time, you probably have this open all the time, so that you have your information on the left.
10:59
But if you have a lot of data on the right, then you might want to want to squish this down. And so you can have more working space. So I’m going to open this back up. And then most of the time when you do the data input, this is where you would go the new tabs so you can say I’m going to enter an invoice, I’m going to enter a bill, I’m going to enter a check. So that most of those functionalities were thinking about this new tab, this new tab up top is where you is similar to the homepage, it’s broken out in a similar fashion. So we have the vendor section, the customer section, the employees section, these three sections are basically cycles.
11:33
So we want to group them together in our mind, because the functionality of the forms will go through these these three cycles, you know, in a systematic way. So if we can visualize the workflow in these cycles, we’ll have a better understanding of what is going on. We’ll talk more about that in the future. And but if I go to this new tab, we got the customer information. So invoicing, that’s basically the bill that will make to the client that’s the customer cycle, accounts receivable cycle invoicing cycle.
12:03
And then we have the received payment when we get paid from the customer estimates if we’re going to make an estimate for a customer meaning we have like a construction job or something and we’re estimating before we invoice then credit memo. So if they you know they gave the thing back, we had to have a credit memo to like reverse the sale, basically, a sales receipt, which is going to be a little bit different from an invoice because we’re going to get paid at that point in time, our refund receipt, delayed credit and delayed charge. And so I go on from top down to the to basically probably the sales receipt are going to be the most used forms.
12:37
Hopefully the credit memo isn’t used that much. But down to the sales receipt most used forms. Also note that these items in here are typically called forms the data input for QuickBooks, when you’re inputting data into an invoice, they call those basically forms, the forms are what will be used in order to generate the financial data, including the financial statements primarily balance sheet income statement. Then on the vendor side of things, we have the expenses. So when we paid the vendors vendors being who we pay, so we think of vendors, not as us the vendor, we think of the vendor as the people that we’re paying, right?
13:10
So we’re the business the vendors are the people that we’re paying customers are not us in our in this vision of the world, right? We’re customers are the people that are our customers, not us being a customer to somebody else. vendors are the people that we pay not us as a vendor. So there’s always two sides of the transaction. And you got to know what QuickBooks is talking about in terms of what side of the transaction, they’re talking about what terminology they’re going to be using. We’ll talk more about that as we go. But we have expenses checks that will be entering bills that will be entering here that go through accounts payable, that we pay the bills, purchase orders, vendor credit, credit card, and print checks.
13:48
And then we have the employee information, we’ll touch on the payroll information, which is here, we won’t spend a lot of time on it, we have a whole nother course on payroll, we might add a whole nother section on payroll to this course. But in the primary section, we won’t spend as much time on payroll although we will touch in on it. payroll is an add on feature it costs more if you’re going to be doing it within QuickBooks. And it’s kind of like a specialty field which can take a whole course in and of itself. So then we have other bank deposits transfer journal entry statement, inventory and pay down credit card. So and if you want to show less, it could show you kind of the most important type of items invoiced estimate and so on. I usually don’t use that font function too much.
14:33
And then down here, you’ve got your different areas of including the banking area. This is where you can set up bank feeds if we so choose. We’ll do that in a future point. In the course we’ll talk more about bank feeds in a future point and how to how to work those in. But we’re not going to start out with the bank feeds because you want to learn how the system works first in my opinion, and then turn on the bank feeds because you need to know how to add the transactions from the bank too quickly. Books. And if you don’t know how to do that, it could be quite frustrating. And then we’re going to have the expenses. So we got two tabs up top the expenses here, and the vendors to the right.
15:11
So this is where the people that we pay, the list of people that we pay will be one place where you can find that, then we have the sales information, which is the income type of cycle, we’ve got the overview, we’ve got all the sales that we make. And then we have the invoices, which is the form that we make when we make the sale. And then we have the customers and the customers are the people that pay us. Those are our customers. And then we have the products and services. This is the list of things that we sell. And we saw this up top in the lists here, when we saw lists and products and services in the desktop version you would probably use that lists more.
15:50
In other words, in the desktop version, this lists drop down is often used to get to like the item lists. So this this term of lists has become kind of a QuickBooks accounting specialty accounting term, due to the fact that of that drop down. So people often refer to these products and services as items now. And they often refer to them as a type of list if you’ve used QuickBooks, QuickBooks desktop a lot. And that terminology is kind of flowed into the online version as well. So we’ll talk more about, you know, some terminology and whatnot, as we go through in this more detail.
16:27
But this is what we sell service and product items, then we have projects we may get a project is another kind of specialty area, we may get into a section on the projects at a later point. And then we have the employee information. So this is where the payroll would be we have our list of employees, we have our contractors, if they if they be here, contractors being people that we might have to issue 1099 reports to although not w two reports. And then we have the workers compensation information.
16:55
Then we have all of our reports, standard reports being the favorite reports of the balance sheet profit and loss. And then we can set up custom reports. And we can have our manage report reports over here. We’ll get into reports and a whole lot more detail later. And then we have our taxes information down here, which we could talk about at a future presentation. So that’s going to be the major navigation of the system. I’m going to go back on up to the dashboard here.
17:23
And so if you’re working on a day to day process, just remember your day to day data entry is probably going to be right here. And then I’m going to show more detail right there. And then we’ll be toggling oftentimes between there and basically the reports down here because every time we enter something will have an impact on the financial statements for the most part that being the balance sheet the profit and loss otherwise known as the income statement.