QuickBooks 2014: The Missing Manual: The Official Intuit Guide to QuickBooks 2014

1063 Pages·2013·26.49 MB·English

by  Bonnie Biafore

QuickBooks 2014: The Missing
Manual
Bonnie Biafore
Published by Pogue Press
Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Sebastopol • Tokyo
Special Upgrade Offer
If you purchased this ebook directly from oreilly.com, you have the following
benefits:
DRM-free ebooks—use your ebooks across devices without restrictions or
limitations
Multiple formats—use on your laptop, tablet, or phone
Lifetime access, with free updates
Dropbox syncing—your files, anywhere
If you purchased this ebook from another retailer, you can upgrade your ebook to
take advantage of all these benefits for just $4.99. Click here to access your
ebook upgrade.
Please note that upgrade offers are not available from sample content.
The Missing Credits
About the Author
Bonnie Biafore has always been fascinated with math in its practical and more
esoteric forms. As an engineer and project manager, she’s thorough and
steadfastly attentive to detail but redeems herself by using her sick sense of
humor to transform these drool-inducing subjects into entertaining reading. She
writes about personal finance, investing, accounting, and project management.
Her books NAIC Stock Selection Handbook and Successful Project Management
won major awards from the Society of Technical Communication and APEX
Awards for Publication Excellence (but the raves she receives from beginning
investors mean much more to her).
Bonnie is also the author of O’Reilly’s Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing
Manual, Personal Finance: The Missing Manual, and Online Investing Hacks.
She writes a monthly column called “WebWatch” for Better Investing magazine.
She has recorded several courses on QuickBooks, project management, and
Microsoft Project for Lynda.com. As a consultant, she manages projects for
clients, provides training, and wins accolades for her ability to herd cats.
When not chained to her computer, she hikes and cycles in the mountains near
her home in Colorado, walks her dogs, takes aerial dance classes, and cooks
gourmet meals. She has also published her first novel, Fresh Squeezed, featuring
hit men, stupid criminals, and much political incorrectness. You can learn more
at Bonnie’s website, www.bonniebiafore.com, or email her at
Dawn Mann (editor) is associate editor for the Missing Manual series. When
not working, she plays soccer, beads, and causes trouble (though not
simultaneously). Email:
Debra Kilsheimer, a partner in the tax and accounting firm Behind the Scenes
Financial Services and an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, helped
me with the payroll chapter. Her QuickBooks videos on YouTube are right up
the Missing Manual alley: upbeat, helpful, and fun. I also want to thank the
technical reviewers, Brad White and Michael Cobb. Their encyclopedic
knowledge of QuickBooks and willingness to introduce me to Intuit experts was
a much appreciated gift.
The Missing Manual Series
Missing Manuals are witty, superbly written guides to computer products that
don’t come with printed manuals (which is just about all of them). Each book
features a handcrafted index and cross-references to specific pages (not just
chapters). Recent and upcoming titles include: Access 2013: The Missing
Manual by Matthew MacDonald
Buying a Home: The Missing Manual by Nancy Conner
Creating a Website: The Missing Manual, Third Edition by Matthew MacDonald
CSS3: The Missing Manual, Third Edition by David Sawyer McFarland
Dreamweaver CC: The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland and Chris
Grover Excel 2013: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald
FileMaker Pro 12: The Missing Manual by Susan Prosser and Stuart Gripman
Flash CS6: The Missing Manual by Chris Grover
Galaxy Tab: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla
Galaxy S4: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla
Google+: The Missing Manual by Kevin Purdy
HTML5: The Missing Manual, Second Edition by Matthew MacDonald iMovie
’11 & iDVD: The Missing Manual by David Pogue and Aaron Miller iPad: The
Missing Manual, Sixth Edition by J.D. Biersdorfer iPhone: The Missing Manual,
Seventh Edition by David Pogue iPhoto ’11: The Missing Manual by David
Pogue and Lesa Snider iPod: The Missing Manual, Eleventh Edition by J.D.
Biersdorfer and David Pogue JavaScript & jQuery: The Missing Manual,
Second Edition by David Sawyer McFarland Kindle Fire HD: The Missing
Manual by Peter Meyers
Living Green: The Missing Manual by Nancy Conner
Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore Motorola
Xoom: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla
NOOK HD: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla
Office 2011 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual by Chris Grover Office 2013:
The Missing Manual by Nancy Conner and Matthew MacDonald OS X
Mavericks: The Missing Manual by David Pogue
Personal Investing: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore
Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual by Lesa Snider
Photoshop Elements 12: The Missing Manual by Barbara Brundage PHP &
MySQL: The Missing Manual, Second Edition by Brett McLaughlin Switching to
the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mavericks Edition by David Pogue Switching to
the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition by David Pogue Windows
7: The Missing Manual by David Pogue
Windows 8: The Missing Manual by David Pogue
WordPress: The Missing Manual, Second Edition by Matthew MacDonald Your
Body: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald
Your Brain: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald
Your Money: The Missing Manual by J.D. Roth
Go to www.missingmanuals.com/library.html for a full list of Missing Manuals
in print.
Introduction
Thousands of small companies and nonprofit organizations turn to QuickBooks
to keep their finances on track. And over the years, Intuit has introduced various
editions of the program to satisfy the needs of different types of companies.
Back when milk was simply milk, you either used QuickBooks or you didn’t.
But now, when you can choose milk from soybeans and rice as well as cows—
and with five different levels of fat—it’s no surprise that QuickBooks comes in a
variety of editions (which, in some cases, are dramatically different from their
siblings), as well as six industry-specific editions. From the smallest of sole
proprietorships to burgeoning enterprises, one of these editions is likely to meet
your organization’s needs and budget.
QuickBooks isn’t hard to learn. Many of the features that you’re familiar with
from other programs work the same way in QuickBooks—windows, dialog
boxes, drop-down lists, and keyboard shortcuts, to name a few. And with each
new version, Intuit has added enhancements and features to make your workflow
smoother and faster. The challenge is knowing what to do according to
accounting rules, and how to do it in QuickBooks. This book teaches you how to
use QuickBooks and explains the accounting concepts behind what you’re
doing.
What’s New in QuickBooks 2014
Despite the fluctuating size of the tax code, accounting and bookkeeping
practices don’t change much each year. The changes in QuickBooks 2014 are
mostly small tweaks and subtle improvements, but some of them might be just
what you’ve been waiting for:
Setting up bank feeds (the connections between your real-world bank
accounts and the accounts in QuickBooks) is a simpler and shorter process
these days, as you’ll learn on Activating Online Services for Your
QuickBooks Account. In the Bank Feed Setup window, just fill in your
bank’s name, your user ID, and your password. When the Bank Feed Setup
window displays the accounts you have at that bank, simply match them up
with the corresponding accounts in your QuickBooks company file, click
Connect, and your QuickBooks accounts are ready to talk to the ones at your
financial institution.
The Bank Feed Center (Banking Online Using Express Mode) makes it easy
to compare your online bank account balances with the ones in your
QuickBooks accounts. After you download transactions, a status area in the
middle of the Bank Feed Center window shows how many transactions
QuickBooks was able to match automatically and how many you have to
match manually. Then, when you click the Transaction List button to open the
Transactions List window, that same info appears at the top of the window.
Click one of the bars in the Transactions List window’s status area, such as
the orange Need Your Review bar, and the program filters the transaction
table to show only those transactions. And you can fill in the payee name,
account, or class right in the transaction table. In addition, you can tell
QuickBooks how to handle each transaction by choosing an option from the
Action cell’s drop-down menu: add the transaction to your account register,
add more details to it, match it to an existing transaction, or ignore it. You can
also add, approve, or delete multiple transactions at once. As you process the
downloaded transactions, QuickBooks updates the status area to reflect your
progress.
Income Tracker (Receivables Aging) lets you see the big picture of your
income at a glance, shows the transactions that contribute to those high-level
numbers, and provides features that streamline collecting income from your
customers. (This feature is available only if your company file uses just one
currency.) The colored boxes at the top of the window represent four
categories of income: the total value of estimates you’ve created, the total
amount on your open invoices (that is, the invoiced income that isn’t due yet),
the total overdue amount, and how much your customers paid you in the last
30 days.
The window’s transaction table lists the transactions that contribute to the
totals at the top of the window. You can filter the table to peruse the details—
for example, to see all the overdue invoices for the last quarter. Ready to take
action, like receive a payment on an invoice? Click that invoice’s Action cell,
click the down arrow that appears, and then choose Receive Payments from
the drop-down list. Choose Print or Email from the drop-down list instead to
print or email the invoice.
Each company file can have its own color scheme (Preferences for Saving
the Desktop), so you can easily identify which company file you’re working
on by the color of the QuickBooks title bar and the borders of its windows.
You can choose from 15 different colors.
Handling bounced checks (Using the Record Bounced Check Feature) in
QuickBooks 2014 is easier than it used to be. When a customer’s check
bounces, the program can help you perform the steps required to deduct
money from your account and re-invoice your customer.
The Reports tab within transaction windows contains icons for running
reports related to that type of transaction. For example, the Create Invoices
window’s Reports tab has icons for reports such as Transaction History, View
Open Invoices, and Sales by Customer Detail.
You can tell QuickBooks how many pages wide or tall you want a report to
be (Printing and Saving Reports).
As you type something in the Search box, QuickBooks displays a drop-down
list with suggested search terms and recent search terms (Using QuickBooks
Search). If you see the term you want, simply click it.
You can now copy a line in a transaction table and paste it into another
line in the table. For example, if you add a line in the wrong place in the
invoice, you can copy and paste it to another row.
Working with email in QuickBooks is easier and more powerful. If you use
a Web-based email service like Gmail, you can set up multiple email
templates (Setting Your Send Preferences) for each type of transaction you
send out. If you attach files to transactions, you can also attach them to the
email message (Emailing One Form). In addition, the Receive Payments
window now includes a feature for emailing a payment receipt to a customer
(in earlier editions of QuickBooks, you could only print a receipt).
When QuickBooks May Not Be the Answer
When you run a business (or a nonprofit), you track company finances for two
reasons: to keep your business running smoothly and to generate the reports
required by the IRS, SEC, and anyone else you have to answer to. QuickBooks
helps you perform basic financial tasks, track your financial situation, and
manage your business to make it even better. But before you read any further,
here are a few things you shouldn’t try to do with QuickBooks:
Work with more than 14,500 unique inventory items or 14,500 contact
names. QuickBooks Pro and Premier company files can hold up to 14,500
inventory items and a combined total of up to 14,500 customer, vendor,
employee, and other (Other Names List) names. (In the QuickBooks
Enterprise Solutions edition of the program, the number of names is virtually