QuickBooks is the cornerstone of financial reporting for a ton of businesses; an all-in-on tool to track finances, payroll, budgeting and all-things money.
But, who doesn’t love QuickBooks hacks that will help to save time AND money when you put them to use? There are tons of tips and tricks that can help you simplify and streamline the work in order to prep your books for monthly and yearly reporting and tax season.
In this two-part blog series, we’ve come up with a dozen shortcuts we know to help you make the most out of QuickBooks and your reporting processes. This month we’ll cover the first six, and watch for the rest of our tips next month!
1. Utilize Attachments
QuickBooks gives you the ability to attach different types of documents, such as credit memos, vendor profiles, inventory adjustments, bills, credit card charges and much more. Simply upload your document to the QuickBooks Document Center by clicking the paperclip icon, choose the file you want attached, and double-click it. You also have the ability to attach multiple files, as well. It can be a great way to send out W9’s to contractors, which makes life much easier.
This can potentially ensure that invoices you send out (which may be high in number) are also correctly documented. You will now have material attached for easy reference for your clients and yourself. It can help to substantiate the corresponding expense or revenue you are asking for.
You can even attach credit card or bank statements, which will help your month-end and year-end reconciliations go much faster. Just make sure you decide on a good naming convention, such as the name of the bank/DD/MM/YY, in order to make things easy to identify in the future.
2. Automate Emails
We all know how much easier life is when things are automated. Emails are no different when you’re working in QuickBooks. Different things you can work to automate in QuickBooks include:
- Setting up groups of reports to be automatically emailed to you.
- Schedule your financial statements to be emailed to you on a monthly basis.
- Schedule recurring invoices to be directly sent to you based on a stated schedule.
- Schedule email reminders to customers to pay invoices.
3. Use a Cash Receipt Journal
Having a cash receipts journal can help you to review money that you have received for a given time period. You can also set this up from the sales center without any modification in the report, which makes it really convenient for users. Simply click on “Sales Transactions” on the left-hand side of the page, click on the drop-down list under “Filter,” go into the “Money Received” tab, and change the dates.
4. Know Shortcuts and Cheat Sheets
Nothing can save you time in QuickBooks more than knowing the different hacks for shortcuts and cheat sheets. From tabbed browsing for multiple windows, opening in Google Chrome, keyboard shortcuts, and a bookmark bar, you’ll be speeding through your daily requirements. A favorite is creating bookmarks for all of the pages you use most frequently!
Check out some keyboard shortcuts here and see what you would easily be able to take advantage of in QuickBooks. There are dozens of them and The QuickBooks Online for Dummies Cheat Sheet teaches you keyboard shortcuts to access various windows and pages without touching a mouse. The various icons at the top of the page help you quickly search for items, create new items, or display transactions, which you can help to tailor to your specific needs.
Another great hack is to set up custom reports. This will allow you to gain quick access to items you want to view and give a major shortcut to things you may have been repeating manually every month. Take advantage of the great tutorials in QuickBooks to learn even more!
5. Set Up Bank Rules
This can help save a lot of time. Bank rules help you categorize online banking transactions and credit card statements, and will make sure they go into the right accounts. It will help to easily automate the sorting process of common expenses you incur, such as vendors, supplies, and utilities. You can further set up a bank rule to auto-add, which means you won’t have to review it and it will enter things based on your transaction history. Use this guide to set up bank rules easily.
There is no limit to how many accounts you can connect, so you can do this for every account you have! Make sure you are reconciling your accounts on a monthly basis, though, to help catch any missed or incorrect data that you can fix for upcoming months.
6. Time Tracking
Inside QuickBooks, there is an easy way to review and approve employee time with TSheets. It no longer has to be overwhelming! Export the time from your site to QuickBooks, and it’s a cinch to approve multiple timesheets all at once.
You also have the ability to create multiple timesheets in QuickBooks with TSheets, as well. The integration is also a two-way street, so any change you make in QuickBooks will sync with your sheet. Therefore, you can easily approve and manage employee timesheets, create invoices and run payrolls with ease.
QuickBooks is a powerful accounting tool, and by using it as efficiently as possible, you will get the most out of it for your business. Stay tuned for our next iteration next month, and we’ll line up another half-dozen useful QuickBooks hacks to make your life a bit easier!
In the meantime, if anything here sparks questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re QuickBooks Certified and know all the ins and outs!