I’m OCD and ADHD. I’ve never been diagnosed, but if you’ve ever met me you know that my brain works a mile a minute and there’s never enough time in my day to get all my work done. As a result, one of my passions is finding ways to game the system and shave time off repetitive tasks.
This is one of the reasons I’ve become such a QuickBooks Online (QBO) fangirl. As a result of becoming a QBO power user, I don’t spend as much time on routine tasks as I used to.
I’d love to share with you some of my favorite QBO tools that make me happy!
Join Alicia in her webinar with Divvy, "QBO Efficiency Tips and Tricks," on November 4, 2020 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time. You can This Event Has Ended. You can find it and others in our archives located HERE
Reports Options
Squirreled away in your QBOA Accountant Tools briefcase, you may not have explored this feature. It has two essential features: Report and Tool Defaults, and a comprehensive Reconciliation Status list.
Report and Tool Defaults
Out of the box, QBO reports usually default to the “Last Month” date range and your company’s reporting basis. For most of my clients, Last Month isn’t a useful automatic report; their most popular date range is This Year to Date.
Also, many of my clients report Cash basis for taxes, but still want to include Accounts Receivable and Payable on their business management reports. This option allows them the best of all worlds!
Reconciliation Status
While there are other places in QBOA where you can look at your reconciliation dates, I prefer viewing it in Reports Options because it lists ALL the balance sheet accounts, not just the ones with Banking Feeds.
Because I’m OCD, I reconcile all my clearing accounts and liabilities every month, so I appreciate the comprehensive view.
Recurring Transactions
Recurring Transactions have been around since the dawn of time as Memorized Transactions in QBDT. Some uses have become obsolete, like rent or phone transactions - since dates and dollar amounts frequently change, creating Banking Rules instead is more effective. But the clever use of Recurring Transactions is essential to eliminate routine invoicing and creating templates.
Monthly Sales Receipts
If you invoice your clients monthly, that can take hours of time, especially when someone doesn’t pay up immediately. Instead of chasing down A/R, turn on QuickBooks Payments Merchant Services. Then create a Scheduled Sales Receipt that runs automatically at the beginning of the month, charging their credit card or ACH. Not only will it send an email receipt, but QBO will batch and match the payments for you. Hours of time saved, and magic money in my bank account!
Have you ever opened up a complex journal entry or estimate intending to make a copy, but forgotten that crucial step and made permanent alterations to a past transaction? Not fun!
Instead, I click Make Recurring in the black bar at the bottom of the transaction. I set it to Unscheduled so I can just go grab it as needed. I change the dollar amounts to $1 or -$1 as placeholders. I also provide instructions in the Description on each line, especially if some of the lines are negative offsets, or I only need the transaction once a year and I’m likely to forget why I did what I did.
Then when I need that transaction, I use the Recurring Transaction and much of my work is done for me.
Banking Rules for Loan splits
One feature in QB Desktop that QBO doesn’t have is a Loan Manager. As a stopgap, I use Rules to split the checking expense into a loan payment.
To do this, create a Rule for money out of your checking account, change the criteria to Bank Text, and enter identifying detail. Click the tiny blue Split link, and select Percentage. Do the interest first, using the loan’s interest rate. Put the rest to the liability.
While this will not 100% accurate since QBO’s rounding may be different from the bank’s, editing the transaction during reconciliation to change it by a few pennies is infinitely faster than downloading the monthly statements and manually splitting to principal and interest.
Conclusion
These are just a few of my favorite creative uses of QBO. On November 4, I’ll be joining Divvy for an Insightful Accountant webinar demonstrating these techniques, and a host of additional tips.
This event has ended. You can find it with our other past events in our archives LOCATED HERE.