QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA) provides us a lot of practice tools, but the sorting and prioritizing of clients in the QBOA client dashboard may be new to many of QBOA users. Just like many of the QBO centers, there is a column setting icon where you can select which columns you wish to display. One nice bonus is you can also sort by each of the chosen columns.
Let's look at how to use this feature:
- Log into your QBOA
- From the Navigation Bar choose Clients
- Client Gear Icon
- Select Columns to display
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Traditionally, the default Bookkeeping columns are the: Status, For Review and Banking.
- Status details include whether or not the client has a QBO account and if so which version of QBO they have subscribed to and if the books are closed the last date they were closed.
- For Review lists items which need to be added to QBO such as bank feed transactions.
- Banking displays what the last date bank feeds were downloaded.
(1) QBOA Client List - (2) Bookkeeping Column Selection - (3) Booking Column Content
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You might opt to include other columns like the Payroll columns which include Status and Items due. This excites me, I like being able to see if a client is still in the payroll setup phase or when their next payroll is due as well as what payroll forms or deposits are due.
- Payroll Status displays what payroll phase they are in including setup progress or next payroll date.
- Items Due includes what payroll forms or deposits are due.
(1) QBOA Client list - (2) Customize Payroll Columns - Payroll Column Data
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For those of us who 'do tax' there are optional Tax columns related to the Trail Balance or Tax Returns features within QBOA.
- Trial Balance includes the status of the current trial balance activity.
- Tax Return column is great if you are processing tax returns in QBOA.
(1) QBOA Client list - (2) Tax column selections - (3) Tax column data
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Sometimes making little changes can help us to get organized and structure our work. If you want to use these columns to plan your work you can use the Work tab in QBOA to view tasks. Upcoming and pending items from the columns auto fill work tasks within the Work tab calendar view.
In my example below using the Work Calendar View, the payroll which needs to be processed today is visible as well as tasks for next week like additional payroll and pending bank feeds waiting to be accepted into QBO.
If you want to add more tasks just follow these steps to Create Projects:
- From the QBOA Navigation bar select Work
- Tasks due today,
- Tasks due next week
- Tasks due in the next 30 days
- Then Create projects
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The goal with the QBOA dashboard is to help you stay organized while using QBOA. For more on how to use QBOA Work check out this additional resource.