Training Materials Continued: QuickBooks Enterprise Basics

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This article is a continuation of the series we started on "training materials" for your clients. We hope you find them beneficial in helping you provide training for your clients.

QuickBooks Enterprise Basics

As we begin our study of QuickBooks (Enterprise), the lesson is intended to provide some of the basics information about how QuickBooks is setup and how you can easily get around within the software.

Getting Around

The QuickBooks Enterprise work area is designed to enable you to complete your work easily and quickly. QuickBooks Enterprise provides several ways to work. For example, some people like selecting tasks from the graphical Home Page, while others prefer to select tasks from the Menu Bar. Still, others prefer to use the left-hand Navigation Bar.

After a short time using these various approaches, you'll be able to choose the method that works best for your unique style.

The Home Page

By default, the QuickBooks Home Page is displayed when you Open a QuickBooks Company file.

The Home Page will display Icons based upon Company preferences, User preferences and User access rights. Not all users will have access to all the various features displayed here.

The Home page provides an "overview" of the workflow QuickBooks uses, something we like to call “The QuickBooks Way.” 

The Home page is configured in such a manner as to compartmentalize related tasks into workflows. For example, the upper most left section of the Home page is related to Accounts Receivable and provides access to Vendors, Purchase Orders, Receiving, Vendor Bills and Vendor Bill Payments. The lower right section contains banking related tasks like Make (Record) Deposits, Write Checks, Print Checks and Reconcile Bank Accounts.

The workflow arrows on the Home page indicate the logical progression of QuickBooks tasks.  You can – and many new users do – perform most routine tasks from the Home Page. For example, if you want to create an Invoice, simply click the Invoice icon. If you need to create a purchase order, click the Purchase Order icon. 

Working with Lists

The various QuickBooks lists contain most of the information you need to fill out the various QuickBooks forms. For example, to create an invoice, begin by selecting the customer name from your Customer & Job list. QuickBooks Enterprise automatically enters the customer information on the form for you.

You can change the information directly on the form as needed, but the auto-fill feature is intended to save you time and prevent errors.

Lists are easy to set up, but require careful planning.There are a couple of things to remember when working with lists:

  • First – Duplicates are a "bad thing." You cannot have the same name used more than once in any QuickBooks list. For example, there cannot be two "Jane Doe" customers.
  • Second – Some lists share common threads. This means that the duplicates cannot exist within either list. For example, there cannot be one customer called "Jane Doe" and one vendor called "Jane Doe." In this case, we would most likely designate the vendor as "Jane Doe (V)."

QuickBooks Centers

Many of the more commonly used lists in QuickBooks Enterprise are displayed in a special format called centers. For example, the customers and jobs are displayed in the Customer Center. Your vendors are displayed in the Vendor Center and Employees, in, well, you guessed it, the Employee Center.

Click the appropriate QuickBooks Center button on the navigation bar to go to that Center. Then, click the tab for your list.

Here is an example of your Customer Center:

You can use the Customer Center to find out how much money a specific customer owes you or to view a list of all your customers with open balances. You also can look at your customer transactions (estimates, sales orders, invoices, credit memos, refunds, and so on) across all your customers in the transactions list rather than having to run separate reports.

On the left side of the Customer Center is the Customers and Jobs tab that lists all your various Customers and any associated jobs. If you're performing more than one job for a customer, you can track the jobs individually by adding new jobs under the customer's name in the Customers & Jobs list.

That way, you can create reports that show the income and expenses for each job.

Think of a job as a child record. The Customer is the parent and the Job the child. QuickBooks allows you to have an almost unlimited number of children per parent, but you also can have grandchildren, great grandchildren and even great, great grandchildren. It's helpful to think of list hierarchy like this:

The Customer Center is the looking glass into your customer information. You can view a list of all your customers and see pertinent information for each of them, you can even customize what information is displayed in the actual list.

Then, just click on a customer's name and all the activity you have had with that customer, as well as their contact information (phone numbers, emails and payment terms) is displayed.

To Add a Customer:

  1. Click Customers on the QuickBooks Enterprise left-hand navigation bar
  2. Click New Customer & Job and then click New Customer
  3. On the Address Info tab, enter all the data that you have about the customer, including their name, Bill to and Ship to addresses, and additional contact information
  4. Complete the Additional Info and Payment Info tabs, as appropriate
  5. If you want to add additional fields to the form, click Define Fields to customize the form
  6. When you have finished entering the Customer's information, click OK or Next (if you want to enter another customer)

Now is the perfect time to practice adding a Customer to your sample QuickBooks file. Just turn over to the exercise near the end of this section of your materials.

You also can add customers as you perform your everyday tasks. For example, if you enter the name of a new customer when filling out an invoice, QuickBooks Enterprise prompts you to enter information about this customer. You can choose from two quick setup options:

  • Quick Add allows you to just add the name to the list. You will need to go back and add their related details later.
  • Set Up takes you directly to the add new window so that you can not only enter the name, but additional information (such as phone number, email, etc.) to the appropriate list.

Be aware that each of the various other Centers work in a similar fashion to the Customer Center shown above. Of course, they'll display information that's unique to that specific center.  We will be looking at other QuickBooks Centers (Vendors, Employees, Inventory, etc.) in other segments of this training.

Training Exercises – Add a Customer

Follow the steps below in adding a new customer to your QuickBooks Enterprise Sample File to complete both Exercise A and Exercise B before continuing with the next lesson.

Adding a New Customer – Exercise A

  1. From the Home Page, open the Customer Center
  2. Open the Customer & Job tab drop-down menu
  3. Select New Customer
  4. When the New Customer window opens, enter Lee Smith Construction in the Customer Name field
  5. Enter Lee Smith Construction again in the Company Name field
  6. Enter Lee in the First Name Field and Smith in the Last Name field
  7. Enter Owner in the Job Title field
  8. Enter 405-990-2222 in the Main Phone field
  9. Complete the rest of the Invoice Bill To field, the Company Name has already defaulted into the field – click the pencil to open the address details
  10.  Enter 2209 N.W. 39th Street in the Address box
  11. Enter Oklahoma City in the City box
  12. Enter OK in the State box
  13. Enter 73112 in the Zip box, then click OK
  14.  Click the Copy>> button to the right of the Invoice Bill to box to copy the billing address into the shipping address
  15.  Replace the shipping address ID with Main Office
  16. Click the blue OK button to save the customer information

Adding a New Customer – Exercise B

  1. From the Home Page, open the Customer Center
  2. Open the Customer & Job tab drop-down menu
  3. Select New Customer
  4. When the New Customer window opens, enter Lanyard Pool Construction Inc. in the Customer Name field
  5. Enter Lanyard Pool Construction, Inc. again in the Company Name field
  6. Enter Ted in the First Name Field and Lanyard in the Last Name field
  7. Enter President in the Job Title field
  8. Enter 405-793-1288 in the Main Phone field
  9. Complete the rest of the Invoice Bill To field, the Company Name has already defaulted into the field – click the pencil to open the address details
  10.  Enter 1806 24th Avenue NW in the Address box
  11. Enter Norman in the City box
  12. Enter OK in the State box
  13. Enter 73071 in the Zip box, then click OK
  14.  Click the Copy>> button to the right of the Invoice Bill to box to copy the billing address into the shipping address
  15.  Replace the shipping address ID with Main Office
  16. Click the blue OK button to save the customer information.