QuickBooks Online Help

Bookkeeping Made Simple with QBO

Are you currently using QuickBooks Online, their Desktop version, or just keeping track of your finances all willy-nilly? Then this post is for you.

QuickBooks Online, or QBO, by Intuit is incredibly powerful and smart technology. Over the years QuickBooks has implemented a number of features designed to save you time. However like most Software as a Service (SaaS) that have been around for awhile, QBO has become so powerful that training and practice are paramount for proper use of the tool. We recently passed the QuickBooks Online Advanced Certification in order to help our clients best use QBO for their needs.

What is Quickbooks online for?

QBO is an online accounting software that you can connect to from any computer or mobile device with your login. QBO is primarily used for bookkeeping, a.k.a. tracking how your business earns and spends money. There are a number of apps, either by Intuit or verified 3rd party vendors, that are designed to help you run your business more efficiently.

The most popular services that integrate with QBO are TurboTax and QuickBooks Payroll. Tracking your finances is one thing, but paying taxes and your employees is a completely separate, and often frustrating, chore! QBO integrates with TurboTax and Payroll to help streamline very important aspects of your business.

QBO also integrates with a variety of other 3rd party apps designed to help you with other aspects of your business. Whether it is managing inventory, syncing your Point of Sale (POS) with your books, creating better reports, or even paying your bills, QBO has app integrations for that.

What’s so cool about QBO?

Glad you asked! There are a number of neat features that can really streamline your workflow.

• Smart Invoicing

• Auto Downloading of Bank & Credit Card Transactions

• Mobile Receipt Capture

• Mileage & Time Tracking

• Connecting with Accountants & Bookkeepers

What is Smart Invoicing?

Smart Invoicing uses specific information about your business to create invoices quickly and accurately. These invoices can then be delivered through QBO directly to your clients. You can track when they have opened the invoice and even send reminders when they are past your billing terms. You can accept ACH deposits or credit cards directly through the invoice as well.

Invoicing is an incredibly important aspect of your business because that is how you get paid (we know, we know, duh). Invoicing in the traditional manner of creating a PDF from Excel or Word or some other program can be very tedious. You have to make sure your pricing information is accurate, enter in the details and calculate the totals, save the PDF of the invoice, attach it to an email, enter the info somewhere else to track that it went out, and wait to get paid - sometimes never knowing if they even opened up the invoice.

With QBO, a lot of that tedious activity vanishes. Here you can set up your products and services so when you create your invoice, it pulls directly from that information so that way your pricing is consistent. Need to add discounts or different billing terms? No problem. Set up recurring invoices? Easy.

Once your invoice is created, you can save it in QuickBooks and it automatically updates your Accounts Receivable. From there you can email your client through QBO with a link, and/or PDF of the invoice. QBO recommends just sending the link  because once the client clicks on the link, QBO tracks that they opened. Now you have more visibility into the status of your invoice!

Past 30 days and your client hasn’t paid yet? QBO reminds you and you can even send your client a reminder email. They also make it easier for your clients to pay by accepting credit cards or even an ACH deposit into your bank account. The ACH deposit is great for you because it does not cost anything for either party to use! Credits cards are great to offer because your client might want to earn points. You can offer both, neither, or each one separately to your clients. The point is that QBO works to help you get paid faster.

Are you on the run a lot and sometimes forget to bill your clients for odd jobs? QBO has an integration with Gmail that allows you to invoice directly from the app. Talk about staying on top of your invoicing!

Invoicing through QBO is quite powerful but takes some time to set up and practice. We are more than glad to help!

Auto Downloading of Bank and Credit Card Transactions, eh?

QBO can sync with you various financial institutions. When you login to QBO, it will download your transactions and list them out for you to review. Now you do not have to upload these transaction from a .CSV file or manually type them in from banking statements!

This save you SO MUCH TIME. Other than the fact it syncs and downloads your transactions, it also recognizes categories you create and follows rules you create. Your transactions will turn green if it recognizes it.

What is recognizing a transaction? For example, your company fuels up its vehicles at Speedway. QBO downloads transaction from your credit card company for you to review. QBO sees that you spent money at Speedway. The last time you shopped at speedway you classified it as a Travel expense. Now when you go to review your transactions you see that your fuel purchase at Speedway is marked green and already categorized as a Travel expense. You can even batch add multiple recognized transactions. And voila! You just saved yourself a bunch of time.

This tool also helps you keep better track of your invoices. A customer pays you so you mark that you received the payment. Then you take that payment, along with a few other payments, to the bank. The deposit clears and all you see on your bank statement is the sum amount of the deposit. So you go into QBO and create a bank deposit and it lists clearly all the invoices that you marked as paid but not deposited. Select the payments for the invoices you deposited and now your bank deposit will match your bank statement. Go on over to your downloaded transactions that are for review and QBO automatically suggests a match between the bank statement and the bank deposit you created in QBO. Match it and accept. And guess what? A much better way to track your Accounts Receivable and confirm that all the money you received indeed was deposited.

Getting used to this can be difficult. It takes time and practice. Also each business is different and may require a different workflow to accommodate its internal procedures. If you need help, no judgement here. Just let us know :)

What is Mobile Receipt Capture?

Mobile receipt capture is a great way to keep track of all your receipts. Open up the QBO mobile app, create an expense, and take a picture of your receipt. It’s that easy. Now you don’t have to remember where you put that receipt. This is a great solution for the forgetful and the clutter reducers!

Here’s a video to show you how it works:

What are Mileage & Time Tracking?

This section should make a bit more sense. QBO can help you track your mileage driven to clients and the time you spend on certain projects. You have to select the right types of QBO accounts to access these features, FYI.

Mileage tracking is great for the self employed individual using their personal vehicle for business related purposes. Tracking miles can be such a pain and it becomes quite annoying. Essentially you activate this feature in the app and it automatically records when you drive. Later it will ask you if that trip was business or personal. Swipe to accept business and then tell the app what you did for that trip. It’s that simple! Does it sound creepy that it can track your trips? Yes… but your phone tracks where you go even if it’s on airplane mode… so as long as your purpose is to be a good person, then you have nothing to worry about!

Here’s a video showing how it works. We kept it as the Australian version because of the great accent. The app will work the same but track miles not kilometers, $USD, and U.S. mileage deduction rates.

Time Tracking

Time tracking is available in QBO Essentials or Plus. This tool provides an easy way to track and bill your time to clients. This makes your smart invoicing even smarter! Enter in your hours worked into the weekly timesheet and then invoice your client at the end of the week. Accurate, easy, and integrated.

Check out this video to see how it works… but this time with a boring American accent.

Connecting with Bookkeepers & Accountants

This last tidbit should make your life easier. Numbers, bookkeeping, accounting, taxes, and remembering how to do everything can be quite a pain. QBO allows you to connect with up to two accounting professionals. Why two? Because you might pay a bookkeeper less to manage your month-to-month activity and pay more at the end of the year for an accountant to do your taxes. A truly simple way to have professionals help you. We remember the good old days when you had to backup your QuickBooks files to a thumb drive and deliver it to your accountant. Then pick it up from them. And you didn’t have that sweet mileage tracker to help you record those expensable miles!

Lastly there’s a new feature called “Work” that allows your accounting professionals to collaborate directly with you in the app. Work creates a clear set of requests and deadlines for you, as well as the ability to ask questions and keep track of the requests.

We hope this post helps you understand QuickBooks Online better. If you need help converting your desktop version to QBO, setting up QBO, or utilizing your existing QBO account better, then please fill out this form or give us a ring at (484) 858-0367.

Happy Bookkeeping!

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