QuickBooks Online Made Easy: The Complete Course and Manual

After you open your company file in QuickBooks Online, you see the QuickBooks Online interface. At the top of the interface is the QuickBooks Online toolbar, which contains buttons you can access from almost every page in QuickBooks Online. At the left side of the interface is the Navigation Bar, which contains the “+ New” button that lets you create new transactions, followed by links to the company file’s other pages. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

QuickBooks Online Plus shows the Dashboard page by default when you open a company file. The Dashboard provides an overview of your business. The Dashboard is not customizable. However, your user access level determines what information appears in the Dashboard page. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

The Navigation Bar in QuickBooks Online provides access to the “+ New” button, which lets you create new transactions. It also contains links that let you open different pages in QuickBooks Online. The Navigation Bar appears at left side of the screen. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

The “+ New” button, previously called the “Create” button, lets you create new company transactions. To access its menu, click the “+ New” button at the top of the Navigation Bar. The menu that then appears shows the available links. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

Clicking the “Settings” button towards the upper-right corner of the screen in the QuickBooks Online toolbar shows a menu of links. The headings in the “Settings” button’s menu are “Your Company,” “Lists,” “Tools” and “Profile.” The links under each heading let you change the associated information or access the related tools and features. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

QuickBooks Online Plus has two views you can use. These views are called the “Accountant View” and the “Business View.” While you can perform most of the same tasks within both views, the view you use may change how you access the task’s command. Most of the changes that occur when switching between the views appear in the interface, like the names of the links for the Navigation Bar commands. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To sign up for QuickBooks Online, visit https://quickbooks.intuit.com/online/ in a web browser. Then select a subscription, sign in, and create the related subscription’s company file. This tutorial covers the QuickBooks Online Plus subscription for a company file, which is the most popular version. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

You can import some types of saved data into QuickBooks Online. The type of data you want to import determines the saved file type the import process accepts. Most imports accept saved Excel worksheets or CSV files, and some also provide other options. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

If you aren’t importing a company file or company file data after signing up for QuickBooks Online, then you must create and customize a new company file. After signing up for a free trial or buying a new company file subscription, a “Set Up QuickBooks” wizard appears and provides an overview of this process. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

There is no need to back up your data in QuickBooks Online Plus to guard against data failure. Anytime you change your company data, QuickBooks Online automatically writes the changes to mirrored disks. This means your data is simultaneously written to two hard drives. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

QuickBooks Online Plus gives you up to five free users before charging for additional user licenses. Users can have different access levels to company data. To view your users, click the “Settings” button in the QuickBooks Online toolbar and then click the “Manage users” link under the “Your Company” heading to open the “Manage users” page. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

Only the current Primary admin can transfer the role of Primary admin to another user. The user to whom the Primary admin role is transferred must be an active Company admin with a valid email account. There can only be one Primary admin user per company file. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

After creating a company file, you should customize its settings. To access these settings, click the “Settings” button. Then click the “Account and settings” link under the “Your Company” heading in the menu to open an “Account and Settings” window. The seven company settings categories appear in a menu at the left side of the window. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To customize your company’s billing and subscription settings, click the “Settings” button. Then click the “Account and settings” link under the “Your Company” heading in the menu to open the “Account and Settings” window. Then click the “Billing & Subscription” company settings category link in the menu at the left side of the window to show the individual settings in that category to the right. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To view your company’s usage settings and upgrade your plan, if needed, click the “Settings” button. Then click the “Account and settings” link under the “Your Company” heading in the menu to open the “Account and Settings” window. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To customize your company’s sales settings, click the “Settings” button. Then click the “Account and settings” link under the “Your Company” heading in the menu to open the “Account and Settings” window. Then click the “Sales” company settings category link in the menu at the left side of the window to show the individual settings in that category to the right. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To customize your company’s expenses settings, click the “Settings” button. Then click the “Account and settings” link under the “Your Company” heading in the menu to open the “Account and Settings” window. Then click the “Expenses” company settings category link in the menu at the left side of the window to show the individual settings in that category to the right. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To customize your company’s payments settings, click the “Settings” button. Then click the “Account and settings” link under the “Your Company” heading in the menu to open the “Account and Settings” window. Then click the “Payments” company settings category link in the menu at the left side of the window to show the individual settings in that category to the right. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To customize your company’s time settings for timesheet entry, click the “Settings” button. Then click the “Account and settings” link under the “Your Company” heading in the menu to open the “Account and Settings” window. Then click the “Time” company settings category link in the menu at the left side of the window to show the individual settings in that category to the right. Learn about this and more in this lecture.

To customize your company’s advanced settings, click the “Settings” button. Then click the “Account and settings” link under the “Your Company” heading in the menu to open the “Account and Settings” window. Then click the “Advanced” company settings category link in the menu at the left side of the window to show the individual settings in that category to the right. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To sign out of QuickBooks Online, click the “User” button in the upper-right corner of the screen. Then click the “Sign Out” button in the drop-down menu. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

If you create multiple company files using the same Intuit ID in QuickBooks Online, you can easily switch between them. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To cancel a company file in QuickBooks Online, click the “Settings” button. Then select the “Account and settings” link in the drop-down menu under the “Your Company” heading. Then click the “Billing & Subscription” link in the menu at the left side of the screen. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

After clicking the “Settings” button in the QuickBooks Online toolbar, you can see the “Lists” heading with links for “All lists,” “Products and services,” “Recurring transactions,” “Attachments,” and “Tags.” Lists keep information about the items you enter into transaction forms. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

The chart of accounts lists all accounts used by your company file. To open the chart of accounts, click the “Settings” button in the QuickBooks Online toolbar and then click the “Chart of accounts” link under the “Your Company” heading. In the chart of accounts, accounts are ordered by account type, as follows: assets, liabilities, equity, income, expenses, other income and expense, and non-posting accounts. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To add new accounts, open the “Chart of Accounts” window by clicking the “Settings” button and then clicking the “Chart of accounts” link under the “Your company” heading in the drop-down menu to open the “Chart of Accounts” window. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To first enable account numbering in your company file before assigning account numbers, click the “Settings” button and then click the “Account and settings” link under the “Your Company” heading in the drop-down menu. Click the “Advanced” link at the left side of the “Account and Settings” page. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To add new customers in QuickBooks Online, open the “Customers” page by clicking the “Sales” (“Invoicing”) link in the Navigation Bar. Then click the “Customers” tab at the top of the page that opens to the right. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To open the “Customers” page in QuickBooks Online, click the “Sales” (“Invoicing”) link in the Navigation Bar. Then click the “Customers” tab at the top of the page that opens to the right. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To view your “Employees” list, click “Payroll” in the Navigation Bar. Then click the “Employees” tab at the top of the page to open the “Employees” page. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To open the Vendors page in QuickBooks Online, click the “Expenses” link in the Navigation Bar. Then click the “Vendors” tab at the top of the page that opens to the right. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To open the Vendors page in QuickBooks Online, click the “Expenses” link in the Navigation Bar. Then click the “Vendors” tab at the top of the page that opens to the right. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To sort lists in QuickBooks Online, click the column heading label for the column by which to sort the list’s data. However, not all the column heading labels in the lists are clickable. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

Inactivating items stops them from appearing in lists but keeps their information. You can later reactivate inactive items if you need to use them again. You can inactivate items in most lists in QuickBooks Online. You should only inactivate items that have a zero (0) account balance. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

QuickBooks Online Plus makes printing lists quick and easy. At the top of each list is a “Print list” button that looks like a printer. Clicking this button opens a new page or tab in your web browser and shows the list in a printer-friendly format. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

You can rename items in a list to change their names. You can also often rename items in the same list to the exact same thing as another existing list entry to merge the two items into one. Merging list items lets you fix mistakes that can happen when multiple people perform data entry in lists. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

Customer types in QuickBooks Online Plus let you classify customers for reporting purposes. Note that each customer can only be categorized to one customer type. To create customer types, hover over “Sales” (“Invoicing”) in the Navigation Bar and then select “Customers” from the side menu that appears to open the “Customers” page. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

Collecting and paying sales tax can be complicated for some companies. For example, a company may have to collect and pay more than one sales tax. Many companies have a mix of taxable and non-taxable products and services to sell. Many also have some customers that are taxable while other customers are not. QuickBooks Online uses an automated sales tax process to help simplify this for you. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

After you initially set up your sales tax in QuickBooks Online, to then add, edit or inactivate sales tax agencies in QuickBooks Online, open the “Sales Tax” page by clicking the “Taxes” link in the Navigation Bar and then clicking the “Sales Tax” tab in the page that opens to the right. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

The “Custom rates” section in this “Sales Tax” page lets you create, edit, and inactivate custom sales tax rates you can collect on behalf of your sales tax agencies in your sales forms if you don’t use location-based customer sales tax calculations and want to manually tack sales tax. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To correctly use QuickBooks Online to calculate sales taxes, you must first set up the required sales tax agencies and any custom sales tax rates you may need. You must then also accurately enter your customer’s addresses and indicate if they are non-taxable. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

If selling products, you may need to track your inventory. To enable inventory tracking in QuickBooks Online, click the “Settings” button in the QuickBooks Online toolbar. Then click the “Account and settings” link under the “Your Company” heading in the drop-down menu to open the “Account and Settings” window. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To create inventory items in QuickBooks Online Plus, click the “Settings” button in the QuickBooks Online toolbar. Then click the “Products and services” link under the “Lists” heading to open the “Products and Services” page. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To add custom fields to the basic purchase order form if you use purchase orders for inventory, click the “Settings” button in the QuickBooks Online toolbar. Then click the “Account and settings” link under the “Your Company” heading in the drop-down menu. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To create a purchase order in QuickBooks Online, click the “+ New” button in the Navigation Bar. Then click the “Purchase order” link under the “Vendors” heading in the drop-down menu to open the “Purchase Order” window. To choose a vendor, select one from the “Vendor” drop-down in the upper-left corner of the window. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

After sending a purchase order and receiving the items purchased, you must record a bill, check, credit card charge, or expense to pay for the items. You can easily add open purchase orders to any of these types of transaction forms in QuickBooks Online Plus. This lets you quickly add open purchase orders to your preferred payment option without re-entering the information. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

If tracking inventory, you can manually adjust the quantity on hand. This is helpful if there is spoilage, damage or any event that changes the inventory amount, outside of regular purchases and sales. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To create a new non-inventory or service item, click the “Settings” button in the QuickBooks Online toolbar. Then click the "Products and services" link under the "Lists" heading to open the “Products and Services” page. If you already created a product or service, then click the “New” button in the upper-right corner of the page to open the “Product/Service Information” pane. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

A bundle item in QuickBooks Online is created from other, existing product and service items you sell together as a set. Therefore, before you create the bundle item, you must first create its component items in the “Products and Services” list. After doing that, to then create a new bundle item, click the “Settings” button in the QuickBooks Online toolbar. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

Sometimes you want to offer discounts to customers. To provide discounts on totals in sales transactions if you enabled a “Discount” field in your sales forms, you can use the “Discount” drop-down that then appears in the sales forms to select either the “Discount percent” or “Discount value” choice and then enter the desired value into the adjacent field. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

By default, QuickBooks Online Plus doesn’t let you record multiple payment types in a single sales form. However, you can create a payment line item(s) to work around this. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

QuickBooks Online Plus makes changing item prices easy. To change the price of an item, click the “Settings” button in the QuickBooks Online toolbar. Then click the "Products and services" link under the “Lists” heading in the drop-down menu. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

As mentioned in an earlier lecture, you can add custom fields to sales forms to record custom data you choose. To enable custom fields in sales forms, click the “Settings” button in the QuickBooks Online toolbar. Then click the “Account and settings” link under the “Your Company” heading in the drop-down menu. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To create a customer invoice, either click the “Create Invoice” link under the “Action” column for the customer’s row in the “Customers” page or click the “+ New” button in the Navigation Bar and then click the “Invoice” link under the “Customers” heading in the drop-down menu that appears. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To create a recurring invoice, open the “Invoice” window by clicking the “+ New” button in the Navigation Bar and then clicking the “Invoice” link. Then click the “Make recurring” button in the toolbar at the bottom of the window to open the “Recurring Invoice” window. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

QuickBooks Online Plus does not let you create batch invoices. Previously, it let you create batch invoices, but only for customers with unbilled activity. However, QuickBooks Online can now use automation to automatically create invoices for unbilled activity every night. Separately, QuickBooks Online Advanced does contain the ability to create, edit, and delete invoices and other types of transactions in batches using its “Batch transactions” feature. However, that version is not covered in this tutorial. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To create a sales receipt, click the “+ New” button in the Navigation Bar and then click the “Sales receipt” link under the “Customers” heading. Alternatively, hover over the “Sales” (“Invoicing”) link in the Navigation Bar and click the “Customers” link in the side menu that appears to open the “Customers” page. Then click the “Create sales receipt” link under the “Action” column’s drop-down for the customer for whom to create a sales receipt. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To quickly find a recent, saved transaction form in QuickBooks Online Plus, click the “Search” button in the QuickBooks Online toolbar. This button looks like a magnifying glass. After clicking this button, a drop-down menu appears. The most recent transactions appear in the “Recent Transactions” section within this drop-down menu. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

QuickBooks Online Plus lets you preview sales forms before sending or printing them. This lets you make sure they are correctly formatted and that the correct information appears. To preview a sales form, open the form to preview. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To print an existing sales form, open the sales form to print. Then click the “Print or Preview” button in the toolbar at the bottom of the window. In the pop-up menu that appears, you will see a “Print later” checkbox. You will also see a “Print or Preview” command and a “Print packing slip” command. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

When creating invoices, you sometimes have different categories of charges, like billable expenses or billable time. To group and subtotal by these charge categories or by dates in your invoices, create a new invoice form style that applies grouping and/or subtotals by clicking the “Settings” button in the QuickBooks Online toolbar. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

A delayed charge is helpful when you have a product that may need to be created and then shipped. A delayed charge lets you create the charge and then convert it to an invoice when the product is shipped or picked up. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

To manage your sales transactions, hover over the “Sales” (“Invoicing”) link in the Navigation Bar. Then click the “All Sales” link in the side menu that appears to show all your sales for the last 365 days in the “Sales Transactions” page that opens to the right. At the top of the page is a Money Bar that shows any “Unbilled,” “Unpaid” and “Paid” transaction summary totals from the last 365 days. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

When creating sales forms, like invoices and sales receipts, you should double-check the sales tax calculations and, if needed, change them. While the “Auto” sales tax feature that relies on the “based on location” sales tax selection in QuickBooks Online is very reliable, it can show an incorrect sales tax amount if the “Sales tax category” for the discount line item is incorrectly marked as taxable or nontaxable. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

If you connect external sales channels to QuickBooks Online, the external orders import as sales orders in QuickBooks Online. Separately, you can also now manually create sales orders in QuickBooks Online Plus or higher. Manually created sales orders in QuickBooks Online are like invoices; however, sales orders do not affect inventory item “Quantity on hand” levels, or amounts in accounts receivable, unless they are converted into an invoice in QuickBooks Online. However, inventory item quantities for sales orders do appear in the product details for the inventory items in the “Products & services” list and do affect the “Available Quantity” of those inventory items. You can also add columns for “Qty on SO” and “Avail Qty” to the “Products & services” list to easily see these numbers, if needed.  Learn about this and more during this lecture.

Statements in QuickBooks Online show customer transactions, based on the type of statement selected. For businesses that use statements for billing customers, these charges are often entered as they are accrued and then submitted to the customer in a billing statement that requests payment of those charges. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

QuickBooks Online can apply automatic late fees to customers, per your default settings within the “Late Fees” section of the “Sales” category in the “Account and Settings” window, as shown in the earlier lecture titled “Customizing Your Sales Settings.” Learn about this and more during this lecture.

Before you first create customer statements in QuickBooks Online, ensure you select the desired level of transaction detail to show in your statements by changing the settings in the “Statements” section of the “Sales” category in the “Account and Settings” window, as discussed in the earlier lecture titled “Customizing Your Sales Settings.” Learn about this and more during this lecture.

You can easily enter payments received for invoices you sent in QuickBooks Online Plus. To record a customer payment, click the “+New” button in the Navigation Bar and then click the “Receive payment” link in the drop-down menu to open the “Receive Payment” window. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

If a customer overpays an invoice, QuickBooks Online will generate a customer credit when the payment is entered into the “Receive Payment” window. To enter an overpayment, enter the payment the same way as you would enter a full payment on an invoice. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

You can also easily record a customer’s down payment or a prepayment in QuickBooks Online. To do this, record the payment in the “Receive Payment” window for the customer. Doing this then generates a customer credit, which can be applied to future invoices for the customer. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

If you enable the “Automatically apply credits” toggle switch option in the “Automation” section of the “Advanced” category in the “Account and Settings” window and save your changes, then QuickBooks Online automatically applies existing customer credits to the next invoice you create for that customer. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

When receiving customer payment in QuickBooks Online using the “Receive Payment” window, you choose into which account to deposit the funds received by using the “Deposit to” drop-down. Often, the amounts are deposited into an “Undeposited Funds” account. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

Sometimes a customer’s check may be returned for non-sufficient funds (NSF). There are three slightly different ways to record a bounced check in QuickBooks Online Plus. You can record a bounced check in QuickBooks Online by either editing the bounced check transaction in your bank feed to note the bounced check expense, or you can manually record an expense or journal entry if you don’t use bank feeds. Doing any of these actions lets you record a bounced check from a customer originally invoiced using accounts receivable. For example, you can do this to record a bounced check received from a customer payment for an invoice in the “Receive Payment” window. Learn about this and more during this lecture.

There may come a time when you will be unable to collect money owed from a customer. You want to track this money, so your income reports show you do not expect to collect this money. To do this, you must review and record the bad debt in QuickBooks Online. Learn about this and more during this lecture.