I have basic knowlage of Quickbooks and would like to sharpen my skill and handon experince. I appreciate any adivse. Thanks
- posted
13 years ago
I have basic knowlage of Quickbooks and would like to sharpen my skill and handon experince. I appreciate any adivse. Thanks
Setup QB to track your own personal expenses.
It depends on what skills you find most useful.
Set up a Company File and enter transactions as if they're real. It's not so much the quantity of them that's important, it's the nature of them.
For example, you might benefit from an understanding of how parts of the chart of accounts relate to the balance sheet - which, in some important ways, is a reflection of the bookkeeping system that's been set up. My view is that this is rather fundamental to everything else.
If you don't know the accounting principles of double entry bookkeeping then Quickbooks can be a great tool to help you learn - simply by making entries and seeing what happens.
A way to think about it can be derived from a few observations:
Asset Liability Fund Income Expense
+Asset - + - + --Asset + - + - +
+Liab + - + - +-Liab - + - + -
+Fund - + - + --Fund + - + - +
+Income + - + - +-Income - + - + -
+Expense - + - + --Expense + - + - +
So, here this is read like this:
+Asset means an asset is being increased. So, it has to be accompanied by reducing another asset, increasing a libability, decreasing a fund, increasing income or decreasing expense.... and so forth.Of course, Quickbooks takes care of the "signs" + or - when you make the entry and depending on the corresponding Category / Account. But, on occasion *YOU* don't know which side of an entry is the plus or minus or you need to make a Journal entry. In that case you might want to see if it comes out as you expect and looking at how it affects the balance sheet is a good and quick way to do that. And, sometimes *YOU* don't know which Category / Account is most suitable for a transaction. And, sometimes in really complex situations a transaction can have splits so that 4 or 6 accounts are affected rather than 2.
Another view might be: how do all the detailed features and tools work? To deal with that, practice using new things like Cash Receipts vs. Invoices, note that sales items carry underlying accounts, etc. You can do trial transactions and see how they are reflected in the balance sheet. If you must, deal with inventory or payroll in a trial company file.
Payroll is an entire set of things to learn how to set up and to manage
- e.g. set up employees and taxes, make payroll, pay taxes, file tax forms. It's widely enough used that it's worth knowing. Inventory much less often.
Dealing with reports can be very important. So, learn how to customize and memorize reports. Create some useful reports that aren't just automatically generated by Quickbooks.
Consider how Classes can help you in generating reports by flagging transactions perhaps according to project / whatever ..... but understand that only one class can be assigned at a time - as compared to membership groups in an address book application for example.
Consider how making Categories hierarchical allows you to group transactions.
Fred
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