Productivity

QuickBooks Productivity Tip – Customizing Lists

Published September 1, 2010 | By Nancy Smyth

The “List” is another basic QuickBooks feature. You will fill out most QuickBooks forms by selecting entries from a list. Lists save you time and help you enter your information consistently and correctly.

QuickBooks Lists are the backbone of the entire process of keeping your books. Each and every transaction that you enter in QuickBooks will work with multiple lists in order to provide you with job costing and accounting functions.

You will find yourself always using these standard lists:

Chart of Accounts
Item (Cost Code)
Fixed Asset
Price Level
Billing Rate Level
Sales Tax Code
Payroll Item
Class
Workers Comp Code
Other Names

When you select any of these Lists, they display various information, arranged in columns. Did you know that these columns can be customized to display additional information that would be valuable to you and your company?

A good example of customizing information that is displayed in the Chart of Accounts List would be to automatically know, just by looking at the Chart of Accounts, which accounts had been flagged as being 1099 accounts – without having to go into the 1099 Preference and determining which accounts had been selected.

To display a 1099 flag in your Chart of Accounts, you would:

From the Lists menu
Choose Chart of Accounts
Click the Account button at the bottom of the window

Customize the QuickBooks Chart of Accounts

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Choose Customize Columns

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This displays a Customize Columns – Chart of Accounts window which displays a list of Available columns on the left and Chosen columns on the right. Click on the 1099 Account option to select it, then click the Add button.

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The 1099 Account option is now displayed in the Chosen Columns on the right. Click Ok to save your changes.

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Now, when you display your Chart of Accounts List, any accounts that have been selected for 1099 reporting will be flagged and display the type of 1099 required.

accounts flagged as being applicable for 1099 tracking

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Customizing the columns displayed in the Chart of Accounts listing to display 1099 flag provides a productivity boost all year long – not just at year end.

Go ahead and experiment with the information displayed in various lists by selecting available columns on the left and adding them to chosen columns on the right.

Simple customization such as this will help you get more done in less time – because you don’t have to constantly search for information.

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QuickBooks Productivity Tip – Use the Open Window List

Published August 31, 2010 | By Nancy Smyth

Using the Open Window List in QuickBooks is a huge productivity booster as it will allow you to quickly and easily go back and forth between tasks. It will also allow you to see just how many and which forms and reports you do have open.

Using the Open Window List is MUCH faster than opening and closing window or forms that you often use.

If you aren’t currently using the Open Window feature, you either close each form when you are done with it, or you always have a lot of windows open and don’t realize it. When you exit QuickBooks at the end of the day you may think that you only have one window open, but in reality you have maybe 8 or 10 – so when you start QuickBooks the next morning it has to load all of those open windows – quite possibly including several reports; this only adds to the amount of time that it takes before you can actually get to work.

Here’s how to activate the Open Window feature:

From the View menu -> click on Open Window List.

When you are working in QuickBooks on an average day, your Open Window List could show that you are working on Creating Estimates, viewing a Balance Sheet, Receiving Payments, working with your Chart of Accounts, working with your Item List, using Weekly Timesheets, entering Vendor Bills, viewing a Payroll Summary Report, looking at the Profit & Loss Report, working with your Payroll Item List, and even looking at an employee record. Each of these normal day to day activities creates a open window.

By utilizing the Open Window option, you can easily identify just how many form, report, and task windows you have open at the end of the day. A good habit to get into is to close all of these items before you exit QuickBooks. Close your open forms and reports by going to the Windows menu -> and choosing Close All. The next morning when you start QuickBooks you may find that it will load faster if you start with a “clean slate”.

QuickBooks 2010 – Rapid List Entry (Add/Edit Multiple List Entries)

Published October 5, 2009 | By Nancy Smyth

The Add/Edit Multiple List Entries is another new feature in QuickBooks 2010; where you can work with Customers, Jobs, Vendors, Service Items, Inventory Parts or Non-Inventory Parts. I can see this as being a very useful feature, and so far my favorite new feature in 2010.

New QuickBooks users will be able to quickly add these list entries (speeding up setup time) and existing users can also benefit when they need to update say their item list with new pricing, change preferred vendors, change Expense or Income Accounts.

Access this feature from the Lists menu -> Add/Edit Multiple List Entries to display the following window. Using the List drop down menu, you can select to work with the following Lists – Customers (and Jobs), Vendors, Service Items, Inventory Parts, and Non-Inventory Parts.

Let’s say for instance, that I wanted to work with my Service Item (Cost Code) List, I would select that list from the drop down menu (1), and then I would want to click the Customize Columns button (2) to be able to work with all the specific elements within the item (3). Once the Customize Columns window (3) is open I can see a list of available columns that I can work with as well as the chosen (default) columns.

I would probably want to select or choose to work with all of the columns that are available – and I would do this by clicking on each item in the Available Column (1) and then click the Add button (2) – this action moves the item element from the Available Column to the Chosen Column window.

Once I had moved all of the Available elements to the Chosen Columns, I would click OK

I would also want to move things around so that the columns more accurately matched the layout of the actual Item Record

Once I had arranged the order of my Chosen Columns, I would then click the OK button so that the flow of data entry would be more consistent with how data would be entered if you set up the items individually.

Once you have the Item List entries displayed, it’s very easy to update costs, change expense accounts, preferred Vendors, etc. and save all the changes with a click of the button.

For example, let’s say that you wanted to change the Expense Account associated with ALL of your items, you would first click into the first cell that contains the Expense Account and using the drop down menu that appears – change the account.

Next, right click the newly selected account and choose the Copy Down feature. This will replace ALL of the existing entries with the new account.

And ALL of your Expense accounts have been changed to reflect the new one that you just selected. Very cool!

As with all good things – there are also bad; and by that I mean that we start running into problems with Customer & Vendor record elements that aren’t accessed through this process. Now this doesn’t mean that the feature is worthless, it just means that you can enter most of the basic information but will still need to edit Customer, Job, and Vendor Records individually to complete the rest.