Do you need trouble shooting for setting up QuickBooks? Is that you? Perhaps you have a mess. Perhaps you are thinking to yourself, “QuickBooks is not as easy as I thought.”
Accounting can be overwhelming because it is like a foreign language. There are certain things you have to learn, and if you don’t learn them, you will struggle.
That is why you need QuickBooks; it helps you with the accounting. It has learned all the rules of accounting and makes it easy for someone to jump in without an accounting background and take care of their own bookkeeping.
It is however, very important to do the set up correctly. Without a correct set up, you will have a mess to struggle through, and you might need someone like my Papa, Lee Davis, a QuickBooks Pro-Advisor, to help you.
So, let’s see what my Papa, Lee Davis has to say about Trouble Shooting for Setting up QuickBooks
Trouble Shooting for Setting up QuickBooks
1. Complete the setup by reviewing preferences.
After you have completed the setup and downloaded Quickbooks (QB), completing the preferences in QuickBooks will help you be more efficient and save time.
2. Review the chart of accounts, and add and delete accounts.
In the setup you choose the industry that closest represents your company. In the chart of accounts you can customize further your accounts in QuickBooks.
3. Using lists, set up: customers, vendors & employees.
QuickBooks is built on lists and forms. You will be more efficient if you completely set up your customers, vendors and employees, not forgetting their email addresses.
Building your items list will help you start invoicing and manage inventory for your business.
4. Understand the forms you will be using such as: estimates, invoices, purchase orders, bills, checks, payments, deposits and credit cards.
Using these forms correctly will give you a great start to entering your data in QuickBooks.
5. With the help of your QuickBooks Pro-Advisor, make the necessary journal entries.
There will be some data that will not be entered in lists and forms. These will require general journal entries. If you do not have an accounting background, use your QuickBooks Pro-Advisor to assist you here.
6. Reconcile your checking account in QuickBooks with your bank reconciliation.
Do not download your accounts directly into your cash accounts. Use the write check form. After you have completed the process, you will be ready to match your checks to your bank download. This is another area I recommend getting help with from your QuickBooks Pro-Advisor.
7. Run your first set of financial statements, including your income statement and balance sheet.
If you have completed the above steps you are ready to run your financial statements. Congratulations!
Did you like our Trouble Shooting for Setting up QuickBooks post?
For me, it was very informative.
My takeaways from this post on Trouble Shooting for Setting up QuickBooks:
1. I should have a QuickBooks Pro-Advisor help me with the set up.
I know, this must sound like a way to plug my father’s services, but I know that my papa is absolutely right. I have listened to him talk about cleaning up client’s messes too many times. When I set up my QuickBooks, I will ask my Papa to be there with me to make sure I set it up properly from day one.
2. I need to poke around QuickBooks to learn about the different features and ways to use it.
If you use any form of technology, it is always good to do some poking around to find out how you can best utilize the software.
QuickBooks is software that will help you rock your books if you use it fully and correctly. Without becoming familiar with all that it can do, you will not be able to rock your books.
3. I need to start out with making some journal entries.
Because I have a very limited understanding of QuickBooks, I am going to do some research on what journal entries are. Skip to the next point if you are beyond my abilities.
I found this very helpful YouTube video.
For journal entries, you will have to use your knowledge of debits and credits.
In your journal, you will list the date, what account the entry falls under (cash, owners equity, liabilities) and your credits and debits.
The reason you should do this with a Pro-Advisor is that QuickBooks will do the journal entries automatically for you after you tell it how to identify a transaction. If you do things incorrectly from the beginning, you will have a mess that a bookkeeper will need to correct later.
There are some manual entries that you will need to record yourself. These include:
- Unique transactions
- Adjusting entries
More on Trouble Shooting for Setting up QuickBooks
I talked to my Papa about this post, and he had a few more things to add to this post:
1. If you are starting a new business on QuickBooks, QuickBooks does most of the classifying for you.
This is very important. If you are a new startup, QuickBooks will be pretty easy to set up, and you don’t have to have much of an accounting background to set it up. But if you are moving your books over to QuickBooks after you have been in business for a while, you need to do a lot of journal entries, which requires a stronger background in accounting.
If your business is not a new startup, you will have to make many journal entries, and therefore, you will need a solid background in accounting to make the journal entries. This is where you will need to understand how to enter your debits and credits.
If you are bringing over your work, you will need to enter certain balances. This is where many mistakes are made. For example, cash does not require a journal entry because that is part of the bank reconciliation. This causes many of my clients problems.
2. The power of QuickBooks is that it gives you the other side of the double entry accounting.
The reason why everyone loves QuickBooks is that you don’t have to worry about making mistakes in your journal entries. In the set up process you are teaching QuickBooks how to make your journal entries. If you start out with wrong initial journal entries, you will have a QuickBooks mess.
3. If you are not a new business, you should take our training course.
Our training course has an advance section in which Lee Davis, my papa, will help you fix any messes you might have. Many of the messes occur in the setup process.
Conclusion – Trouble Shooting for Setting up QuickBooks
I am so grateful for my job as the chief blogger for Lee Davis and Company. It gives me the opportunity to learn something that has intimidated me, accounting. Since I too am a budding entrepreneur, I need my Papa’s help too.
I learned many useful lessons from this post, and I hope you did as well.
Please let us know in the comments if you have any other questions that Lee Davis can answer. We would love to help you.
How can Lee Davis and Company help you?
We would love to help you with your trouble shooting for setting up QuickBooks. One of our specialties is cleaning up messes. Since many of the QuickBooks messes come from the set up process, we could do a one-on-one training session to help you. We could also train you in our training courses, in which we could answer your individual questions.
Another option for you is that we could manage your books for you. If you would like to spend more time in your business and less time on your books, we could take over your books for you.
What can you expect from Lee Davis and Company?
Lee Davis is the president of Lee Davis and Company. He prides himself in helping his clients make their dreams of running a successful business a reality. He has the tools and advice that will help you, the client, get to the next level.
What services can you find at Lee Davis and Company?
- Bookkeeping Services
- Small Business Advising
- Quickbooks Training
- Management Services