David H. Ringstrom - QuickBooks Online For Dummies

At the end of your fiscal year, you need to enter a journal entry, dated on the last day of your fiscal year, that moves the dollar amounts from the appropriate Draw or Contribution account to Retained Earnings — another equity account. If I’ve just lost you, talk to your accountant about how to handle closing the year.

After you set up your company, you should review the default settings that Intuit established and make changes as appropriate. To examine and change payroll settings, see Chapter 9.

Choose Settings ⇒ Account and Settings to display the Company tab of the Account and Settings dialog box (see Figure 3-14).

On this tab, you can change your company name, address, and contact information, as well as your preferences for communication with Intuit. To change any setting, click anywhere in the group where the setting appears. Editable fields or controls will appear for any settings that you can change. When you finish making changes, click the Save button that appears in the group of settings and then move on to another group of settings if you want. When you finish, click Done in the bottom-right corner.

FIGURE 3-14:Review company settings.

To review the settings related to your QBO billing and subscription, click Settings and choose the appropriate option. QBO users will choose Settings ⇒ Account and Settings to display the Account and Settings dialog box and then click Billing & Subscription in the pane on the left side. QBO Accountant users will choose Settings ⇒ Your Account.

You won’t see the Billing & Subscription pane if your QBO company is being managed by an accountant who participates in the ProAdvisor Preferred Pricing program, which I discuss in Chapter 12.

The page shown in Figure 3-15 shows you the status of your QuickBooks, QB Payroll, and QuickBooks Payments subscriptions. From this page, you can convert your trial version of QuickBooks and of the QB Payroll product to a regular subscription. Be aware that converting cancels any trial period that you opted into. Although I couldn’t show it in Figure 3-15, if you scroll down on your screen, you’ll see that you can also use this page to order checks and supplies. As of this writing, you can also reduce your QBO subscription fees by roughly 10 percent by opting into annual billing instead of monthly billing.

FIGURE 3-15:Review QBO billing and subscription settings.

The subscription-based Payments product that Intuit offers enables you to receive online payments from your customers. If you already have a subscription to the Payments product, you can connect it to QBO from the Billing & Subscription page of the Account and Settings dialog box. If you don’t have a subscription, you can subscribe from the Apps page (select it on the navigation bar) or from the Payments page of the Account and Settings dialog box.

When you click the Usage tab on the left side of the Account and Settings dialog box, QBO displays the use limits applied to your QBO company based on the version of QBO you selected when you created your company (Simple Start, Essential, Plus, or Advanced).

To review sales preferences for your QBO company, choose Settings ⇒ Account and Settings to display the Account and Settings dialog box; then click Sales in the pane on the left side.

On the Expenses tab of the Account and Settings dialog box, you can control expenses related to purchase orders, bills, and payments you make to vendors (see Figure 3-16). To view this tab, choose Settings ⇒ Account and Settings ⇒ Expenses.

FIGURE 3-16:Expense preferences you can control.

In the Bills and Expenses group of settings, you can opt to display a table on expense and purchase forms so that you can itemize and categorize the products and services you buy. If you purchase goods and services for your customers, you can

Add a column to the table so that you can identify the customer for whom you made the purchase.

Add a column where you identify expenses and items for which you want to bill customers.

You also can set default bill payment terms.

In the Purchase Orders group, you can opt to use purchase orders and manage up to three custom fields for purchase orders, as well as custom transaction numbers.

In the Messages group, you can establish the settings for the default email message sent with purchase orders, including the salutation, subject, and message. You also can opt to send yourself a copy of the message that goes out with each purchase order.

The Payments tab of the Account and Settings dialog box offers you a way to connect with Intuit Merchant Services via a QuickBooks Payments account. If you don’t have a QuickBooks Payments account with Intuit and want one, click the Learn More button. If you already have a QuickBooks Payments account, you can click the Connect button to connect your QBO account with your QuickBooks Payments account.

QuickBooks Payments is the name Intuit uses to describe the service it offers that enables you to accept credit cards or bank transfers from your customers and email invoices that contain a Pay Now button so that your customers can pay you online. You might know this service as GoPayment or Merchant Services.

Bank transfers cost 1 percent of the transfer amount, with a maximum fee of $10 per transaction. No monthly fees are associated with accepting credit card payments — just a per-transaction fee, which varies depending on whether you swipe a card, accept a payment online, or key in a credit card number. QBO users who use QuickBooks Payments have money from qualifying credit or debit card transactions deposited in the bank the next business day, with no extra fees and no extra waiting.