Introduction to QuickBooks 2013

The Chart of Accounts is the heart and soul of QuickBooks. In this lesson, you'll learn how to take fullest advantage of this powerful tool to add, edit, and access accounts that you can use to track the value of your business or monitor your income and expenses.

In this lesson, you'll learn how to use company lists in QuickBooks to gather and organize all of the information you'll need to properly conduct your business. By the time you finish this lesson, you'll know how to store and retrieve all manner of useful facts, including data on customers, vendors, products, services, important events, and more.

In this lesson, you'll become comfortable working with bank accounts in QuickBooks. You'll learn how to tell QuickBooks about checks, withdrawals, and transfers between accounts. You'll get firsthand experience with adding, finding, and editing or voiding all manner of checking and savings account transactions. You'll even be prepared to reconcile your QuickBooks checking account with your monthly bank statement to ensure that no errors were made.

The physical objects you rely on to help you run your business (like furniture, machinery, vehicles, computers, telephones, or even the building that houses your business) all have significant value. The total value of these assets has a direct impact on the overall worth of your business, and there are tax implications if you sell an asset or if its value changes. That's why it's important for you to keep an accurate tally of everything your business owns. This lesson will provide you with plenty of opportunities to do just that.

Without an organized system for managing all the bills your business receives, they can really start to stack up. And when bills pile up, it isn't hard to overlook one or two from time to time. That, of course, can result in late fees and credit difficulties. In this lesson, you'll learn how to use QuickBooks to make sure you are paying all of your bills right on time—not too early, and not too late.

This lesson will finish discussing QuickBooks's accounts payable tools. You'll learn how to get QuickBooks to memorize bills that you find yourself paying over and over again, month after month. Then, you'll learn how to create some useful accounts payable reports.

You'll find this lesson useful if your business ever finds itself required to collect payment from a customer long after the products or services have been delivered. Throughout the lesson, you'll get some hands-on experience with invoicing. You'll find out how to create an invoice, fill it with invoice items, edit it, print it, and even email it to your customers.

Okay, so you've created an invoice and delivered it to your customer. With a little bit of luck, your customer will place the invoice on their "to do" list and, eventually, you'll receive some form of payment for your troubles. Now what?

In this lesson, you'll explore some useful customer-related reports that can help you keep track of exactly who owes you what. Then, you'll learn what to do if you ever incur a charge on behalf of a customer and wish to be reimbursed for that expense.

In this lesson, you'll learn how to customize your QuickBooks invoices to give them a more professional look. You'll also learn how to work with two of QuickBooks' more advanced features: inventory tracking and estimating.

In the final lesson, you'll find out how to create, use, and memorize a wide variety of useful reports that can help you locate, organize, sort, total, summarize, and otherwise make sense of all those transactions you've painstakingly entered into QuickBooks.