Balance Sheet. It represents the balance of company’s Assets, Liabilities, and Equity at a given point in time (e.g. Dec 31) of your business. It is like a snapshot of a company’s financials, and it is the only financial statement that is reported at a specific point in time.

Chart of Accounts. This refers to accounts used to keep track of wide varieties of transactions in your business operation – income, expense, asset, liability, and equity. Cash account is one example of your asset account.  Sales are another example of an income account.

Classes. A feature used to produce income and expenses by category that extends across multiple accounts or multiple customers, jobs, and vendors.

Closing Date. Locking or closing your books, usually after producing financial reports for a fiscal year and after paying corporate income tax, to prevent users changing anything.

Company Information. This refers to your company information’s, such as, name, address, contact number, fiscal year, CRA business number, and other company related info.

Equity. It represents the residual value of the assets of the business that the owners can claim after all liabilities are paid.

Estimates.  Used to estimate/forecast your sales invoices and can be used to create invoices. Estimates are non-posting transactions, which mean estimates do not affect your financial records.  

Expenses.  Basically, the money you spend to support your business.  Expenses generally categorized into two: Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) and General & Administrative Expenses.  COGS related to the cost of your products sold, while General & Administrative Expenses is for overhead, office supplies, payroll, and others.

(General) Journal Entry.  It is an entry made in a journal that contains date, account names, debit amount, credit amount. Each journal entry must have the same amount of debit and credit.

Income. Income/Revenue is money you receive from selling your products/services and any interest income from your investment.

Income (Profit and Loss) Statement. This statement explains the company’s income/ revenue earned and expenses incurred in your business, in a certain period to time (e.g. Jan1 – Dec 31), which results in a profit or loss.

Inventory Average Cost. This is a costing method used by QuickBooks to value your inventory.

Items. Items simply are what you buy and sell. You enter in in customer and purchase forms, like invoices,  bills, etc. When you set up an item, you also define how this item will be posted in your charts of accounts. Thus, an item is actually a quick way of entering transaction, while QuickBooks is handling its accounting behind the scene.
There are 11 item types in QuickBooks, from Service, Inventory part, Non-inventory part, etc.  

Job Costing.  It is a way to track many expenses occurred in one specific job (project). These expenses are used to compare with the revenues generated by that specific job, to determine if it is profitable.

Liabilities.  These are obligations owned by entity to another party arising from past transactions. Loan from your bank is one example. Account payables, wages you owe to your employee, and taxes payables are another examples.

Lists.  They are lists of chart of accounts, items, fixed asset item, price level, payroll item, sales tax code, and other lists you used in your company file.

Loan Manager.  A small add-on program within the system, which can be used to track and pay your loan or debt from a single screen.  You have to be ready with all relevant information of your loan (including amount of payment) before starting the Loan Manager, so you can add and set up the payments schedules in it.

Multiple Currencies. It refers to using more than one currency in your business operation.  You have to turn on its preferences to activate it.

Preferences.  Tools used to control a wide range of behaviours and features in QuickBooks.  There are more than 20 preferences categorized into My Preferences and Company Preferences.

Price Levels.  A feature used to give you flexibility in creating many different percentages or amounts of discounts or markups.

Reconciling Accounts.  This means proofing or verifying your register (entered transactions) with statements from your banks/credit card.

Register. This is a record on entries reflected in chart of accounts.

Statement of Cash Flow. It summarizes a company’s cash inflow and outflow of operating, investing, and financing activities over a period of time. The ending balance is equal to the cash balance in the Balance Sheet.

Undeposited Funds Account.  It is an Other Current Asset type of account that is set up automatically, and used to temporarily to hold customer payments until you literally go to the bank and deposit them to your bank account(s).

Write off. Writing off is removing items from your balance sheet to expenses.  For example, damaged goods and bad debt.