QuickBooks has a 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.
To create/add a new loan in Loan manager:
1. From the Main Menu, go to Banking > Loan Manager to open Loan Manager window.
2. Click the “Add a Loan” button to open Add Loan window:
QuickBooks uses chart of accounts names only as a default, but using both account names and numbers are easier to arrange & manage as your business grows. The advantage of using both account names and numbers is that you can arrange your chart of accounts according to types – Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Income, Expenses, and Other Income and Expenses. You can also create or add subaccounts in within the parents’ accounts easily, making them looks very logical.
To enable the account numbers, from the Main Menu, go to Edit > Preferences > Accounting > Company Preferences, and tick the Use Account Numbers box. Once you use account numbers, QuickBooks will display the chart of accounts in alphanumeric order instead of alphabetical order, which is exactly what you want to achieve.
Typical range for 5-digit account numbers and type looks like:
- 10xxx Assets
- 20xxx Liabilities
- 30xxx Equity
- 40xxx Income
- 50xxx Sales, Cost of Goods Sold, or Expenses
- 60xxx Expenses or Other Income
- 70xxx Expenses or Other Income
- 80xxx Expenses or Other Expenses
- 90xxx Other Expenses
As a small business owner, sometimes you want to share ideas with others – may be you want to show the useful customized reports but you don’t want to show your financial data. Or, you have a few company files and you want to have the similar reports in each company file without remaking them.
In QuickBooks, this can be done by exporting memorized reports templates from one company file and then importing them from the other company file.
Report templates contain only the formats & filters of the reports, without the financial data. You have to memorize the reports before you can export their templates. All reports are saved in .QBR extension in QuickBooks to differentiate from other files.
Let’s take a look how to export memorized reports templates:
1. From the Main Menu, select Reports > Memorized Reports > Memorized Report List to open Memorized Report List window:
Read more: Sharing (Exporting & Importing) Reports Templates
In accounting, depreciation or amortization refers to two aspects of the same concept:
• the decrease in value of fixed assets (Balance Sheet accounts), and
• the allocation of the cost of fixed assets to periods in which the assets are used (Profit & Loss accounts).
Methods of computing depreciation, and the periods over which fixed assets are depreciated, may vary between fixed asset types within the same business. Small business can enter depreciation of their assets monthly, quarterly, or annually, depending on the requirements.
Let’s take an example that your business buy a computer for $10,000,- and the useful life of your computer is 5 years. Suppose the salvage value by the end of fifth year is $0. In straight line depreciation, you would depreciate your computer $2,000,- per year ([10,000-$0]/5).
In QuickBooks, to capture the purchase of your computer and record depreciation, you have to add the following accounts:
1. Computer Equipment (as a parent account in Fixed Asset type)
- Cost – Computer Equipment (as a subaccount)
- Accumulated Depreciation – Computer Equipment (as a subaccount)
2. Depreciation Expense
Thus, when you made a purchase and make a payment using either Write Cheques or Enter Bills followed by Pay Bills window, select the “Cost – Computer Equipment” account from your balance sheet account when entering Expenses tab. This will result in the balance of your Computer Equipment account to be $10,000,-:
Even for small business with only a handful of employees, creating users can restrict their access to financial data and keep track of what they are doing. Each user can have Full, Selective, or No access to certain area of company file (Sales & A/R, Purchases & A/P, Checking & Credit Card, Inventory, etc.) and the audit trail will show which user is doing what.
Only the Administrator can create additional users in QuickBooks:
Select Company > Set Up Users & Passwords > Set Up Users to open “Set up User password and access” wizard and click Add User button: