083 QuickBooks Online Basics from the Numbers Witch
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As an Advanced Certified QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor and Platinum-tier expert, I’ve helped countless businesses harness the power of QBO over the past two years. With a degree in math and physics, my love for numbers runs deep, and my “woo” sensibilities have earned me the nickname the Numbers Witch. We're breaking down complex concepts into easy-to-understand steps.
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Welcome to money. Through ease, this is your host, Regan Bashara. I'm back for another episode to talk to you specifically about the basics of QuickBooks Online. Now QuickBooks Online is not built for the layperson users. Shocking. I know they've made this software available to small business owners.
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At an affordable price, they have made it super accessible. They have so many tools that are extremely.
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Useful for entrepreneurs, but while this may be the case, QuickBooks Online is an accounting software and therefore you need to understand the basics of finance and accounting to.
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Keep your books.
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Using this app, this episode is sponsored by the Bookkeeping Foundation kit. This is an essential tool kit.
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Of videos, questions, samples and resources to help you set up a bookkeeping system and stay on top of it for your small business.
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The Bookkeeping Foundation kit is $77, and you can purchase it by clicking the link in the show notes. As a bonus, I'm also offering the 30 days free inside my private virtual community. That way you can have support from me and my other clients as you work through the material I have.
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Hours of live content and tutorials already in the group and I go live twice a month for more Q&A and financial organization tips.
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I also host Co working sessions on zoom that are exclusively available to members of the community. These are kind of like a study hall where you can work silently alongside me on or off camera, or even bring questions and get support from me on the call. Make sure to tune in next week for money through.
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Is where I'm going to talk about database management and it is way more exciting than it sounds. I promise. And just like we talked about home organization tips being useful for us when we do our bookkeeping, you're going to learn about systems and data management because that's all bookkeeping.
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Is this week I want to go over the basics of the QuickBooks Online software. Now I'm an advanced certified QuickBooks Online Co advisor and I am a Platinum tier level, meaning that I've helped a lot of people use QuickBooks Online for their businesses just over the past two years since I've owned my own bookkeeping.
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Uh.
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But as you know, I've been doing bookkeeping for 10 years, and I've used QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online for that entire time. Just a reminder, I am not an employee of Intuit or QuickBooks, and I'm not paid to promote their products. This is just the software that I use for my business, and all the clients that work with me.
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Use QuickBooks Online by their own choice too, so I have a degree in math and physics and I just love numbers. I don't know if you can tell.
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But I combined that with my quote UN quote woo sensibilities, and I call myself the numbers, which I also have some coding experience and my spouse is actually a software developer. My mom has been a computer programmer since before I was born, and I'm 33 years old. Y'all you could say it's kind of a big part of my life.
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Reality and in my DNA, even to understand how databases work.
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So when it comes to understanding QuickBooks Online, here's how I want you to think about it. Number one data exists, data exists because you are transacting all of the time you are making and spending money. Hopefully you're making money every day. Hopefully you're making money in your sleep.
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So most of us as business owners are actually spending money every day. We have money going out the door all of the time. And because these transactions happen, the data to describe what happened exist.
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So since the data exists, we should have a good system to keep the records of what happened, right? And that is all that your bookkeeping is it is a set of data that we put into a system and we put it under reports and we categorize it and organize it a certain way so that you can know what the hell is going on.
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In your business.
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#2 the data has a quote UN quote natural way of being organized based on gap. Now I put natural in quotes because obviously bookkeeping doesn't like naturally occur in.
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Other.
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Numbers. Math, finance, money. All of these are systems that humans created to describe what happens in real life. Data exists because we exchange money for goods and services, and in the United States at least, we have a set of principles that we use to keep track of how money.
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That's made and spent, and that is called.
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Up GAAP, also known as the generally Accepted Accounting Principles. This is basically the rules for how we do accounting and bookkeeping in the United States, so it doesn't naturally occur in nature, but gap is the quote UN quote natural way of doing bookkeeping.
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For accounting, we as accountants know how to do bookkeeping and accounting based on this set of principles, we all use the same for the.
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Part methods of doing bookkeeping, doing record keeping, and financial accounting. That is what QuickBooks Online uses to set up the system for you to track your numbers. They are taking into account that we all kind of use the same rules and methods to do our bookkeeping, and they set their system.
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Up in a way that supports doing accounting based on those principles. #3 is that most importantly, QuickBooks Online uses lists and they make connections between the entries across those lists. So if you know anything about database management.
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But I promise you know something about data management because we have all seen a spreadsheet and Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheets. You know how spreadsheet works. We have columns and then we have rows and it's up to you to decide whether or not columns come first or the rows come first. But.
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If we look at any cell of Excel, we have a column that is referencing that cell and a row at the same time. So each cell has a ref.
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That is A1 or B2 and that tells you what column and what row each cell oriented.
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So.
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QuickBooks Online is using lists and you can kind of think of it like a spreadsheet on steroids, right? We have lists of your clients and customers we have.
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Lists that is, like your chart of accounts.
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We have lists of products and services. We have lists of reports, everything in QuickBooks Online is a list and they're all pointing to each other. When you put data in the QuickBooks Online so QuickBooks Online, it's just like a big set of data that we need to organize and in a certain way so that it reports.
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The way we want it to according to the rules of the accounting rules to the gap rules, right? So if you know anything about data management or databases coding QuickBooks Online can be thought of in that way and maybe that will help you understand how it's set up because what we.
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Know how a software is set up. That means that we can figure out how to use it right. It is not as intimidating when you just think of it as. We've just got a bunch of lists in here, so we got to make sure that our lists have the correct data in them and then when we tell one list to point to another list.
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OK.
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We need to make sure that it's categorized correctly, that it's pointing to the correct thing or the correct entry on the other list, so that is how you can think about it and if I.
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Helps listening versus seeing it visually. I do have some videos explaining, you know how the lists are set up in QuickBooks Online over on my YouTube channel. Make sure you are subscribed and the fourth thing that I want you to understand when it comes to QuickBooks Online and your bookkeeping is that these three.
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Key areas you need to.
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But first you need to familiarize yourself with them. Number one is your products and services list like I talked about. We make money in our businesses based on our offers and your offers are either a product or a service. They can be a one time offer where someone pays you once and they get the thing or it can be on a recurring basis.
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Like I do monthly bookkeeping for people that is on a recurring basis that service, so that happens over and over and over again. They don't just pay me once, right? Unless they pay me once and they're like, OK, we're done.
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And you know, but we're not talking about.
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But your products and services list inside of QuickBooks Online is super important to get straightened up and get together and to be super familiar with what you've got going on in there. Because when you send out an invoice to a client or when you sell something, you're going to go pull from your products and services list in QuickBooks Online.
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In order to record that money that came in.
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And your products and services are going to point towards your income categories. I've talked a little bit on the podcast about income categories before, but most business owners, I recommend you have like 2 to 3 income categories and this is just the general umbrella of whatever your offers are. So for me, I do actual accounting.
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Services for people and then I have consulting services where I'm like teaching them how to do something or I'm giving them feedback on their.
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Bookkeeping or I'm teaching them best practices and so those are consulting services. And then they also have digital courses for sale that people can just go pay for and purchase whenever they want, just like the bookkeeping foundation kit. My digital sales are a separate income category. Some me doing the accounting or me doing.
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Consult.
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So you want to get your income categories right and then you tell QuickBooks look at my products and services list where we're going to point to on my income categories list. So that's what I mean when I say that we just, we've just got a bunch of different lists that are all pointing at each other, your products and services list each of those.
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Offers is going to point towards a specific income category and you have to be the one to tell QuickBooks what to do.
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Right, QuickBooks is a computer. It's an app, it's software, and it's only going to do what you tell it to do. So telling it to do the thing you want it to do means that your data is going to be more accurate and reflective of how you want to look at your reports. So that would be your products and services list. First thing to look at the 2nd.
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So you have QuickBooks Online that you want to set up and familiarize yourself with, and to keep up with. Make sure that information is correct on there is your customer or client list, because if you don't have somebody's e-mail correct or you don't have their information correct or.
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You don't have those set up on the right invoice, or you know, whatever.
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If you don't have your customer and client list accurate, you're not going to get paid. There is going to be something that happens because of incorrect data on that list. That means that you have trouble getting paid or it takes longer.
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For you to get.
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Paid. So getting your customer or client list imported or put in the QuickBooks Online.
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Manually where you just go enter all the data they do allow you to import that information though. If you have like a spreadsheet or a CRM software, you can import that data into QuickBooks Online.
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Getting your customer list really tight, getting that information correct, especially their contact information, means that you can automate things down the line and you can make it for people to pay you. You can make it much easier for you to get paid on time consistently etcetera. So.
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I always tell.
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Folks like if you have your customer list.
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Somewhere in a spreadsheet or another apps like Salesforce or something, or in a Google Drive. Let's get that imported into QuickBooks Online, and let's get as much of your customer data in there as we can. I always tell people you can never send.
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Too much information, right? You can never have too much data. The more data and the more details we bring in, the better your books are going to be. The better your records will be, the easier it will be for you to read your reports. And then the last area of QuickBooks Online that you need to set up first whenever you're first starting out with QuickBooks Online.
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And that you really need to get familiar with and stay on top of is your chart of accounts. And again this is a list. This is a list of category.
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Stories that you need to set up when you first start doing your bookkeeping. When you first open your business, your chart of accounts contains all of your bank accounts. Obviously, credit cards, all of your income categories. So just like we talked about your products and services list points to your income categories. That's the product and service list.
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Pointing to your chart of accounts, which is another list, they're just talking.
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To each other, right?
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QuickBooks is helping you do that, but you need to be the one to set up your chart of accounts. Set up your income categories, and then most businesses are going to have a similar expense list like their expense categories are going to be pretty similar.
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But still you want to get the language on your chart of accounts in your categories you want to have that language reflect the language that you use every day in your business. So however you talk about your business, however, you describe yourself making and spending money use the same language. Literally the same word.
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Words on your chart of accounts. That way, when you're reading your reports, you know what you're looking at and the chart of accounts. I like to think of it as the hub of your bookkeeping. This is where we start. This is where we make sure that the information there is accurate first, before we even start bringing in transaction data. So those are the three key.
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Areas that you need to be looking at first whenever you're using QuickBooks Online. If you've already been using QuickBooks Online, it's always a great time to.
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Go look at that information. Look at those lists and make sure that that information is as accurate as possible. And we do this inside the bookkeeping foundation kit. I actually give you a sample chart of accounts, whether or not you are a retail business selling products, or you're a service based business. I give you a sample chart of accounts to help you get started.
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Business they teach you how to set up these lists in your QuickBooks Online company, in your own bookkeeping. So this way we are optimizing your data. We are optimizing your workflow.
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Meaning that things don't fall through the cracks anymore. So your data is going to have more detail and this will help you plan and achieve your business goals. I walk you through this setup part which is crucial to using QuickBooks Online inside the Bookkeeping Foundation kit. So go ahead and grab that today by visiting the link and the share notes.
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You will get immediate access to all of the content inside the kit.
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Plus a free 30 day trial of my private virtual community. Remember, the community is in addition to the digital course, and the community is where I'm going live twice a month with more tutorials, content and Q&A for my clients. All my clients are already there and we're here to help support you.
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Because when you're doing this work, questions are going to come up so you can come bring them into the community, get feedback from me and the other folks who do this.
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Work too. Make sure you're subscribed to this podcast, and please leave me a rating or review. Share it with somebody else that is struggling with QuickBooks Online and make sure that you tune in next week because we're going to talk about data management tips, I promise it won't be boring because my podcasts are never boring and the key features inside.
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Quickbooks online that help you accomplish that data management. Thanks so much for listening today. I hope you have a wonderful day. A wonderful rest of your week and I'll talk to you soon.