 QuickBooks Online 2024, increase screen size, duplicate tabs and open multiple browsers. Get ready and pack some trail mix because we're hiking on QuickBooks Online, our audit trail to success. Here we are at the Intuit owner of QuickBooks website that's at intuit.com that's intuit.com. We're going to be looking for the QuickBooks Online test drive. The primary tool we'll be using for the first part of the course. There's two primary ways we can get access to this primary tool. The first way, the easy way, the way we're going to be using after this first presentation is to just go to your favorite browser, type in QuickBooks Online test drive and search through the results. We'll see this shortly but before we do that let's go to the second way which would be going to the QuickBooks web page or I would go first to the intuit.com web page intuit being the owner of QuickBooks. This way takes a little bit longer but some people might feel that they're a little bit more secure going this way considering you're not just doing a search but going directly to the source, the owner of the software and finding it from their direct web page. So this way we would go into intuit.com. I'm going to search for QuickBooks and then I'm going to go all the way to the bottom of the QuickBooks page because this page changes often times but if I go to the bottom we've had this products down here for a very long time and we're going to go on to the QuickBooks Online. Note that we're not going to be using the 30 day free trial for the first part of the course. That would give us the blank file, the file with nothing in it which would be great if we're starting from scratch but for the first part of the course that's not what we want to do. We want to start with a file that has stuff in it so we can deconstruct before we then create something from scratch. So what we want to do is scroll down and you have it down here. Let's keep going down and there it is. Here's the test drive. So you go into the test drive here and then it takes you into this screen. You've got to verify that you're not a robot. That's the first way to do it. First a word from our sponsor. Yeah actually we're sponsoring ourselves on this one because apparently the merchandisers they don't want to be seen with us but that's okay whatever because our merchandise is better than their stupid stuff anyways. Like our crunching numbers is my cardio product line. Now I'm not saying that subscribing to this channel, crunching numbers with us will make you thin, fit and healthy or anything. However it does seem like it worked for her. Just saying. So subscribe, hit the bell thing and buy some merchandise so you can make the world a better place by sharing your accounting instruction exercise routine. If you would like a commercial free experience consider subscribing to our website at accountinginstruction.com or accountinginstruction.thinkific.com and so I'm going to close this out and show you the second way to do it. We just search in our search engine for QuickBooks Online test drive such as this and then it might not be the first option. It's the first option for me because I've done this a few times but if you look at the URL you can still be fairly secure that you're going to the right spot because it should be a QuickBooks website or an Intuit.com website. So this one says test drive QuickBooks Online so I feel fairly confident and you can see that's a little bit faster to get in there. So then down here we have the available QuickBooks test drive so you got the United States one that's the one we're going to use and then you have the advanced. We're just going to use the normal test drive which I believe is going to be equivalent to the standard QuickBooks Pro and we're going to go into that. We're going to verify that we're not a robot. I think it's QuickBooks Plus but we're going to verify that we're not a robot and that should take us into the file. Now sometimes you might have some issues getting into this file. One of the reasons that might be is because either you already have a QuickBooks Online account and you have the QuickBooks open somewhere else right. So if you have QuickBooks open somewhere else then I don't believe you can get into here from the same browser because QuickBooks is trying to log you in and the universal browser and you're logged in under your username and whatnot. So if you want to use that browser you might have to log out of QuickBooks. Now even if you're not logged into a separate account within into it or QuickBooks at the time your browser might have cookies in it that are still basically have you logged in so that might be a reason so you'd have to log out of your file for QuickBooks so that you can log into the test drive which basically logs you in as a universal as though you're logging in as a universal user as opposed to your particular account. Now that's a little bit annoying actually because sometimes you might want to have this sample company open at the same time that you have your actual file open. Is there a way to do that? There is. So the way we can do that is we have to use a different browser. If you use the same browser then QuickBooks is going to think that you're using your username and they're not going to let you into this file because they're going to try to get you to go to your company files and whatnot. So you can use a different browser entirely like I'm using Chrome here so you could use like Microsoft Edge or you can use the incognito. So if you're in Chrome you have the three dots up top. So we want to hit the three dots and you can see this new incognito window. So that opens up a new window but now it's supposed to be one that doesn't have any cookies in it and therefore it's not going to have you logged in to the browser even though I'm still using a Google browser in essence right. So now if I logged in here QuickBooks online test drive I should be able to log in again in a separate browser. In doing this you can have your actual company file open and you can have your separate browser open which is very nice. Now the other way you can do this is you can open a completely different browser. So I have Microsoft Edge or search engine of Edge and Chrome open now so in Microsoft Edge then I shouldn't have the same cookies I shouldn't be logged in here so I can type in QuickBooks online test drive and again I should have these two these two windows should be able to be open at the same time. I find the incognito thing to be the best because most people probably don't use multiple browsers and so this incognito window opening up the test drive in there can be a great resource if you want both of them open at the same time. Now just a couple other things on the navigation that we want to look at here. So later in a following presentation we're going to get into more details on how to navigate around here look get into the details of what everything is on the left hand side in the search area. Right now we just want to look at a few things with regards to the navigation and if you're used to the desktop version at all or if you're used to desktop software in general like Microsoft Office type of software for example then you have a little bit different feel of those kind of softwares than you do on an online type of software. So I'm just going to do some comparisons to QuickBooks desktop even if you have never used QuickBooks desktop it's just a good comparison between you know what's on a desktop version between what's on an online version. So when we look at a desktop such as this the navigation here what you're the tools that you have to navigate is usually you're going to have some kind of open windows list on the left hand side and then they had the classic dropdowns which you might remember in say Microsoft Office products before the ribbon happened so if I look at Word here for example or Excel instead of the dropdowns now they put this ribbon so this is another tool that can be standard kind of tool for a desktop type of software and then of course the thing that you're working on will be displayed in the middle so if I open up a report for example and I go to my company and financial and I open up my balance sheet for example it's going to be displayed in the middle and now I've got my two open items on the left I can toggle between the home page and the balance sheet on the left hand side so we and in order to increase the size of something like this we actually have to increase the display size of the whole thing meaning I can go into my settings and increase the display which will increase a lot of the buttons on the home page and make them larger or I have some settings that I can go up top and go into my reports and adjust the fonts of the report we'll get into that concepts later but if I go into the web-based kind of system notice it's not practical typically to have the dropdowns you could have all the dropdowns in a web-based type of system but oftentimes they're going to put their information in this case on the left hand side similar to the dropdowns but they're on the left hand side and they're going to be expanding to the right and then if you go into any of these items then up top you have your tabs so a lot of times on a web-based application you're going to have these tabs as opposed to the dropdowns and they go back and forth to be using these different kind of dropdown methods which I think are going to be more or less useful depending on the kind of thing you're you're operating with is it a tablet is it a phone is it a computer so we've got basically the tab dropdown thing on the left hand side it opens the screen that you're working on in the middle so if I did the same thing and I opened up my reports for example if I went into my reports and I opened up a balance sheet then that's going to be displaying in the middle however note that I can't easily toggle from this balance sheet to the home page it didn't open up a new page it just opened up over the top in the middle so what if I want to have the balance sheet open and I want to have the profit and loss open well in the desktop version you can talk you can open both of them and toggle between them with this open items how can I do that similar kind of thing with the online can I only open one thing at a time well here you can use the tabs now tabs I mean up top the actual open window that we have up top so with a lot of web-based applications we can have multiple windows open up top and we just have to make sure that we refresh the windows so that we're using the you know the latest and greatest version of our reports so what we will typically do every time that we open up a file is we're going to open up our normal reports profit loss and the income statement and and have them in a separate tab so usually the first thing we'll do is I'll go up top right click on the tab and then we go to duplicate it so now I've got two tabs in the same browser and this is going to be where our profit losses and then I'll do that again right click and duplicate so now we've got the income statement here and this one or what did I make this the let's make this the balance sheet reports and I know I'm going through the reports we haven't really looked at that over here yet but we'll just have the balance sheet and then the income statement and then the first tab is usually what I think of as my data input tab that's my default method whenever I'm working on something typically I open something up I open up the major reports that we're going to be using that being the financial statements balance sheet income statement and then I have my tab on the left where I can do my data input things like invoices and whatnot that will then have an impact on the end result balance sheet and income statement and I can then jump over here refresh the screen run the report and then and then I can go from here so that's going to be the method we can use to have that same flexibility of having multiple windows open and not being having to toggle back and forth now the other great thing about an online version is that you can actually disconnect these I can take this tag of this tab and put it over here I can put them side by side right I picked up the wrong one here and there it is so I can put them side by side here and I can if I'm doing my data input I can have my report on the right and I can do the data input on the left so that's great and then I can grab this tab if I need to I could just grab it left click on it and then pull it and I'm just going to click it right in there to put it back where it was and then make it full screen so so that take if you if you're used to desktop software this tab and duplicating tabs and making sure you refresh the tabs can be confusing at first but once you get to do it it's pretty it's not too bad to to work with and the websites have gotten a lot better at being able to refresh everything so that you have everything basically up to date so these things are a lot are all up to date although if you're if you're working for a long time sometimes it might log you out and you have to log back in and so on and refresh the screen so some of those types of things happen more often online than on a desktop version but it works pretty well so the other thing that's a little bit different with the desktop than the online version is that we can we can zoom into the screen on a web-based kind of system so for example if I'm in a report and I want to zoom in to this report I'm going to close this is called a hamburger over here so we can also often close this hamburger and if I want to zoom in I can hold down control and scroll up so now I'm at 150% zoom in so I can really so that's really nice to be able to zoom into particular things that works great with reports but you have to be a little bit careful with it as well because it does distort the screen so for example if I'm working on a web-based application if I do that over here and I scroll in it might actually adjust you know the things up top the items so now I've got this drop down that has all the items in it that were up top so if you're working in a screen that has a different zoom in than I'm working in or possibly even just a different size of a screen such as you're using a phone or a tablet and I'm using a normal computer screen then you might have different layouts due to the fact that the web page is trying to optimize how it's going to fit on the page based on the size of the screen that you're using and how zoomed in you are into the screen so that could create a little bit more confusion when we're trying to follow along with a presentation if you have a different you know size of the screen than I have for example also note that QuickBooks has gotten way better at this but if you zoom into something like an invoice if I add an invoice now I have a data input form it didn't open the invoice there it goes and if you zoom in if you zoom into an invoice then it might mess things up right it could it could if I'm zoomed all the way in notice they can't really fit everything on the screen and if you do the data input this way then sometimes it can get a little bit glitchy like it won't it won't actually record or something like that now it's gotten way better than it used to be at that so it records pretty good even if you're zoomed in but if that happens you just close out the invoice and then scroll back down so that you're at 100 percent and do the data input at the 100 percent so that's so that's going to be the the zooming on it now if you're in the reports over here the other option you have on the reports is to on the on the desktop version was to change the font size you don't have as much options on the online version to change the font size in color as the desktop version so that's one of the things the desktop actually does a little bit better but again you kind of compensate with that by being able to scroll in and do this do this zoom in and zoom out feature so those are just a few tips that we want to first look at and next time we'll go in and we'll start to really analyze all of these options on the left hand side and and dig into how you navigate around around the screen so this time we just want to say how can we get into the software this is the sample company Greg's design and landscaping services remember every time you do data input into this company file it will basically refresh to the default once you log out and go back into it that's basically how we said how it's set up we looked at how to increase the size of the screen duplicating the tabs make sure you have that down we'll do that often so we'll have a lot of practice with that but that's a really useful tool when I first started using QuickBooks online a long time ago I didn't even realize you could do that so I was kind of frustrated that I couldn't go to multiple windows because I didn't know how to duplicate the screen and the duplicate of the screen works pretty well and then and so you can have the multiple tabs and remember that if you're using this sample file you might want to open it up in the incognito window if you have another company file open or you have a into it account open so we'll get into the navigation next time