 QuickBooks Online 2024. Comprehensive problem introduction. Get ready and some coffee because we're looking at some quick tips with QuickBooks Online 2024. Whenever attempting to learn, understand, practice with new software or possibly our current software in a new way, one of the major obstacles we first run into is how can I get access to the software possibly for free and in a format that's going to maximize the growth of our learning curve and in a format that will not compromise our current data set for our current business. When we're thinking about different types of software, it's useful to kind of categorize the types of software in our head and think about how they work and that will help us to understand how we might utilize the practice tools related to them. I usually break out the softwares into the categories of desktop type softwares and online or web-based type softwares, although that's not a perfect type of distinction, but it's good example. If we think about desktop software, you might think about Microsoft Office suite type software like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and those kinds of software. Once we have them on our computer, we can typically make multiple Word documents, for example, once we have Microsoft soft Word set up, whereas when we go into many online or web-based softwares, we might be purchasing the use of the software per use case, such as with QuickBooks Online. With QuickBooks Online, we purchase one company file at a time. It's not like we can have one purchase of QuickBooks Online and then create multiple different company files. So notice this creates different kind of practice tool problems. If we have the desktop kind of situation, then as long as we have access to the software, we can create new company files and we can practice with courses such as this quite easily. When we're looking at online type of software on the other hand, first a word from our sponsor. 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We might have the online software but we already have our business data within it and we would like to have a sandbox, something to work with where we're not going to mess up the current data in our current business, which is a little bit more difficult. Now notice that that comparison isn't perfect, that one being the online or web-based software versus the desktop software because there are online kind of applications that work similar to the desktop version such as if you had the Google documents, for example, then you're working basically in a cloud-based type of system and you can make multiple files, but that's the general idea. With the QuickBooks online system, when you purchase QuickBooks online, you're purchasing one company file that's usually for your business. How then can we practice with QuickBooks online? So here's the tools. One, you might be able to get access to the free 30-day trial, that's one tool that possibly you could use to test out the software. Oftentimes they also have a student version, so if you're working at any kind of accredited institution, then you might be able to get access to the software and that would be great because maybe you get it for a longer period of time. If you can get it for 60 days, that would be great because we're going to go through a long comprehensive problem here. Then you've got the free test drive. The test drive is another resource that's different than the 30-day trial. You're not making any type of commitment in that situation. You're just using the test drive file and then you possibly could, of course, look for discounts if you were to purchase a company file. Now, these tools can be used for different purposes and the two main purposes you might want to think about, I would put them in these two main categories. One is a situation where you're trying to just understand the general navigation of the software. You can think about this as similar to if you were to go to work for a new company in the accounting department. In that case, what you're trying to do is deconstruct what has already been created. You will already have financial statements at least for the prior year. We'll already have data input. What you're trying to do is see what happened in the past, mirror it going forward because hopefully the accounting cycle has been set up and is running smoothly. In that case, if we wanted to practice that type of scenario, I would like a file that has something in it already. That's going to be the free test drive file. That's a great tool for that because it's already got the GL setup, the general ledger. It's already got the items setup and it's already got data in it. You can see what the data is doing. You can deconstruct it and then you can try to repeat that process. It's not going to be messing with your current data files or anything like that, which is great. However, if you want to start up a new company file, which would be similar to a scenario like you're a bookkeeper, if you're a bookkeeper, you might be working with clients where you have to set up new company files, transfer people from a prior system to the current system or just have a new company accounting system in the software from scratch. In that case, you would like to have something similar to the free 30-day trial or possibly the student version if you can get a longer access to it. Why? Because I don't want that beginning stuff in there. I don't want the GL in there. I want to start it from scratch. I want to see how the company file would start from the beginning and then put in place all those baseline items. If you're working with the test drive, you would actually have to delete all that stuff to try to get to that starting point and then add it back again. It's not really designed for that kind of thing. What you would like to do is have a file with nothing in it. Now, sometimes a file with nothing in it is a problem if you're trying to learn the reports, for example, because you need something in the file to run reports. In that case, you would want the test drive that already has stuff in it. But if you're starting from scratch, you want nothing in it so you can put those foundational items in place such as the general ledger, such as the items that you're going to be putting in place, and so on and so forth. Because this is a comprehensive problem we're working with at this point in time, the ideal tool would be a free, a new sandbox, a new company file with nothing in it. So possibly the 30-day trial or a student version of the software would be ideal. However, if you can't get access to that, you can still kind of follow along and practice each of the steps in the free test drive file as we go. But also note that the test drive file does not save your work as we move forward. So every time you log out of the test drive file and go back into it, it's going to reset the data, which is going to be a problem if we're trying to work a comprehensive problem over a longer period of time. So let's take a look at some of these tools online. Here we are at the Intuit website. Intuit is the owner of QuickBooks, i-n-t-u-i-t dot com. I like to start here, see the softwares that they have up top. This is usually where they have it. I go into the QuickBooks and then I usually like going all the way down to the bottom because this page might change and you don't know exactly what they're selling on this page because they have different QuickBooks products. So we can go all the way to the bottom where they have products and then I like to go into the QuickBooks online. The bottom of this page has been very similar for a long period of time. We'll go into the QuickBooks online. You can see here they have the free 30-day trial. They have it up top. That's different note than if I go down here then they have the test drive. Now this page has been pretty similar for a while but if you can't find this test drive this way then you might just do a google search for it or whatever search engine is your favorite search engine and search for the test drive but they're different right. So this is going to already have something in it and then this file will be a new company file. Now we'll take a look at the processing or go through the purchase of this free 30-day trial in a second but just note that you should see this toggle screen. If you don't see this toggle screen you're probably in a different web page and you want to go through the process here that we went through and if you can't find it again type it into a google search and that might be easier to get there directly if QuickBooks changes its advertising pages and whatnot and you can't find it right. Sometimes they shuffle them around a bit. It's also a little scary because if you toggle over this way then it's going to change the price. So the general idea here is being well if you take the 30-day trial then we're going to give you a larger price because you got I guess the free 30 days would be the idea but you certainly don't want to be paying $90 a month for QuickBooks when you can go with the 45 and you possibly could look for discounts and whatnot if you want above and beyond that possibly. So the idea of the 30-day trial from a QuickBooks standpoint would be well if you turn on the 30-day trial they want you to be putting in as we go and try to mirror it as best you can into the system and then be locked in by the end of 30 days so you basically have to keep going at that point in time. What we would like to do of course is when you're practicing with it you want to make sure that you're at least running it if you're using your actual data parallel to another accounting system so you're not locked in it's not like it's not like you have your other accounting system that's still there and you're practicing with it for 30 days that's what you want to that's the kind of system that you would want to have or in here we're going to be practicing with it with our data file to do a practice problem with it that's what we're going to do over here we're going to run a practice problem from a new company file and then when you want to actually purchase the software then you're probably not going to renew the test file that you've been working with because you've been testing it with that one but rather possibly start you know another company file possibly looking for discounts at that point in time that would be the general idea so we'll go into that in more detail later but once you're in the company file note that you're going to have to log in to the company file if you're in your actual business file then you still might want to have a sandbox elsewhere as well so whether you're in the practice problem or your business file you still want the sandbox and it's going to be difficult to open the sandbox file sometimes while you're logged into your company file because sometimes the login messes up you can't have like two quickbooks online businesses open at the same time sometimes right so they might be adjusting that they've kind of made it so you can log in to the test drive but I still think you're going to have might have issues trying to log into two different company files at the same time so how do you get around that if you want to practice with the test drive so instead of opening it in this browser I'm going to imagine that we have this open here and in our company file and then I'm going to go to my three dots up top and I'm going to go to the new incognito window this is in google chrome by the way but most browsers browsers have an incognito window and then I can search for the test drive here because there's no cookies that are trying to track whether I'm logged in to into it so I should be able to open two different company files by using instead of two browsers in this case the incognito window so now I can search for quickbooks online test drive and then I'm going to look for the for the result that has into it dot com in the url this is probably the easiest way or fastest way to find it rather than go into their website but some people might feel more comfortable going to the website because you're going to the source there and then I can open this up and verify that I'm not a robot and this way if I was working in my company file in my actual browser I could still have this open in incognito so this would be my actual company file over here and then if I want to test out something over here I still have my sample company file open possibly on another screen if I have two computers or I can toggle between them and that's that could be a really useful tool because you have like a sandbox still open that we can be working with now notice that when I go into this one here if I was to go into the reports for example and look at my profit and loss report I'll go back to two thousand oh one oh one two three twelve three one two three tab there's something in it that's the point so it already it already has stuff in it that's great if you want to deconstruct and figure out what happened meaning if I want to drill down on this and and go into the the source documents this is kind of like auditing right I'm going from the end product drilling down to the source document to see how the thing was put together it's like taking apart an engine to figure out how to put one together again next time and that would analogy and accounting would either be we're going to put the engine together by putting together the financial statements for the next period or how can I put together the whole underlying foundational things necessary to put the engine together so if you're taking an engine analogy uh the the if you're just trying to run another month you're trying to service the engine put the oil in it you know make sure that everything's running smoothly and whatnot in the car as opposed to taking apart the engine to try to put the foundational whole engine together right which is what you're trying to do when you start the new company file and so what we're so what we're going to do in this practice problem is start a whole new company file as though you were either someone who had another software that you were using like a quickbooks desktop that you want to convert to online or some other software that you're going to convert or you've never really had an official accounting software yet and it's your first company file in that case we don't want anything in it that's the point and then what we're going to start putting together is the the chart of accounts here which is going to be you could see we have the chart of accounts is going to be in the transactions and then the chart of accounts so quickbooks gives you an initial chart of accounts but we'll have to kind of trim it down and see what see what happens with the chart of accounts we'll often we'll also need to set up our items where you can see here these are the things that we're going to be selling we'll also have to set up our customers and our vendors we'll have to set up you know our terms our sales tax and and they will have the exact same numbers but you can get what not of each presentation basically as we go and try to be getting as best you can as though we have another accounting company but we're trying to start up already a specific point in time so that's often an issue for bookkeepers oftentimes that are basically working with smaller companies oftentimes that have that that's one of them the big obstacles getting everything set up and running smoothly so that's what we'll we'll dive into in future presentations note if you if you're able to use something where you can get access to a sandbox for 30 days that would be great but remember this is a long practice problem so so if you can get the student file for whatever a longer period of time that would be great and if you're if you're going to commit to pushing forward with the practice problem that way you want to make sure you have the time to try to see if you can crank the whole thing out within within the time frame that you have and if you don't have any access to another file or anything like that you could still follow along with the presentations use the sandbox the the that that the that already has data in it over here uh but but then you won't have the exact same numbers but you can get the gist of each presentation basically as we go and try to mirror it as best you can in the sample company that has been set up already