 QuickBooks Online 2023. Set up 30-day free trial to practice bank feeds. Get ready to start moving on up with QuickBooks Online 2023. First, let's think about a few different options that might be available for accessing QuickBooks Online possibly for free. Support Accounting Instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files, and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. The first option the one we're going to be setting up here is the free 30-day trial period. There's also a free student version, free test drive, then you might want to take a look at discounts on the purchase of the software. Note I recommend keeping separate in your mind practicing with QuickBooks Online and actually doing your bookkeeping with QuickBooks Online which can be more difficult with the online version of the software than the desktop version because with the desktop version you can set up multiple company files to practice with without being charged more per company file whereas with the online version you are typically charged per company file that you're setting up therefore that leads to a problem oftentimes of people already having their business file set up wanting to practice but ideally to practice you might want a new company file without data in it so you can practice the setup process and of course you don't want to mess up the data that's in your company file. So that leads us to our different options that we have here. Whether or not you already have a company file set up you might be able to set up another company file utilizing the free 30-day trial planning on using this company file just to practice with that's the mindset we're in when we go through this practice problem. The free student version is kind of similar to the 30-day trial but you might be able to get more than 30 days which would be great so if you qualify as a student for Intuit the owner of QuickBooks you might want to look into that option. The free test drive is available to everyone you can find it in the browser we'll show you how to search for that it has some pros and cons it already has data in it which can be quite useful for certain things but when you're trying to set up like bank feeds and set up a new company file it's not the ideal situation you would like to have a nice fresh company file to be working with and then of course when you purchase the software for your own personal bookkeeping which you might do after you do the practice and end the 30-day trial to set up another company file then you might look into discounts with QuickBooks providers and CPAs and accountants and see what the best purchasing options are for your bookkeeping needs okay let's get into it here we are in our browser so we could search for Intuit I'm going to go intuit so that's intuit dot com Intuit dot com Intuit being the owner of QuickBooks you got the different softwares it's have it's been fairly similar for some time in that they have their different softwares that they own up top now note that if you want to go into the test drive I would recommend not going into it by the owner's website but rather just search in the search engine and I would recommend using an incognito window because that allows you to log into your company file as well as that test drive without messing things up I'm in Google Chrome so I'm going to choose the three dots in the browser incognito window just to show you this other option so you got QuickBooks QuickBooks online test drive so this is one of the free options that they have I would just type it into your browser I suggest using incognito window or another browser other than the one you're going to open your QuickBooks file and then search for the URL that has intuit dot com in it so you have some confidence that this is the correct location and then you've got your test drive I'm using the United States version I'm going to verify that I'm not a robot and then we go into the test drive here so there it is this this has some information in it already it's not great for starting out a new company file but this is a great option for just practicing with and you might want to have it open even as you're working in your actual bookkeeping so you can test things out over here but to do that you got to open it in another browser or in an incognito window so you can see how easy it is to get to that kind of free option the other free option we want to get into is that free 30 day trial so now I'm going to go to the QuickBooks icon up top and usually what they're advertising in here will be the online version that's the one that they're focused on but I like to go all the way to the bottom and for some reason their sales page is a little bit different if I go to my products down here and they've had this item at the bottom for some time it's like it's looked very similar for some time and then in the products I want to go to QuickBooks online so I can zero in on the product I'm focused in and then note here it has has try it for free 30 days so you got the 30 day trial here if I scroll down here's your options here's the toggle that I'm used to seeing they've had that for some time note on the prior page it wasn't there the toggle and they might change this their web page has been changing over time so they might try to remove this little toggle at some point at which time you might just search into your search engine I think it would be easier to find the free trial possibly even outside of the Intuit website just typing in QuickBooks online free trial and and you might and then look for the Intuit website now it's a little bit scary to set up the free trial because when I toggle to the right then the prices jump up so that's what I'm talking about by using the free trial as a practice file because QuickBooks is saying hey look if you take the 30 day free trial it's going to cost you more after you start after you start rolling forward but my plan is that I'm going to I'm going to use the free trial to practice with to see if I want it if I like it and then I'm going to possibly set up another company file possibly with the help of an accountant to get a discount or me or something like that when I set up the company file so I'm not going to be too frightened by the fact the plot the price jumped up here because I'm going to I'm going to cancel it before the 30 days is up is the plan all right so I'm going to I'm going to go over here and then I'm going to use the plus version you can practice with the simple start or the essentials you can look at the differences the differences are highlighted in bold down below you can connect three sales channels that's one of the newer newer kind of things we might have a whole section on that we get into that later so include three users that's one of the major differences and over here you got five users and then inventory is one of the big differences to get up to the plus but the plus is kind of like the default that use it was kind of the one that that most people were using so when we use the free trial I'm going to use the plus and we'll talk a little bit about that inventory if you don't have inventory then you might not need the plus but it'll all of them will look in essence the same uh except that the add the higher ones will have some options that the lower ones do not clearly so uh so the difference between desktop and online is quite different they're like totally different softwares the difference between simple start uh essentials plus in advance is kind of like the same software but they turn on more features right so it's pretty much the same stuff all right so I'm going to choose this one and so then uh continue so then they also have the payroll option so I think you can get a free 30 day trial for the payroll as well but we shouldn't need payroll and this practice problem so I'm not going to turn it on but I think if you wanted to practice with the payroll you want to make sure to turn it off but before the end of the time frame you might be able to look into the 30 day trial with the payroll but I'm just going to continue here and so now we've got your total uh your total after after 30 days is 85 dollars again they're trying to scare us with the 85 but I'm going to cancel it before the 30 days hopefully and so your plan here it says free trial for 30 days and so I'm going to say all right that's good to go good to go on that now if you already have an account then you could give them the account and you should still even if you have an account possibly be able to get the 30 day trial because you're setting up another a different you know company file uh and if you don't have if you don't have an into it account then you can of course set up your into it account here so it may require the payment options here so again if you put in the payment options you got to make sure that you stop it before the uh before the end of the 30 days for the company address I'm just going to pick an address from a Beverly Hills 85 million dollar home here one two one zero benedict canyon drive and this is going to be a 90210 Beverly Hills Beverly Hills well hold on a second populated all right Beverly Beverly Hills California boom and then okay and continue so then it's going to try to scare you again because it's saying hey we're giving you you're going to get charged way more after the 30 days and so they got the green buttons to buy it or continue with the little button down here that they're trying to hide at the bottom but we're going to continue because we're going to cancel before the 30 days is up hopefully that's the plan that's the plan so i'm going to go into the to the continue and now we've got our setup process so it says welcome we're glad you're here uh here's what we'll do together right now tell us what you need uh help with we'll ask a few questions to get to know your business we'll bring in your transactions and organize your money so i'm going to set this up i'm going to do somewhat of the bare minimum to set it up because we can't set up many things like bank feeds and applications afterwards and i think that's actually kind of easier to do oftentimes so i'm going to i'm going to call the company file bank feeds practice file so so i'm just going to give it a generic name here uh this is my legal name i'm not going to check it off here if it legal name versus doing business as for example might be useful for for some of the reports that you're putting together and things like tax returns and whatnot payroll so how how have you been managing your finances nothing i'm getting started quickbooks desktop now if you choose quickbooks desktop then it might ask you to try to convert the desktop version to online so if you're using a prior software then the question is do you want to pull in the data from all that prior software or do you want to just start from this point going forward in the current software just entering the financial statement data from that point going forward so i'm not going to use that sage is another software other bookkeeping software spreadsheets or pen i'm just going to say other i'm just getting started let's say this is i'm going to say next so what's your industry so the industry uh could be a general kind of industry now note with the industry you would think possibly that they would they would change your chart of account based on the industry and uh and change the name of the accounts and stuff like that but it seems to me that they don't do a lot of differences between the different industries with the with the chart of account that just give you one generic chart of account so this is almost more for internal purposes than any difference that they're going to make to the company file as far as i can tell so my general rule here would of course to be the picking the industry that's closest to you what i'd like to do i'd like to be able to say i would i would like to not pick any industry because i want to try to build my chart of accounts as i do the data input just to show how the bank feeds work most fully but notice i'm not even going to pick an industry i'm going to try to skip it and i still i think they're still going to give me the same chart of account which is kind of different than the desktop version because on the desktop version there's a big difference you actually get to see the different chart of accounts that they are recommending based on the industry that you're picking and you can pick one to have no chart of accounts so you can build it from scratch so i kind of i kind of wish they would take a chapter out of the desktop version and customize that a little bit more give you an option to not have this giant chart of accounts or you know customize it a little bit more per industry so in any case i'm skipping that there's my rant on that one what kind of business is this so you got sole proprietorship partnership not for profit organization now some items might be necessary to have these differences internally for tax reporting and what not purpose is but again they're not really changing the chart of accounts depending on these you would think that the sole proprietor chart of account would have owner's equity and not retained earnings a partnership would have multiple partnership accounts not for profits the names would change according to it saying it's not for profit even though not for profits or money hungry just like anything else as corporation and corporations you would think that they would have you know the retained earnings so in any case i'll just pick the sole proprietorship next and it says how does your business make money we tailor our account categories based on your answers so provide services sell products and i'm going to pick both of those again they say here that they categorize our chart of accounts based on our answers but i think they're just going to give us it seems like they just give one big long chart of accounts no matter what i pick that's what it looks like to me i mean i'm just i'm just saying so i'm going to go to the next one what's your main rule at bank feeds practice so we can say where the owner employee bookkeeper other i'm just going to say the owner here this is probably for bookkeeping or internal use of quickbooks they just want more of our personal information it looks like here i'm not sure that is going to change anything in terms of the actual account or the file that's what i'm saying who works at this business help us understand so i fly solo employees so i'm just going to say maybe contractors other partners again this looks more like information that quickbooks wants to gather rather than information that might help us build the company file so what apps do you use for business so these are some standard apps that that might be integrated so i'm not going to worry about that now because that's not our focus of the practice problem and you can add the apps after so if you have apps you need to deal with you don't have to do it at this point i'm going to skip it so what do you want to do today so set up quickbooks to start using it right away explore quickbooks before i set it up i'm going to set it up to start it right away let's begin setting up things uh you care about most okay let's do that list your accounts and see everything in one place so quickbooks will automatically bring in transactions and save hours of manual entry securely link your bank or credit card select accounts you'd like to bring in see what your cash flow looks like now this is the bank feed link we're gonna do that but again i don't really like doing it in this setup process i kind of like doing it once the file set up so i can see what accounts i'm dealing with and whatnot so i'm going to skip this and we'll actually link to the banks once the the file is set up what do you want to set up next uh invoice customers look professional and get paid track receipts and bills so i'm not going to get into the custom invoice is it at this point in time i'm going to skip this information and what is everything you want to set up your choice is help personalize your setup you can still use every part of quickbooks so you got organized money in and out i'm going to do that except online payments uh i don't i'm maybe they're going to try to sell us on their on their quickbooks thing uh financing or bank accounts and whatnot to do that so i'm not going to do that yet invoice customers i'm going to do that and again by checking these off i don't think they're adding a whole lot except maybe they might adjust the flowchart to the company file i think it's for internal uses for quickbook wants to know what we're doing for their purposes more than ours mainly but whatever track time manage inventory protect my business with insurance that looks like an upsell to me if i check that off they're going to try to sell me insurance it seems like track mileage i'm not going to do that get a business bank account get i'm not going to track receipt and expenses pay employees track sales manage sales tax let's do that next what else we got the effortless way to pay your team free 30 day trial of quickbooks payroll so now they're trying to upsell on the payroll uh and so you could set up you if you want to practice with the payroll within your free 30 day trial you could set that up and that's another nice thing to practice with but we are practicing the bank feeds and i'm not going to i'm not going to i'll touch on payroll and how it relates to bank feeds but not getting into to payroll so yes i'd like to payroll premium free for 30 days i mean it's free for 30 days i can cancel it but do i need it i don't think i need it i'm just going to say no let's go to the next okay we're almost ready to dive in that's great i was going to dive in before the water was in the pool but now that it's it's much better if there's water in there all right so it says welcome to quickbooks let's show you around so you can take the tour i'm not going to take the tour i'll kind of i'll kind of so they they give you your setup checklist all up here uh the business information get ready to to invoice send personalized invoices so you give you some information on how to personalize the invoices and whatnot i'm going to go ahead and see if i can close this setup i'm going to say close the checklist pour five or done setting up close the checklist close it close it all right there it is now if i go to my chart of accounts it's going to be down here in the bookkeeping i'm in the business view by the way if i go into my chart of accounts just to see what they put in here see i didn't even choose i didn't even choose an industry and they gave me this big old chart of accounts which looks exactly like the last problem i did where i did choose an industry so i really it looks to me like they're not doing anything different based on the chart of accounts that they give basically to everyone which i don't know why they do that it's so much better on the desktop version but we're going to we're going to go in here and i mean i'm not saying the desktop version is better at everything the bank some of the bank feeds are better on on the online and stuff i'm just saying i don't know why they don't customize that a little bit more but i'm just complaining i'm just whining a little bit it's not a big deal no worries so we're going to do that we're going to go into that we'll and we'll set up our bank feeds in a future presentation and we'll dive into it uh and a bit more so we've got our company file we've got 30 days we got 30 days to knock this one out let's do it