 QuickBooks Desktop 2023, company preferences, desktop view, finance charge, and general preferences. Let's do it within 2-its QuickBooks Desktop 2023. 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. Here we are in QuickBooks Desktop. If you've been following along, we set up our practice file, get great guitars in a prior presentation. If you have another company file that you're following along with, that's okay because we are in essence simply going over the preferences which can be found in the added drop-down preferences down below, noting that it's useful to look at a company file that has just been set up for the preferences because then we can see what the default preferences are. And when we might need to change those default preferences when setting up a new company file depending on our particular needs. Let's go into the preferences. Last time we left off on the checking account, we're moving down on the left-hand side to the desktop view, two tabs up top. The default is the multiple windows view and then you've got the one window. Now I typically keep the default here, however this other view could be useful. Note if I close this back out, I've got the home page open which you could see by going to the company drop-down or you could get there and home page. Also note that I always have the open windows hide icon bar open windows on the left-hand side in this format. Now note that you've got your three items up top here as well as the program itself up top here and therefore you could kind of move this around in a similar way as you can move the entire program around up top. You can maximize it, you can close the window, you can minimize the window. So if I maximize the window then I would still see these three icons here and these up top and usually I would then navigate around by having the open windows open. And if I want multiple things open at one time, I can open something else and toggle between the open windows. That's what I prefer to do but you can also toggle this way and go through the two windows and have a side-by-side view and so on in that format. Now if I change the edit and preferences to this one then I could say okay and you can see I don't have the same kind of three preferences. I've only got the closing of the window and I actually kind of like that because I typically toggle this way. So that might be a useful view even though I don't usually use it. So I'm going to go back to the other ones just because that's what I usually do but just be aware you might like that change. Desktop view, save when closing the company so when you close the company file it's going to save what you have open. It usually opens all the stuff that you had open before. That's what I usually keep as the default although once again you might not like that. You might say hey look I don't want you to save the desktop view and maybe just open up the homepage every time I open or something like that. So I think it might be useful to experiment with these because I have worked with people that have all this stuff open and they never close all the stuff. Maybe if it closed it after they open every time it might be saving time for them. So save current desktop. You can save the current view if you like to have whatever is open at that point in time and then save that every time you open the company file. You can experiment with that. I'm going to keep it on the default. Show homepage when opening a company file. So the homepage as we can see here is this page and I like having it open every time. Once you get used to the homepage and you've visualized the flowcharts maybe then you don't need the homepage and you don't like it to open every time. And if you want to get there you can always go to the company dropdown and homepage this way but I still like it so I keep that on as the default. And so we got the switch to the color icons light background on top icon so I could I could experiment with that and you could switch the formatting of that. So here we have that I'm going to go back to the original and say edit and say switch color icon light background on top of icon bar I'm going to go keep it at the default. And then you've got the windows settings. Now these two look like they're in QuickBooks but they're really just go into the display settings within your windows system. So if I go into here then it's going to open up my display settings in my actual computer and I'm on a Windows computer. So I would typically go to those settings this way by by just searching for my settings for example and then go into into my settings settings and then adjust anything I wanted to hear such as the display settings which we brought up to 150. That's where we're working at at this point in time and then you could go into the sound settings and so on and do whatever you want to make your changes to the sound setting as well. So I'm going to close that back out and then company file color scheme you could change the color scheme so you got different color schemes like you can make it this nice forest green. It makes you feel nice and calm like you're meditating in a jungle or something a forest of some kind. I'm going to keep it at the default because I think that's most familiar for people when they open QuickBooks. And so I want to I want to do what most people are familiar with but that obviously that could be kind of nice to change your change your color scheme to customize it a bit. So we got the company preferences select the features that you want to show on the home page. Now notice these up top might have to do with you can turn them on and off and just remove them from your flow chart possibly or add them. These down here are going to be preferences that are tied to actual preferences. So let's just get an idea of that if I say OK. This is my flow chart for the vendor cycle my payments my bills in essence. This is my customer flow chart. And this is my employee flow chart. So I might have for example in my customers area maybe I don't use my sales receipt because I always use invoices. So I don't really need this form. Maybe I feel like that's cluttering. So I could say let's remove something like that form because I don't use it. So I could say get rid of the sales receipt. And then I could say OK and say OK. And then I got to open up my home page again because it needs to refresh the home page. And now you could see that sales receipt icon is gone. And then I can go to the edit dropdown company preferences. And I got the statement the statements and statement charges. So that's going to be this item you might not use that. That's like when you enter items directly like instead of using the form. So you could do if you don't use that at all you can remove it if you would like. Vendor enter bills and pay bills. So that's going to be on the vendor side enter and the pay bills. So then these down here have to do with actual preferences. So the estimates is going to be this item here. If you want to remove the estimates you got to turn the estimates off. So if I go to estimates that's going to take me then I'm going to save what I did up top. OK. It closed everything up. I got to go to the jobs down here. And this is another preference. And then I would if I turn off the estimates then that will remove the tab. But I'm also removing the capacity to have estimates. So we're going to go through these preferences in the future. So I'm not actually going to toggle that now. I just want to note it here. If I go back to the desktop. If I do the sales tax same thing the sales tax is currently off. We're going to have to turn it on later. But to toggle this sales tax icon on or off will actually will need to turn the settings on. So if I click that it takes me to the settings for sales tax which I can then adjust. Right. So if I go back to the desktop view then I've got the inventory which is currently off. If I close this let me open up my home page again so we can see these things. So so now we've got the inventory is a whole nother line item up top. So we'll actually turn that on later. So I'm going to go to the edit drop down preferences. And so the inventory if I go into the inventory if I was to turn it on takes me to items and inventory which we'll do later. I'll turn it on just so you can see the difference now and say OK. And say OK now I've got to open up my home page again. And now you can see this line item up top tracking the inventory. So if you see this line item up top they have inventory on which would imply that they have a perpetual inventory system potentially set up. If you don't see it then they don't have the perpetual inventory system and you can turn that on by either going to the preferences item inventory directly going there or you can see it on the home page where it's indicated in the desktop view inventory is now on. If I click on inventory it'll take me to this page. I'm going to turn it back off so it's back to where we were before as the default preferences and then when we get down to it we'll take a look at it again. So if I say OK OK company preferences then it's back off that line item is now gone edit preferences again we're going to go back on to the desktop view. And so that's I this payroll item if I go into payroll takes me down to the payroll items here so we'll deal with payroll in a future presentation and that will set up this payroll item below payroll is a similar thing. This back out. Notice there's no lying down here for the payroll. There's no entering of the payroll. This indicates that they don't have payroll turned on at all. If we turn payroll on which is an add on feature typically you have to pay for it or use the manual payroll. We will use the manual payroll in a future point in the practice problem for which is great for practice. Not what you want to do in practice when you're actually working a file because you don't have the same kind of double checks but it's really good to actually visualize what is happening. So we'll turn it on later but I won't do it now because we're not there yet because that's going to be down here in the payroll items. So we'll keep the defaults. And then if I go back here we've got the time tracking. So time tracking is here time and expenses that's going to be this item and that is going to have an impact possibly on the payroll because it enters employees time and it also will have an impact on the billing if we're using like a job cost system. We'll get into that in more detail in a future presentation. So let's go back into these we're going to go into the desktop view. So that is the desktop view on those items. Okay let's go to the finance charges. Now the finance charges there's nothing in the my preferences company preferences finance charges when you when you are charging a company like for an invoice you enter an invoice they owe you money then you typically are going to say hey you're going to pay me whatever my terms are 30 days or whatever if they don't pay you after the 30 days you might say okay now I need I want to try to charge them penalties for late payments or interest or something charges after that point in time and that's when you might set up the finance charges. We're not going to add them to our practice file they're off by default but that would be the idea. So the annual interest rate you'd set the interest rate to do that the minimum finance charge. So you might say I have some baseline which would be the minimum if the finance charges below that like it's a dollar or something. I'm not going to bother adding the finance charge. You could have a grace period. Meaning the finance charge will typically happen after the due date meaning if you bill someone or invoice someone then they're going to owe it to you typically at the due date after 30 days or whatever. And then if you want it to be greater than 30 days you can extend the time frame to like a grace period of five days before you start a finance charge the finance charge account. So if you were to charge finance charge maybe you would have then finance income or penalty income or something like that an income account that you would have to assign the added fees for because you didn't really bill or invoice for those items. They are now added revenue that you are getting for the late payments and then assess finance charges on overdue finances from the due date meaning you enter it. The bill or invoice that you give to the client when you did the work typically it's going to be due 30 days later or whatever and then you would typically start the finance charge you would think from the due date but you can do it from the invoice or bill date. Then you got Mark finance charges invoice to be printed. So then we've got the general items to preferences. So this is some of these are kind of personal preferences. So they might be dependent on your personal needs as opposed to like the needs of the company by industry. So let's go through these we've got the pressing enter moves between fields. So if I say OK and I was to go into an invoice usually I tab between fields and that's what I typically do. But but then you might have entered to go between fields so that you can toggle and play with those settings to determine the data input as you enter the information into the system. So I'm going to keep the default myself here as off. It's off by default automatically open drop down list when typing. So for example if I'm entering an invoice and I start typing in a customer name I don't have any customers set up yet. So there is no default. But if there were it would start to put that in if I go down here and add let's add like an account to to a to a deposit maybe form. And if I start typing an account down here then you get the drop down that drop down. And usually people like it because it makes it easier to find an account. And and so I'll keep that on by default. OK beep when recording a transaction that's often annoying. So but it can give you an indication that the transaction has been recorded sometimes when you enter things and you don't finalize the transaction. Then you think it's been finalized and it hasn't and that becomes the problem and the beep might help but I don't like it. So I'm turning it off automatically place decimal point. So if I was to enter data into the system an invoice for example then I'm trying to enter a rate. If I say this but I don't have a decimal on I got to say point five or something like that. If you if some people think that that entering a decimal takes another keystroke and it's a little bit faster if you're dealing with decimals all the time to just say four four five oh and have it place the decimal after the four four instead of assuming it this way. So that could drive you crazy if you're used to the other way of doing it whatever that way is. Some people really like that so you can play with that data input might make your typing a little bit faster if you automatically place the decimal. So worn when so you could toggle that on and off and see what it does worn when editing a transaction. So when you edit the transaction it's going to give you a warning that you did edit it. I typically keep that on by default and it is the default bring back all one time messages. So we're going to keep that off by default so it doesn't kind of annoy us hopefully with the messages turn off pop up messages for products and services. So I think that's usually a good thing to turn on otherwise it might be giving you messages such as do you want to buy more checks. Do you want to turn on payroll and that kind of stuff. And so I'll turn it off. It might give you those messages when you when it's useful. I mean it might be like yeah I could use another check right now but it could be annoying after a while showed tool tips for for clipped text. So sometimes the little tips can be useful but they might get annoying after a while in which case you could turn it off. Worn when deleting a transaction or unused list item. So if you're deleting something it usually gets you an extra warning which I think is a good little safety control. It can be a little bit of annoying but it gives me a little bit of cushion in case I click the wrong thing. So I kind of like to have that on then we've got automatically recall information. So this is usually a nice tool because when we enter data into the system we want it to be able to be consistent. And so one way it can be consistent is we can kind of memorize what we did in the prior transaction and mirror what we did last time this time. So automatically remind account or transaction information. You can either have automatically recall last transaction for this name or pre fill accounts for vendor based on last on past entries. I kind of like the first one I believe is my preferred preference. You can go back and forth between these two. So I'm going to I'm going to adjust to this one. I might adjust it later but but I think that's the one I like. And so if I say OK and say you're entering like a check then if I was to enter a vendor then I would like it to kind of fill out down below what happened in the prior prior transaction to that vendor. Meaning I want to assign at least to the same expense account so that I know where I assigned it last time so I can be consistent going forward. And if I memorize the last transaction completely it will also give me the dollar amount. The dollar amount might not be useful. The memo might not be useful but I find it pretty easy to delete those things and and it does automatically populate the expense account pretty clearly that way. That's why I like it. So I'm going to go edit preferences. So then we've got default date to use for new transactions. Use today's date. So if you're working real time then you want to oftentimes use today's date every time you enter a new transaction. Use the last interdate as default is the default and that's good for us because we're working a practice problem. And therefore I don't want it to always default back to today's date. That's going to be very annoying. Also in practice if you're working real time today's date is great but sometimes you're entering transactions for a period of time in the past. You might have a client that comes in and says I need you to do all year's worth of data input or something like that so I can get my taxes done. Well now you're in a real world situation not just a practice problem in which case this setting will not be useful to you because you need to set the proper date as you're entering the data into the system. So I'm going to keep this one of course. Keep custom item information when changing item in transaction. So I like to ask you but if that gets annoying and you get the pop-ups when it asks you you can say always or never on those preferences. Go into the company preferences. Show portions of an hour as a decimal so you can have portions of an hour point to or you could show the minutes at the twelve. So this off this becomes kind of an issue when you're dealing with time because you could show the time if you're saying that something is is a half hour. So it was 10 and a half hour or 10 10 and 12 minutes. You could say 10 and 12 minutes but because 12 minutes is 60 minutes when you convert it to a decimal. Then you know if you pull the trusty calculator out trusty calculator then 12 12 out of 60 is point two. So there's kind of a messy conversion going in the time because you can show it as 12 minutes or point 20 percent of an hour. So I'm going to keep it at the default always show years as four digits. So that's going to be displayed here if you want to adjust that you can toggle it on and off and keep in the default. Never update name information when saving the transactions. I'm going to keep the default there. I saved transactions before printing. So when you're printing the transaction notice when you enter a transaction you could like if I entered an invoice then I could save it down below. But if I don't hit the save button it hasn't really saved it. If I print it up top I still would think that I would want that to trigger this transaction to be saved because I don't want to print something that's not actually being recorded. So I would think you would want that you know on as the default edit references. So then we've got automatically I'm on company preferences. So save transactions manage login settings. So log off every time a user closes the company or exits. That's what I usually keep on as a default because I think that's you know a good internal control so someone else can't just go in and open up the QuickBooks file. So when you leave the computer especially in an office setting it's useful to log off which means when you got to log in you got to log back in. But that's a pretty good internal control. But you could keep our users logged in for so much of a time period making it a little bit faster for you to work. So if you're at home or you feel secure that no one's going to you know come mess with your computer or anything like that. I don't trust anyone these days personally but dang coworkers over there are going to try to hack into my computer and mess up my mess up my decimal settings. They're going to set my decimal settings messed up. It's going to drive me crazy. So I just make it like this way. But if you're feeling comfortable you could change that. So after this time period users will automatically be logged in. You can kind of play with that and check your settings out. Those are the general settings. We'll continue on with the settings next time.