 QuickBooks Online 2023 new company test file free 30-day trial. Get ready to earn the skills needed to boost our bank books on up with QuickBooks Online 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 at the Intuit website Intuit being the owner of QuickBooks that's at intuit.com we're looking to set up our free 30-day trial so we have a sandbox to be working our test company file. Remember that your other free option to practice with QuickBooks Online is the QuickBooks Online test drive file to find that option. I think it's easiest to just type into your favorite search engine QuickBooks Online test drive but we're going to be on the Intuit website. Intuit has multiple softwares that they own. I'm going to go from here to of course the QuickBooks software remembering that there are two major categories of QuickBooks software desktop and online versions. Their main sales page for QuickBooks will typically be pointing towards the online version of the software but it still looks a little bit different than if we go directly to the online sales page. So I would typically go all the way down you can see you don't have like the free option right here doesn't indicate that but if you go all the way down to the bottom then for a long time for many years they have had their products listed at the bottom of their page and if I go into the products and look at the QuickBooks Online product I get a slightly different sales page than just the QuickBooks overall sales page which does have this try it for 30 days option right here and if I toggle down you also see it in this toggle option down below. Now if for whatever reason that sales page changes and you find it difficult to find the free 30-day trial on the Intuit website itself I would recommend trying just as we saw with the with the QuickBooks online test drive just typing it into your favorite search engine and then looking for the browsers that have an extension of Intuit.com and maybe sometimes it might be easier to find it that way than actually on the website but this method has been applicable for years now and a way that you can find is pretty much the same. So now you've got this toggle button that toggles from the free trial or not having the free trial. Now if you toggle it over it's quite scary because it doubles all the prices down below right. So what we want to make sure that we're doing is planning what we're going to use the trial for. Are we testing out the company file that we're using the trial for so that we can later purchase it or because if we lock ourselves in to putting the data that we really need and putting new data into the system for that 30-day trial then we're pretty much locked in to continuing to use that particular software. So what we want to plan on doing is using the 30-day trial as a testing period and then if we want to purchase the software possibly start another company file or look at our purchasing options you know at that point in time that's going to be our plan here. Now you've got the different software options below the simple start the essentials the plus depending on how big your company is one of these options you know might be better or worse notice they're highlighting the differentiations between the options over here the main things that are going to be important is that we want to be dealing with inventory or possibly we might have inventory needs if you have inventory needs then you're going to go up to the plus which is most popular unless you have more advanced needs where you're going to go into the advanced needs if you have just a service company business and you don't need a lot of different users that's when you might be able to step down from the plus to essentials in the simple start but the plus is the recommended most popular option and so that's the one we want to practice with in our free trial so I'm going to toggle this over to free trial I'm not going to let it scare me that it jumps up to the 85 a month I'm going to choose the option and I'm not going to let it deviate me from taking the trial period so now it has the payroll now I think you can actually add the payroll as a free 30 day trial as well so that you can possibly practice with the payroll but it's not something that that we're going to be really working on at this point if it is something that you want to practice with possibly you can get access to the payroll which is a whole another world and of itself you can do a whole courses multiple courses on different payroll settings and whatnot but I'm going to go ahead and continue without it that's like an add up or a step up kind of feature from like a marketing standpoint and then notice here you've got your free your free trial for 30 days so it's still on the free 30 day trial if you don't have an account then you could set up an account with into it now if you already have an account you might still be able to get access to the free 30 day trial because even though you have an account and possibly a company file you are setting up a new company file and therefore you would have to if you'd have to pay more if you if you were running the two company files separately so we're testing out a new company file which hopefully we can get the 30 day trial on or we need to set up an account so that we can do our 30 day trial that's our plan now notice it may ask for your payment information like credit card information paypal or bank transfer or something like that but hopefully we still have it on the 30 day trial so it's not going to be billing me for it but that will lock us in if we don't cancel it you know before the 30 day trial period is over so that's going to be we'll need possibly a payment option possibly to run the 30 day trial and of course we're going to if we do that need to basically cancel the subscription which into it is a is a big company and whatnot and so you should be there shouldn't be any funny business going on for the most part for to be able to cancel before the 30 day trial period is up okay so for the company address I'm going to put in an address of a house that looked up on Beverly Hills and then of course you want to take a look at the terms of service and make sure you're in alignment with the terms of service now we're going to provide just the basic information we need to get the company file set up some of these items we're going to skip through because they're not essential to first setting up the company file and we can typically go back into them and adjust them later so welcome I'll be glad you're here tell us what you you need help with and so on and so forth I'm going to say next what do you call your business I'm going to call this tests company file company file 100 and we're going to say next and have you been managing your finances no matter where you're coming from we're here to help so nothing I'm I'm getting started this is kind of for informational purpose purposes internally for into it so I'm just going to pick some an item here QuickBooks desktop if you had QuickBooks desktop and you were transferring then you can go through the option of basically transferring the data file spreadsheets or pen and paper and it might help you to kind of walk through how to get up the new company file so in other words you might have a company file if you're setting up a QuickBooks file where you had no prior company file you're setting it up from scratch or you might have a prior accounting system possibly QuickBooks desktop possibly you know peach trees sage 50 or pen and paper and whatnot in which case your question is do you want to be importing all that prior data in some way shape or form into the QuickBooks system or kind of cut in a line drawing a line in the sand at the end of the year or something like that and just entering the balance sheet in essence so that you can go forward into the current year so I'm going to go ahead and say nothing so how long has a file been in business so I'm going to go and say under a year and this is probably for mainly internal purposes I don't think this is going to have an impact on the creation of your statement they're gathering data here generally and so what kind of business is this tell us how your business is set up is it an LLC so limited liability company I'm going to say no and I'm just going to pick sole proprietorship partnership nonprofit escort you would think that these different settings would have a different setting on the chart of accounts that's being given because they would have an impact you would think on the equity section in the chart of accounts but I don't think they even do because QuickBooks gives you this massive chart of accounts no matter what the options you put into many of these items and so I think this again is possibly more for internal purposes for into it to manage their data so what's your industry start by typing the selection of the selected industry and I'm going to say you know I'm going to say construction for this one construction industrial building and we'll say other construction material merchant I want to choose something that has basically inventory in it again you would think that this indication would have some impact primarily on the creation of the generic chart of accounts that they give you but I don't think it really does because I think they give a massive chart of account that's basically trying to encompass a bunch of different type of company files that's different than the desktop version which actually does change the chart of accounts you know based on the industry that that you are choosing so what can so again I think it's more for personal information with the online version here so what's your main role so we can be the owner employee bookkeeper I'm going to say owner for our purposes and go next is test your main source of income we use this info to get you started so again I'm going to say no but this doesn't look like it's going to have an impact on the company file this looks like more personal information that QuickBooks is trying to accumulate so which of these best describes I own and run the business I do freelance I do demand gig work something else again will this have an impact on the on the chart of accounts or anything that the company file is being created I have my I don't think so yeah I think it's this personal information that QuickBooks wants to gather so I'm going to say next uh who works at this business so I fly solo employees contractors other partners I plan to hire now you would think that if you chose to employees for example then you would have payroll set up and it might try to upsell you for payroll or contractors we would need the 1099 forms in order to process the the uh tax returns and whatnot but what will these items necessarily set up payroll or set up the 1099s or something like that no it's giving information I believe to QuickBooks so that they can have that for their data analysis as well as possibly try to upsell you on the payroll possibly and stuff like that so I'm going to say next and does a bookkeeper help you with your books if so we can connect them to your account so if you have a bookkeeper that that helps then of course it would be nice to give them access to the QuickBooks file so I'm going to say no here and they then they say we could find you a bookkeeper what apps do you use for your business so if we have if we're using these apps more and more the online version is becoming nice because you might be able to connect it to some of these apps but I'm not going to connect any apps now if you have apps you need to connect to then it is something that you can do at a later time so you don't have to say well if I don't connect the app then it's all going to fall apart I won't be able to do it later no you can typically do it later I'm going to skip it for now and what do you want to do to do in QuickBooks so I'm going to accept payments get business bank track receive expenses track time track sales send stuff manage and pay bills create estimates possibly manage inventory manage sales tax track miles maybe not that one but those are the items if I don't check these off will I lose the capacity to do those options in QuickBooks I don't think so does it have an impact on how QuickBooks is going to set up I don't think so except for possibly like a an intro like sheet that tells you kind of what to do it does in other words I don't think it's going to change the chart of accounts or most of those set up I think it's more for internal purposes is for Intuit's data analysis so I'm going to say next and what should you do first here are a few ways you can help you get started so get ready to invoice track receipt and expenses so I'm going to say that we'll pay get ready to invoice next okay start getting paid with invoices so we'll help you get started fast and and look good doing it so one give your invoice a template touch so invoices can be used as a data input form but they also of course could be customized for your invoicing process we're not going to dive into that now to send your sample invoice to see what your customer see three set up online payments to let customers pay you on the spot so I'm going to go ahead and skip that at this point because that is something that I can do at a later time and that's not where our focus is invoice from anywhere and get paid faster so get the free QuickBooks mobile app with your subscription see real-time alerts download QuickBooks mobile app so this is another way that you can basically set up your payment options uh with QuickBooks that's not our point of focus now so I'm going to say next on that and you're on your way it says pooling your information personalizing your setup building your checklist great all right so it's we're set up welcome to QuickBooks let's show you around and so on you can take the tour I'm not going to do that I'm going to close this out and then they've got your checklist here so this is all that data input that you put in kind of helps you it gives you basically a checklist to go to go over here and that's the main thing it's basically given you so in my opinion it kind of looks like QuickBooks wants to gather data and and then and then you know kind of make a thing that acts like the data is actually being used for your help with checklist but it's not really adjusting most of the files meaning like it's not really adjusting the chart of accounts and stuff that we'll take a look at so I'm not going to dive into the checklist and any detail here so I'm going to close the checklist I'm going to say close the checklist so done with that and then the major navigation fields here are on the left we've got of course our information on the left this is where we'll typically go when we want to enter new data or review data we can go to the new button this is where that we have the forms to enter data and then we can go into the sections over here which I would categorize by cycle or by vendors customers and employees vendors section customer section employees section tracking data for who we buy stuff from who we get money from customers and employees and then our settings and stuff are over here under the cog now also note there's two main views that QuickBooks has been testing out for some time there's the business view and the accountant view when you first set up a company file it puts it in a business view which is less professional in terms of terminology and I think it's supposed to make you maybe feel more comfortable with these less technical terms I don't think the technical terms are any more difficult than the less technical terms I think they're trying to it seems to me like the terminology is trying to appeal to people that are more casually minded you know as they're doing right so the home page is the get things done page the business overviews busy bookkeeping we have bookkeeping and then this one is quite casual language get paid and pay area instead of like your customers and your vendors and that kind of customer leads commerce payrolls pretty straightforward banking services and taxes as opposed to if I go to the drop down on the cog up top and switch to the accounting view which is the more traditional view so this is probably the view that actually most of the presentations that you would find and help that you would find is in and it has now instead of home page you've got a dashboard right which is kind of a more formal term banking sales instead of get paid and paid we have the sales area still not the most formal term but I would call this like your customer area typically cash flows expenses instead of get instead of pay and get paid area which is I would call like the vendor cycle section and then you've got your reports down here so it's a little bit more stuff on on the tab they didn't compact as much stuff into one tab like for example the sales which is the paid and the get paid gets grouped in with the expenses when you go to the business view so if I go to the business view get paid and pay basically combine those two things so now you've got this sub sub area which has these two things kind of combined in it so they've kind of condensed some of the things on the first set of options and then expanded some stuff on the second set of options but the bottom line is the software works in essence the same between the the two views I tend to prefer the accountant view and I think that's the view that you will see more like more often when you're seeing people do presentations and video form but if you're using the business view if you like that we might try to toggle back and forth between the two and note that you should be able to find the two you should be able to toggle back and forth and you want to get used to the fact that things could move around because at any time in the future QuickBooks could just pick one or the other that they like best and just stop the other one which you would think would have happened already because they're basically beta testing these two views putting them side by side to see which is preferred and you would think once they find the preferred view they would drop the other one because that you would think would simplify you know their side of things greatly so I don't know maybe it could be that that the that the business view might work better on like a mobile phone or something like that is another thing I'm thinking as to why why the two views maybe maybe the traditional view is something that people tend to like on a computer whereas the other view works quite well on a mobile phone possibly or something like that but that's where we stand so we've got our file set up now I just want to take a quick look at the chart of accounts which is under the accounting in the accounting view and I have to say see chart of accounts and so now they've given us a chart of accounts notice we didn't we had no options say don't give me a chart of accounts they gave us a chart of accounts and it's a very long like look at all the equity accounts usually equity has like one to five accounts right retained earnings is like equity possibly draws or if you know but now they've got all these different equity accounts and so all these different costs to good sold accounts so what they've tried to do it looks to me is like they've got this massive chart of accounts that hopefully will encompass the needs of many different types of businesses so now as you start a new company file one of the things that we need to do is try to try to handle this chart of accounts try to trim it down to what we what we need but that's going to be our major our major starting point