 QuickBooks Online 2024 Lists. Get ready and some coffee because we're diving into it with Intuit's QuickBooks Online. Here we are online in our browser searching for QuickBooks Online Test Drive looking for the result that has Intuit.com and the URL Intuit being the owner of QuickBooks selecting the United States version of the software and verifying that we're not a robot. Opening up our major financial statement reports like we do every time reports on the left hand side in the favorites. We're going to be right clicking on the balance sheet open link in new tab right click on the profit and loss open link in new tab up to those new tabs up top closing the hamburger for the balance sheet tab into the right closing the hamburger for the profit and loss otherwise no one is the income statement. Let's go back to the first tab that's the data input process or that's the process we go through every time so that we can do data input on the first tab and look at the result of that data input on the reports in the tabs to the right. We now want to give an overview and brief explanation of the concept of lists for QuickBooks. We're going to give a list of the items that are within the list a brief explanation of those items in future presentations. We'll go into more detail on some of the most important list type items. We also might give a little bit of history on where the lists concept may have came up within QuickBooks. But first we want to compare and contrast what we have seen in the past and what we are working with now in prior presentations. We have mainly been working 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 but that's okay whatever because our merchandise is better than their stupid stuff anyways. Like our trust me I'm an accountant product line. Yeah it's paramount that you let people know that you're an accountant. Because apparently we're among the only ones equipped with the number crunching skills to answer society's current deep complex and nuanced questions. If you would like a commercial free experience consider subscribing to our website at accountinginstruction.com or accountinginstruction.thinkific.com under this plus button looking at the broad accounting cycle and then within that cycle the center cycles or cycles within the cycles the customer or sale cycle the vendor cycle or the expense or purchase cycle and the employee cycle or the payroll cycle. So this plus button up top is where we will typically go when we do the data input forms that are going to happen periodically. So this is where you're going to go most often in the normal accounting process within QuickBooks and then on the left hand side we have gone into the center so we can track the recording of those and better manage our communication with the people we deal with such as our customers that can be under the sales center here or the revenue cycle and the vendors under the vendor cycle and the payroll area. Now when we set up a new company file then oftentimes we have to deal with those underlying foundational items which we often call lists from a QuickBooks terminology standpoint. Note that that list concept is more specific even then in accounting concepts like if you go and learn accounting in a textbook they might not call all of these things lists. The reason we call them lists in QuickBooks in part is most likely because in the desktop version when we have the dropdowns up top these were housed under the lists now they're under the cog up top and we have all of our lists here so this is one place you can go to find them. Now many of these items within the lists will also be able to be located other ways as well so you might not always go into them with lists but they have been the term list has kind of solidified itself and so we still use that within QuickBooks even though the online version might house these lists in different ways than where the desktop version have them all under the dropdown of lists but the general underlying theme of the list concept that could be useful to understand going forward would be that these are the things you have to set up foundationally. When you set up a new company file you have to set up most of these list type items first so that you can then do the normal day to day process. If on the other hand you're going into a company file you got hired somewhere let's say and you're going to a new company they're already going to have the system set up so the lists will already be populated and you're going to learn the routine of entering the transactions generally with the plus button and managing the communications with your customers employee vendors and the centers. So let's go into the lists and we'll just take a brief look at them and then we'll get into more detail on each of them or some of the main ones in future presentations when we do the section or course where we start a new company file then of course we'll set up more of these lists from the beginning. So the big one is going to be the chart of accounts. The chart of accounts is the underlying foundational thing. Let's see if I can right click and open it in a new tab. So there it is it's opening over here I'll pull it to the left. So here is our chart of accounts. We've taken a look at many of these accounts or how to create them and use them when we did the data input forms you can actually create new accounts as we've been seeing when we create an invoice or bill and so on and so forth but generally you'd like the chart of accounts to be set up before you start doing the data input because it's going to make the data input a lot easier that way although there are exceptions to that if you're doing a bank feed situation and you might want to set up your chart of accounts as you do the initial month of bank feeds or something like that we'll talk more about that in a future course or section on the bank feeds. Note that when we start a new company file which we'll do in another course or section we'll start a new company file then QuickBooks will generally give you a chart of accounts as a default starting point but note that if you're used to the desktop version the desktop version has some pretty specific chart of accounts depending on the information you give to the system which will be specific, industry specific to the industry that you provide to QuickBooks whereas the online QuickBooks they basically give you the same chart of account or that's what they've been doing for a long time no matter what information you give them about the type of company you are whether you're sole proprietorship or corporation and whatnot and therefore their chart of accounts tends to be quite long and there's too much stuff in it really in the chart of accounts so we'll see that, so you're going to have to trim it back a lot often times if you're starting a new company file and that's one of the things you want to think about when you first start the company file but the chart of accounts will be underlying foundational things necessary every time we do a data input form because every transaction that we input invoices, receive payment, expense, bill will impact at least two accounts by accounts we mean the accounts in the chart of accounts and they will then be populated of course these chart of accounts items on the balance sheet and income statement as we record transactions to them we'll talk about the chart of accounts in detail in a future presentation we have the recurring transactions I'm going to right click and open that in a new tab so these are transactions that we're memor- are going to happen on a routine type of basis so to try to automate the system if the transaction is going to be reoccurring we can make the reoccurring transactions we may have another course or section talking about that in and of itself in detail and then we've got the products and services this is the other big one that I'm going to right click and open it in a new tab hold on a second did it work? where does that right click open in a new tab and so this is the other big one we might talk about in and of itself in a future presentation but the general idea being that these are the things that you're going to be selling so you have to set these up so that when I hit the drop down and I make an invoice or I make a sales receipt these are the things that will populate in the invoice and sales receipt the goal being I want to make the data input forms the invoice, the sales receipt, the bills as easy as possible so that I can hire someone possibly that doesn't know bookkeeping and whatnot to do the data, they could do the data input without understanding the journal entry and what's going on with that kind of stuff therefore you want to make your items down here products and services that you sell as clear as possible so that they will record the transactions automatically when you enter them into the system also if you deal with sales tax as we saw in a prior presentation and we will see in future presentations the tax is going to be turned on, you have to turn on the tax and then you have to assign it the second thing you need to do is make sure that the items that you set up are properly set up to be taxable or non-taxable that's going to be the driving factor to calculate the sales tax when you have sales forms such as invoices and the sales receipts we'll talk more about that in future presentations we'll get into that list more but that's a list product categories we can make categories I'm going to right click and open that up we can make categories of the products which can help us to further kind of group the products down when we're looking at our list of products so we can make the categories to put the products within and then we've got the custom form styles I'm going to right click and open that so we may have another course or section just on the custom forms here but you can see that mainly when you're looking at the customization of the forms we're looking at those forms that are going to be used or given to external users such as an invoice an invoice you're usually going to email to the customer and therefore you might want to customize it at least maybe just for the look of it adding your logo and stuff like that onto the invoice you might also have different fields that you could add to it for searching purposes within the system but oftentimes it's for the look and feel so that when you give it to the customer it has your style on it so we can have the invoice most of the time when we get to the practice problem we're going to just use the invoices mainly to practice the data input and track the accounting but again we might have a section or a course just on the customization of the forms if you want to look at that in detail the estimate is the other one that goes out to people and then the sales receipt is one that you may use as an internal document that's where you make the sale like at a cash register or something but you might also provide it to people if I select the drop down over here note that a received payment form is often an internal form it's used, it's a form but it's not one that we usually provide to someone else oftentimes we might but we usually use it to facilitate the ease of the data input and so a lot of these other forms you could see are generally of that nature they might be just internal forms for data input closing this out then we've got the payment method if I right click on this we open the payment method displace cash check in any other ways you categorize payments you receive from customers that way you can print deposit slips when you deposit the payment you have received you have the different payment methods that we can select and you can see you can actually add these when you're entering a particular form so notice these are usually kind of internal documents they're not going to adjust the data input of the form so if I go to this like if I go to right click and duplicate this tab and we're going to say that we are going to have let's say an expense form for example and then you've got your drop down of your payment method was it paid with American Express cash check discover card you can add one in here and you can actually add it basically as you go if it was like an electronic transfer or something that's an internal field generally that doesn't have an impact on the financial transaction the debits and credits the impact on the financial statements but it could be useful sometimes for internal tracking closing that back out so we can add those and then back to the lists we've got the terms right clicking and opening up the terms displays the list of terms that determine the due dates for payments from customers or payments to suppliers terms can also specify discounts for early payment from here you can add or edit terms so let's see the terms are going to be here these are the terms of 10 net 15 and so on and so forth for example if you were to give an invoice how soon do you expect them to be paying you in 10 days and 30 days and so on and that becomes important because when you're tracking to see whether or not they did pay you you can track the invoices you'll recall as being either currently due or past due and so on over here in the sales area so we've got the sales area and we can say if I go into the invoices we can say the overdue invoices not yet due invoices well that's going to be dependent upon not the date that you entered the invoice but after the whatever term that was put into the invoice let's go back on over here and then back to open the terms and so you can you can run the reports you can add a new term which you have the name of the term and do and fix number of days do by certain day of the month so you might do it that way do the next month do the next month if issued within and then you've got do the next month so I'll say save it name well let's just close this out that's the general process alright let's go close this one out and let's go back to our list again of attachments right click duplicate display the list of all attachments uploaded from here you can add edit download and export your attachments you can also see all transactions linked to our particular attachment so if I go into the form these meaning we have documents that we can basically add in as attachments so we're kind of tracking a document within QuickBooks and that could be useful possibly if you want to back up a certain transaction with an attachment say like an expense form you want the attachment to put on it so for example if I go into the new button and we go into an expense form we've seen at the bottom of these items we have the attachments here which we can upload this way and add basically the attachment which will give us more detail or possibly an audit trail as to what is going on with a particular transaction closing that one out going back on over next we have tags so I'm going to right click and open that one up the tags display the list of all tags created you can add edit and delete your tags here so if we go to the tags this is kind of a special feature that allows you to track certain things that are tagged within the reports so it allows you to kind of filter your reports it works similar to class tracking if you're used to class tracking but it has some pros and cons and differences from the class tracking I believe we have a section or course specific to the tags so if you want to dive into that in more detail you can it's not part of it like the normal accounting process but instead gives you you can put tags into each of the transactions which will allow you again to sort your reports in accordance with the things that have been tagged so I'm going to close this back out and so then we have the custom fields so sort track and report the information that matters to you add custom fields to your forms so that you can capture more business related info so you've got your custom fields make information business decision with the custom fields you could check it out in more detail this means that you're going to put custom fields into your reports that will give you more information when you do the data input that you might want to capture within the report and then when you within the form and then when you run reports you might be able to track different reports by those added fields that you have added to the forms so custom fields allow you to customize forms to gather meaningful insights create meaningful and detailed reports to make better business decision track search and filter data points related to your business so there is going to be that one now so those the lists that are going to be most crucial that you have to have set up and we'll go into in more detail are of course going to be the chart of accounts the products and services are going to be really crucial the rest of them you know you may or may not be as crucial right recurring transactions you might not have them unless you want to have certain transactions that are going to be repeating all the time the custom form styles you might you don't need to have a custom form style the generic you know the just normal form works both from data input and will be sent out but you might want to make it make them more customized if you want to and then payment methods is something that is a kind of somewhat of a mind it's adding a little bit more details not required your payment methods will be set up basically by default so that you'll be able to do the data input for the most part the terms again the default terms will probably be like net 30 and so you can kind of set those up as you go but it might be something that you want to think about of course as part of your normal system of what your terms will be when will you be collecting on the accounts receivable the attachments you don't really necessary need attachments it's only certain transactions that might need attachments so it's not like a required thing the tags would only be necessary for special things that you want to tag for more advanced filtering options for your reports not like a required thing that you need same with the custom fields you might add custom fields to help you with more information but it's not really required to get running the ones that are and the ones that we'll look at in more detail the chart of accounts the products and services