 the most difficult process if you're starting a new company file and you're trying to set up the company file from scratch that is one of the most difficult things to do because you have to then put in line all of the underlying things in order to get everything set up like the chart of accounts and you know your bank account and stuff lined up if you're going to be tying into the bank feeds and that kind of stuff all that foundational stuff needs to be in place first if it's properly in place then it's going to be a lot more easy going forward so we would actually like to use this kind of scenario on the second half of the course when we're going to get into the more difficult process of starting a company file from scratch so if you want to jump into that right away to start a company file from scratch you can jump to that part of the course but the easier thing to do at first to get to know the software is to do what often happens when you go to a new company for example if you go to another company and you're going to be working in QuickBooks you're not going to be setting up a new company file from scratch you're going to be working with a company file that has already been set up so your goal there is really to deconstruct what has already been put in place and try to try to see if you can understand the process and then continue on with that process possibly making changes as you go usually if the process is built will those changes being small changes not huge changes so that's the first thing that we'll start out with is actually starting a new company file and then saving this for the second half of the course and you want to make sure that once you if you're using this for practice if you can get access to this for practice you want to make sure that you're maximizing that 30 days if that's what you have for practice and then turn it off at the end of that at the end of that process so you don't say don't get charged and then if you want to be purchasing the software you want to look into discounts and whatnot and seeing if you can talk to an accountant and see if you can get the best price on the purchase side so there's also the student version now this you have to be uh you have to be able to be eligible as a student and usually that would mean that you're going to some kind of accredited school would be one of the conditions but you can look at the at the website here for more information on that the easiest way to get to this place is usually not from the Intuit website but rather just typing into your favorite browser quickbooks online education edition or free quickbooks online for students or something like that and you'll and then you can you'll usually be easier to find this for some reason so it says here at free platform to help build financial confidence for today's generation get students excited about finances with a flexible interactive curriculum that utilizes real world tools into it for education is a free and flexible financial literacy platform for high school students that offers real world tools to get them excited about finances so this is for high school particularly i think they have some some uh other educational uh capacity as well possibly for college students which uh might be similar to the free 30 day trial but maybe you get it for longer than 30 days right it would be nice to have it for 60 days or something like that we have a long course here we've got a lot to got a lot to go over so it'd be nice to have it for a longer period of time so you could look into these options if you go into like an accredited institution uh and and see what you can do there then we have the test drive now the test drive is available to everyone and uh the the good thing about the test drive is that it already has data in it now that that's a pro and it could be a con it's a pro if we want to practice navigating the software if i want to take a look at reports or i want to take a look at how to do data input of invoices and bills and whatnot it's good that it already has data in it because then i can actually look at a report that has information in it because then i can actually enter invoices that have customers bills that have vendors already assigned items have already been input into the system so we can practice using an accounting system that's already built so if you're completely new to an accounting software the first thing that we want to do as we will do in this course is use some type of system or some type of of software that already has data in it so that we can deconstruct it deconstructing something is easier than building something from an engineering kind of standpoint right so if you if you if you if you had to build an engine without ever having seen one that's going to be quite difficult if you see the engine and you're able to take it apart then it's much more likely you might be able to put one back together right so that's that's the idea so we'll start the first part of the course here using this tool now it's the great thing about this tool is everybody has access to it however it's possible quickbooks could change the numbers over time number one and number two when you log out of this software and go back into the software then the numbers will revert back to where they were before so it's not well suited for a long problem that you want to practice over multiple days because it's going to delete the data that you put into it also if you are if you already have a into it account a quickbooks account sometimes it gets messed up to try to get into this account because it basically logs you in as a universal login i think is the general what's happening so you might want to open it up in like incognito mode or in a different browser than your actual company file if you're using it for practice