 QuickBooks Online, 2024. How to access the software. Get ready and some coffee because we're diving into it with Intuit's QuickBooks Online. Whenever learning a new software or practicing with a particular software, one of the first questions that will come up will be, well how can I get access to the software possibly for free if possible so I can use the software for practice. Different softwares actually have different obstacles with regards to this question of how can I get access to the software for the purpose of practice. For example let's take a look at Microsoft Excel because most people are familiar with how it works. If you were to buy Microsoft Excel you'll typically then download it onto your computer which means we would call it say a desktop type of software and once you have the software it would be fairly easy to take a course in Microsoft Excel because 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 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 you can create multiple sheets multiple workbooks within Microsoft Excel you're not having to use one particular workbook that you might already be using for business to follow along with a particular course. When you move on to online software web-based software such as a QuickBooks online the outline is usually a bit different because you're not going to buy the software and then create multiple like worksheets in the comparison of Microsoft Excel workbooks worksheets instead you purchase it on a company by company basis so you might have access to QuickBooks online already for example but you're using it for your business so if you want to practice using the software you'd like to have some kind of sandbox for the purpose of practice so that's the obstacle that we have the scenario that you might be in is one you don't have any accounting software or you don't have QuickBooks online and you're thinking of moving to it for example or two you already have QuickBooks online but you still have the problem of I'd like to practice somewhere I'd like to follow along with the course in a step-by-step basis without using the data that's in my current business file and learning things in a step-by-step basis with a practice problem is really the best way to learn and ideally what we would like to have is the same thing on our screen as is on your screen so that we can work through a practice problem step by step so we're going to look at the different tools that QuickBooks provides us and see how well we can utilize these to meet that goal to try to use it purely for practice to try to make it as hands-on and interactive as possible to try to have every step on our screen matching what's on your screen to the extent that we can so what resources do we have so QuickBooks online often offers a free 30-day trial so we'll get into these in more detail I'll just list them right now they often also have a free student version so you can look into that if you qualify for the student version that would be great for practice they have a free test drive and then you can look into of course discounts if you were to purchase let's go into each of these in more detail and I'll talk more specifically how they might fit into utilizing in our course how we might utilize them in the course first the QuickBooks online 30-day free trial so we're at a screenshot of the Intuit owner of QuickBooks online web page where we see the toggle on for the free 30-day trial this web page is actually a little bit difficult to find so we'll show you later how to get here from the Intuit owner of QuickBooks web page you can also get here usually by just typing into your favorite browser say a Google search for QuickBooks online free 30-day trial and look at the results that way as well when you toggle this on it's actually a little bit scary because the price is basically go up so the idea from Intuit side QuickBooks side of things would be it would be cheaper if you don't take the 30-day trial and then if you take the 30-day trial you get a free 30-day trial but then they increase the price after that point in time I would think the idea from Intuit or QuickBooks side of things what they would like to be happening would be that you completely commit to putting your actual numbers into the 30-day trial so that after 30 days after you're using it you're basically locked in at that point in time and you have to go forward with it unless you want to go through the pain of changing the software again which is a pain to do so I would suggest that if you're practicing if you're testing out the software what you would like to do is at least run a parallel between the the stuff you're putting into the new software here for 30 days and your prior accounting system run it the same numbers on each system for a while so that you can commit to it to see if it's if it's what you would like to do and generally ideally if you're testing it out you'd like to test it out for the 30 days without being forced to then purchase it at that after that point in time so you'd like to be able to practice with it and then possibly see if you can purchase at a later point in time possibly looking into discounts talking to your accountant to get the best price at that point in time from a course perspective what we would like to do is get the software the sandbox with a free what with just a nothing in it type of situation for a new company file that type of scenario is perfect when we're trying to practice the setup process which is often 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 well 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 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 capacity as well possibly for a college students which 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 we've 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 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 but it's great also if you actually have quickbooks online but it's your business file and you want to practice with something well then you don't want to practice in your actual company file you want to use this file typically to do that but remember if you're logged into your business file you won't be able to do that in the same browser oftentimes because into it will try to log into a different account to get into this test drive so you can use an incognito window or a different browser all right so this is what we'll use in the first half of the course now when you want to purchase the software after you do a test drive or after you take the course or or whatever and you're convinced that this is right for your business then you might want to look into obviously the best price that you can get you might want to ask your accountant or a quickbook advisor to see if there are any discounts available and and and then purchase the software in that fashion looking obviously for the best price on the purchase in other words what we're trying to do here is find places purely for practice sandboxes that we can use for practice either a sandbox that has nothing in it which which might be good with the student files of the 30-day trial so we can practice setting up the software from scratch or sandboxes that already do have stuff in it such as the test drive so that we can practice navigating the software with stuff that's already in it let's do a quick look on how to find some of these things from a browser so let's first I'll I'll go to into it so this is into it it's into it.com this is the owner of QuickBooks page so this is the first place I would typically go because QuickBooks has a lot of different web pages within it so I always start from the source here intuit.com into it.com then I'm going to go to the QuickBooks software into it owns different different softwares mailchimp turbo tax and so on we'll go into the QuickBooks website when you go into the QuickBooks website this is the change this is the page that they change most often it's typically geared towards QuickBooks online but I usually go all the way to the bottom where they have this products area the products area has been here for a long time and then I can go into here and I want to go specifically to the QuickBooks online page and in the QuickBooks online page you will see that you this is where that toggle happens now again if I hit that toggle it's scary because the prices jump up so you got to remember if I'm hitting that toggle I'm trying not to be locked in to anything past the 30 days I'm trying to practice for the 30 days is how is is so you want to make sure that you you know what you're doing uh when you're when you're taking the practice file and how you're going to implement it and whatnot and you know so read the terms of service and all that kind of stuff so in any case uh that is that one now if I go into the the test drive that's different than the test drive remember if I scroll down here I think there's a test drive when here it is so it says take a test drive so I believe this is going to give you actually the the test drive company file which is different now I think the easiest way to get into here because sometimes they change this page they haven't changed this page for a while but you know they could change this page so if they were change anything then you might just type into your favorite browser QuickBooks online test drive and this is what we'll do a lot going forward you might be a little bit less comfortable doing that because now we're going to go into a a random search but if you can see here that it's from Intuit.com Intuit is the owner of QuickBooks so you feel pretty secure that you're in a solid place so I would look through here and say okay where's the test drive is it coming from Intuit QuickBooks Intuit.com okay and then I'll go into that and then here's going to be our test drive we're going to be using the United States test drive here I'm not going to be using the advanced but just the normal it'll usually ask if you're a robot and we're going to say we're going to say that we are not a robot and then we'll go into the sample company file which already has data in it so you can see how that's going to be important because now I can navigate around here so this is going to be the tool that we'll use for the first half of the course second half of the course we'll we'll go into using see if we can use an actual company file which possibly you can leverage the free 30-day trial for and then if you want to look into the student file you can look into I would just type into your browser uh quick books online free student something like that and it gives me the free 30-day trial register and activate QuickBooks online student trial so you might be able to find something like that here and then read through their process register for the for the Intuit Education program verify your eligibility and you can activate your student trial so get started so this might give you access to the software possibly for a longer period than the 30 days so if you're at any kind of accredited institution then you might look into that in more detail and that might be a really nice tool