QuickBooks is one of the most widely used accounting solutions in the world. With desktop, mobile, and online versions geared towards small and medium-sized businesses, over 82,000 companies use QuickBooks. It is the most “universal” accounting software in the small business world, with numerous options for integration with financial institutions, online marketplaces, payment processors, and other apps and tools to simplify small business accounting and recordkeeping.

However, QuickBooks can be incredibly daunting to small business owners who don’t come from an accounting background. The program has a major learning curve, and it’s normal for users to need ongoing support beyond QuickBooks setup. Setting up the program incorrectly can cause major bottlenecks, and ongoing inefficient QuickBooks can cause your firm to miss out on the financial insights and growth QuickBooks is capable of.

Accounting Freedom offers dedicated ongoing QuickBooks support, and these are our QuickBooks tips for small businesses to ensure you get the most value out of the program.

Setting Up QuickBooks for Success

QuickBooks setup can be tricky, but it’s also important to have it done correctly. The setup stage sets the foundation for how you will record transactions on an ongoing basis, and an improper setup can cause issues that will take much longer to fix.

The first aspect to consider is the version of QuickBooks you’d like to use. QuickBooks now offers a Solopreneur version tailored to companies of one, which may be exactly what you need. If you plan to hire employees within your first year of operations or already have employees, you probably don’t need the enterprise-grade version, but Solopreneur won’t cut it. You’ll want to get the most value out of your subscription without ending up with too many bells and whistles you won’t use that only complicate the user experience.

Once you determine the best version for your business, you will need to set up a chart of accounts that best fits your operations.

Most versions of QuickBooks come with preset charts of accounts that best represent what that type of business needs, such as a bakery with different inventory accounts for raw materials and finished goods. If your business isn’t represented in the preset lists and you don’t have an accounting background, you may need professional guidance on how to set up your chart of accounts manually or by starting with a preset and then modifying it.

Optimizing Bookkeeping Practices

Bookkeeping can be a monotonous, repetitive task that easily gets procrastinated. You don’t want to wait until crucial tax filing deadlines or other obligations to input that information: you should develop daily, weekly, and monthly bookkeeping procedures to manage these tasks. The frequency and procedures will vary depending on the kind of business you have and the subsequent transaction volume.

Inputting and checking transactions should be done at least once a week for medium and low-transaction volume businesses, like professional services. If your business has a high transaction volume, like a restaurant or shop, daily bookkeeping with weekly accuracy checks would make more sense.

Bank, credit card, and digital payment accounts should also have reconciliations performed weekly or monthly, depending on your transaction volume. Not only do transactions need to be checked for accuracy, but the amounts on your books and statements should be cross-referenced. Transactions may not have cleared yet or were entered incorrectly.

QuickBooks has many features that can simplify and streamline these processes, namely their integration with several apps. You can save so much time when your digital payment account transactions automatically enter QuickBooks with lower error rates!

Managing Cash Flow Effectively

QuickBooks isn’t just for small business accounting records. You can effectively use it as a tool to monitor and manage cash flows to ensure that you have enough cash to cover your expenses and plan for large projects. Small business owners not only need to pay attention to revenues, expenses, and profits, but also cash management.

QuickBooks has intuitive cash flow monitoring tools that utilize your historical data and let you know how far off you are from your positive cash flow goals. As your business grows and evolves, you can instantly get year-over-year and month-to-month comparisons to make informed decisions.

Leveraging QuickBooks for Tax Preparation

QuickBooks is compatible with various tax preparation solutions, enhancing its utility during tax season. You can set up your QuickBooks to accurately reflect your tax-deductible business expenses, allowing for an efficient import of these transactions. Additionally, it facilitates the manual reconciliation of any differences between book records and tax filings, such as adjustments for partial deductions on certain expenses. This integration helps ensure that your financial records are comprehensive and compliant with tax regulations, streamlining your tax preparation process.

Maintaining a recordkeeping system that makes sense for your business is a solid foundation for making tax time quick and painless. To ensure you have tax-ready financial records, have separate bank and digital payment accounts for your business so that you don’t need to separate personal transactions from them. This makes integration with QuickBooks faster and easier, and you’ll spend less time reviewing the imported transactions and removing ineligible items.

Advanced Features and Automation

QuickBooks has so many different overlooked features, since most small business users only look to it for their baseline bookkeeping and tax filing needs. Did you know that QuickBooks has all of these lesser-known features?

Branded invoices. You can send an unlimited amount of invoices with your bespoke branding on them to your customers to accept immediate payments online. QuickBooks Invoices supports a variety of payment options, including credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, PayPal, Venmo, and ACH.

Integration with Mailchimp. It may seem odd to connect accounting software to an email marketing solution, especially if you don’t have an enterprise-grade account requiring advanced customer relationship management (CRM). But this little-known integration benefit with QuickBooks Online can show you powerful insights about where exactly your money is coming from so you can send highly-targeted marketing campaigns and personalized offers.

Mileage manager. Whether you drive for a living or need to drive frequently for business purposes, manually tracking your mileage or using a separate mileage-logging app can be tedious and frustrating. QuickBooks’ mobile mileage solutions track your mileage to easily categorize business trips and even show you what your potential mileage deduction is. It also keeps track of your personal miles so you can get an accurate calculation of your vehicle’s business percentage for accurate and timely tax filing.

Troubleshooting Common QuickBooks Issues

QuickBooks has many common problems users run into. Here’s what to do if you encounter the following situations:

Incorrect Auto-categorization of Expenses

When you sync transactions from your bank or credit card, QuickBooks often automatically tags them with what it thinks they are, and this can be inaccurate. You need to proactively train the program to correctly classify your expenses.

A properly set up chart of accounts helps with this issue.

Locked QuickBooks Files if You Move Data

If you’re using QuickBooks desktop versions and move the data to a backup external drive or some other removable device, QuickBooks Server Manager might lock the file. Check that your desktop version of QuickBooks is up to date and restart your computer, then try to run QuickBooks using the “Run as Administrator” option.

Subscription Ownership

Make sure that the software is in your company’s name and not the accounting firm’s in the event you switch accountants or the firm ceases operations. You may be unable to access your QuickBooks data otherwise.

 QuickBooks Optimization with Accounting Freedom

QuickBooks can be a highly effective business management program in addition to providing automation tools and a framework for your accounting records. Intuit is also constantly rolling out new features and updates to enhance the user experience.

However, QuickBooks can also be overwhelming with a major learning curve. You should have guidance from knowledgeable QuickBooks advisors with extensive accounting backgrounds, like the team at Accounting Freedom.

Need help setting up or optimizing QuickBooks for your business? Contact Accounting Freedom for expert support today!