I usually tell people that they don’t need to upgrade because frankly, the new features each year usually aren’t all that exciting. But there are several new features in QuickBooks 2012 that make it worth a look. I’ll be releasing a series of blog posts, articles and videos covering some of these new features in the coming weeks but for now I’ll just mention a few of them.

There is a new calendar view feature that lets you see your upcoming bills, invoices and to-do lists in a calendar format. I believe that this one, single feature will make it a worth-while upgrade for a lot of small business owners. This gives them a quick and easy way to see what’s coming up without getting lost in reports.

Improved export to Excel features – you can now export a report to Microsoft Excel and it contains a “live” link back to the QuickBooks data. This allows you to go back into the exported spreadsheet and refresh or update the numbers from the QuickBooks file. This will be one of those features that’s useful for a lot of tasks like quickly getting totals of accounts or calculating ratios.  You can now also customize the formatting of your export to Excel and save those customizations as a pre-set to use in future exports. Another big time saver!

Memorized transactions have been improved. Now when you get the pop-up window telling you that there are memorized transactions to enter, you get to see what they are and manually choose which ones to enter.

There is a new Lead Center that allows you to track sales leads with some custom fields. You can convert a lead into a customer if need be.

You can batch time sheet entry if you have several employees with the same time. This could be a huge time saver for certain businesses.

The Document Center has been improved to allow local storage of the scanned documents and has a new drag and drop interface.  I can’t wait to get a look at this!

There are other improvements for accountants too. Improved condensing, the ability to “export” one single year’s worth of transactions, using one QB file to set up a new, blank company file and more.

If you’ve been holding off on upgrading QuickBooks for a few years, I really think you should check out this new version. It might just be time to pull the trigger!

Of course, if you are interested in upgrading I would appreciate it if you purchased through a link on my site. I do get a small commission on each sale and it really helps me maintain this site.

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This post was written by Michael Debyah.

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

And yes, I think I will be relaunching the podcast as well, although it won’t be exactly the same as it was in the past. It will be focused on accounting, bookkeeping and QuickBooks but in a slightly different format.

Stay tuned!

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

I also am not taking on any more consultations and probably won’t respond to any questions that are sent to me.

I want to thank all of you that have participated in the discussions here on the site and those who had consultations with me.

Good-bye for now and as always, good luck with your QuickBooks!

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

Topics discussed include QuickBooks purchase orders, the accountant’s copy (which continues to be a very popular topic), using classes to segment your reporting and using MICR software with QuickBooks.

Lots of new things are happening here and if you’re not already on the email list now would be a great time to sign up!  Don’t miss out on the latest developments as the show continues to evolve and big changes are made.  You can sign up right on the home page.

If you have any questions that you would like answered on the show please call our new voicemail line at 781-990-8827.

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

I can’t figure out where this video came from or what group at Intuit created it but it is very well done and I wish I could embed it here on my site, but that isn’t an option.  So, if you want to watch it just click the screenshot and it will link you right to it.  The video runs just about 10 minutes.

If you watch it, please leave a comment to let me know what you think!

P.S. – I you aren’t already on my email list, now would be a great time to sign up for it…there are going to be some big announcements coming over the next couple of weeks and you won’t want to miss out!  Just head on over to the home page to sign up.

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

Was this lesson helpful to you? Please let me know in the comments section down below!

Sign up for my email list to get QuickBooks news and other info delivered to your inbox.

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

I also mention my new email newsletter signup that is available on the home page.  As a “thank you” for signing up you will get an e-book that I put together called the “Accounting Primer:  All the Accounting You Need To Know”.

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

Do you have a specific item related question?  Let me know in the comments section for this episode!

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

Tip #9 of 30:  Customize the icon bar

The nice thing about the icon bar is that you can totally customize it and make it your own.  Just go to the “View” menu and click on “Customize Icon Bar”.  You will see the list of icons currently included on the bar.  You can delete any that you don’t want and you can drag them up and down to reposition them.  You can add new icons here too, but I think there’s a better way to do it.

Close the Customize Icon Bar window and return to your QuickBooks desktop.  Open the screen that you want to add to the icon bar.  For example, if you want to add an icon that open up the “Transfer Funds” screen you first open up that screen.  Now that it is open in front of you, go up to the “View” menu and select “Add Transfer Funds Between Accounts to Icon Bar…”.  You will get to choose an icon graphic, a label and a description.  Bam!  You just added your own shortcut icon to the icon bar!  By default it goes all the way over on the right so you may need to go into the “Customize Icon Bar” screen to move it to the position that you want it.

This technique works for just about any window, including reports.  So you can put icons on your icon bar for easy, one click access to the reports that you use most often.  It is a huge time saver!  And your report gets saved along with any filters or custom columns that you have set up, making it even more useful.

Did you find this tip useful?  If so, I would love for you to leave a comment below.  I would also love to hear some of your favorite QuickBooks tips!

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

Tip #8 of 30: Remove unwanted icons from your home page

You know how when you first install QuickBooks you get a bazillion icons on the QuickBooks Home page?  It looks chaotic and is very overwhelming.  You can easily remove the icons that you don’t need or want though.

Just go to the “Edit” menu, then choose “Preferences”.  Click on the “Desktop View” section, then switch to the “Company Preferences” tab.  There are some checkboxes there and links that you can click to toggle different features on and off.  Don’t worry if you remove something that you need later, you can always go back and turn it back on at any time.

If you aren’t using the QuickBooks payroll features you can get rid of those icons as well by going into the “Payroll & Employees” section of the Preferences.  On the Company Preferences tab select “No payroll” and most of the Employee icons will be removed.

Once you pare down the number of icons on your home page, it looks much less cluttered and can help you focus on getting things done!

Did you find this tip useful?  If so, I would love for you to leave a comment below.  I would also love to hear some of your favorite QuickBooks tips!

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

Tip #7 of 30:  If you’ve entered a bill, don’t pay it with a regular check

There are 2 ways of dealing with bills in QuickBooks.  You can enter the bill into QuickBooks and then pay it at another time (a 2 step process).  Or you can choose to not enter the bill at all (just leave it in a pile on your desk or in a folder or something like that) and simply write a check to pay it when the time comes (a 1 step process).

I don’t really care which way you do it, but you have to remain consistent.  If you have entered a bill in QuickBooks using the “Enter Bills” function, that bill must be paid using the “Pay Bills” function.  If you use the “Write Checks” function it will not clear out the bill and it will still be left in your Accounts Payable balance.  Not to mention the fact that you have now duplicated the expense and distorted your accounting.

So it’s very simple – if you “Enter Bills” then you must “Pay Bills”.

For a more detailed look at these processes, check out episode 4 “Entering Bills” and episode 5 “Paying Bills in QuickBooks“.

Did you find this tip useful?  If so, I would love for you to leave a comment below.  I would also love to hear some of your favorite QuickBooks tips!

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

Tip #6 of 30:  Enter individual credit card charges, not monthly totals

A lot of small businesses use a business credit card to pay for expenses such as gas, office supplies, travel and meals.  And a lot of bookkeepers don’t enter each charge individually, they just wait until the credit card statement comes in the mail and they enter the total amount onto a bill or check.  Sometimes they break it down into multiple expense accounts but for many businesses there is an expense account called “Credit card expense” and the whole amount goes there.

This is not a good bookkeeping practice for several reasons.  Most importantly, there needs to be a proper accounting of all expenses.  So if there are 10 transactions on a credit card statement for gasoline purchases, 3 transactions for restaurants and 3 transactions for office supplies, then at least 3 separate expense accounts should be posted to (Auto Expense, Meals, and Office Supplies).  Also, there is a problem with the timing of the transactions.  If everything gets entered on the same date (the date of the credit card statement) it could distort reality for 2 different accounting periods.  Say your credit card statement starts on the 15th of the month and ends on the 14th of the next month.  If all the charges get posted as totals on the date of the 14th, then expenses aren’t getting charged to the proper periods.

Another issue is that of reporting and tracking.  If individual credit card charges aren’t getting recorded with the actual vendor names then you are losing a whole layer of information that could be useful.  You’ll never know which vendor you spend the most money with and it will be more difficult to track down the details of any one specific charge.  And you’ll have a much harder time discovering any bogus charges if you never see any actual paper receipts.

So my tip is this:  enter each credit card charge individually, using the real vendor name and the real date of the transaction and post it to the proper expense account.  Devise a system to make sure you get the credit card receipts from the person(s) that are using the credit cards and just do it.  It only takes about a minute to record a charge and it has many benefits, as mentioned above.

Did you find this tip useful?  If so, I would love for you to leave a comment below.  I would also love to hear some of your favorite QuickBooks tips!

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

Tip #5 of 30: Backup your data every day!!!!

A lot of QuickBooks users only backup their data once a week, and that day is usually Friday.  That is a fine schedule but I believe you should really back up your data more often than that, like every day!

Think about what would happen if your data file suddenly backup corrupted and unusable, or there was a fire in your office and the computer was destroyed.  As long as you have that backup you can restore it on another computer and continue working.  But depending on how old that backup is you may have some info to re-enter.  If your backup is one week old then you will have to re-input one week’s worth of transactions.  That may not be a good thing if you have a lot of activity!

Backing up is quick and easy and with the prices for USB flash drives being so low, there is no good reason for not backing up at the end of each day.  If you’re not sure how to do the backup and restore, check out episode 9 of my QuickBooks podcast titled “QuickBooks Backup and Restore“.

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

Tip #4 of 30: Use the “Tab” key on your keyboard to navigate from field to field when entering information in QuickBooks

There is no doubt in my mind that the fastest and easiest way to move around in QuickBooks is to use the Tab key.  Any time you are filling out a form such as the “Enter Bills” or “Create Invoice” screens, tap the Tab key to move forward one field at a time.  After you use the Tab key for a  while you will develop a rhythm and know exactly how many taps of the key it takes to get to the next relevant field.  If you need to go backwards, hold down the Shift key and then press Tab.  It will move you back one field at a time.

I see so many QuickBooks users fill out the first field on a form and then grab their mouse, click in the next field and then use the backspace or delete key to remove the default date or text that is in the input box, then start typing their input.  It takes at least 3 or 4 times as long as just hitting the Tab key and start typing your input.  When you tab into a field, it automatically highlights or selects the text that is already in that field so you can either tap the delete key to instantly clear the field or start typing and it will replace whatever default value was there.  This is a huge time saver!  So if you’re not currently using the Tab key to move around with QuickBooks, you are really missing out and I highly recommend that you start using it right away.

Did you find this tip useful?  If so, please leave a comment below!  Also, I would love to hear about your favorite QuickBooks tips or tricks!

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

Tip #3 of 30: Clean up your QuickBooks lists by merging duplicate entries.  This actually quite simple.  Just edit the list item that you want to get rid of of change the name to be exactly the same as the item that you want to keep.  QuickBooks will pop up a message that says “This name is already being used.  Would you like to merge them?”.  If you click “Yes” then it will merge them together under the name that you entered and all of the historical transactions will appear under that merged name.

Did you find this tip helpful?  Please let me know in the comments section.  I would also love to hear some of your favorite tips

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

Tip #2 of 30: When you open most reports, your cursor is automatically in the “Dates” field.  You can type the first letter of the pre-defined dates to make that selection.  For example, on QuickReports I usually want to see all the transactions.  So as soon as the report comes up on my screen I tap the “a” key on my keyboard to switch the date selection to “all”.  You can hit the “t” key to cycle through “today”, “this week”, “this week to date”, “this month”, etc., etc.  Use the “l” key to cycle through the “Last Week”, “Last Month” and other “Last….” dates.  The ‘n” key cycles through the “Next…” dates.

Feel free to comment and let me know if you found this tip to be useful.  Also, I would love to know some of your favorite QuickBooks tips.

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

So, here is my QuickBooks tip for day #1.  It has to do with working with date fields in QuickBooks.

Tip #1 of 30: When you are in a date field anywhere in QuickBooks, you can press the “t” on your keyboard to automatically insert today’s date.

That’s it!  I told you they were going to be short, quick little tips!  Be sure to come back tomorrow for tip #2.

This post was written by Michael Debyah.

This post was written by Michael Debyah.