You need to track invoices. You want to make sure you are collecting the receivables from customers that still have not paid. You need a simple method to reconcile the bank accounts.

QuickBooks Online is the go-to software for business professionals. The software is a powerful tool that can help you manage the organization.

This means QuickBooks Online could be a source of anxiety if you do not understand how it works. Then again, it could be a powerful skill you have to put you in front of your competition!

I’m Dr Eric Knight, I am a CPA with over 20 years’ experience in business and academics.

I’ve used my experience to design a course that makes QuickBooks Online simple to learn and easily applicable to most small businesses.

This is NOT a spectator course. You will be given assignments that let you start using QuickBooks Online from the start.

By the way, you do NOT need to purchase a QuickBooks subscription to do the homework. You will use the Sample Company that QuickBooks Online provides to the public. In other words, you don’t need to pay anything extra to do the homework! You get to learn by doing!

There are no prerequisites to take this course. A basic understanding of business will do.

Learn to use QuickBooks Online quickly and easily with this Rapid Training course!

Lesson 1: Introduction:

QuickBooks is the most used business software for small businesses. It is more than a bookkeeping program. Let’s get an overview of this course and what will be covered in our lessons.

Lesson 2: Overview of QBO:

In this lesson we’ll compare QuickBooks Online with the QuickBooks Desktop version. Contrary to what people believe, these editions are very different and it is important to understand this in order to make the right decision.

Lesson 3: Sample company:

QuickBooks offers a Sample company that we will use to learn QuickBooks. Think of this as your testing environment. In this lesson you will learn how to access that free testing environment. We’ll begin an overview of the areas of QuickBooks Online.

Lesson 4: Overview Continued:

We continue to walk through the various sections of QuickBooks Online so that you will understand where you will be working. We’ll discuss what elements of QuickBooks Online will be covered and explain the many additional offerings QuickBooks has available.

Lesson 5: Company Settings:

Would you like your invoices and customer communications like emails be unique and stand out? This lesson looks at the company settings that allow for customizations of your forms, reports, and communications. We’ll also see how you can change what information is provided on your reports an how you can use the settings to change what information is captured. All this and more!

Lesson 6: Chart of Accounts:

The chart of accounts is a list of the accounts used in the business to build reports such as the profit and loss statement as well as the balance sheet. You will need to add accounts to the chart of accounts from time to time. Let’s learn how to use the chart of accounts. You may also need to adjust account balances. The best way to do this is with a journal entry. We will see how easy it is to make journal entries in QBO.

Lesson 7: Products and Services:

Before you can begin selling to customers, you will need to set up products and services. In this lesson you learn how to set up a product and service. Some businesses sell merchandise. That would be the product. Some businesses sell a service. Some do both. Therefore, we’ll get an example of how to set up both as well as set up a customer.

Lesson 8: Sales Receipt:

This lesson is exciting because it starts you off into accounting for sales. What could be more exciting than getting sales! This lesson takes a look at how sales are recorded when a payment is received immediately.

Lesson 9: Invoices:

Often a business provides a customer with a service or product but does not receive payment right away. For example, a painting company paints a customer’s house but does not get paid until after the job is over. In those cases, the business will need to invoice the customer. In this lesson we will see how easy it is in QBO to invoice a customer.

Lesson 10: Receive Payment on Invoices:

Though sales are exciting, receiving payment for the sales is even more so! This lesson explores how you will close an invoice when a payment is received on the previous sale.

Lesson 11: Bank Deposit:

Perhaps your business has been collecting cash and checks from customers. Great to hear! Now it is time to make a bank deposit. Once you make the deposit your funds will show up in the bank account of your choice.

Lesson 11 part 2:Bank Reconciliation:

An important part of protecting cash is to do regular bank reconciliations. QuickBooks Online has an easy method to make sure you can match your books to what is going on at the bank.

Lesson 12: Vendors:

Vendors supply a business with needed resources. Inventory, supplies, etc. When a new vendor is found, you can set that vendor up in QBO to make it easier later when it is time to purchase from that vendor. This lesson takes you through the steps to add the needed information for a vendor. Now you are ready to buy your supplies!

Lesson 13: Purchase Order:

At some point many businesses need inventory or supplies. To order the needed resources, you will often send a Purchase Order to the vendor of choice. The Purchase Order form is used to communicate what you need, when you need it and how much you want. This lesson shows you how to create a purchase order and some tricks to help you make the purchase order a more helpful and flexible tool.

Lesson 14: Bills:

Though paying bills is not as fun or exciting as receiving sales, it is just as important. You can use QBO to pay the bills directly or you can pay the bills yourself and then go into QBO to let the system know you paid the bill. In this lesson you will see how quickly you can get this task completed so you can go make more sales!

Lesson 15: Expenses:

Suppose you need to pay for lunch with a client. The restaurant is not going to send a bill. You pay with the company card and now you need to input this into QBO. That is one of the many instances when you will need to use the Expense feature. Any time you pay for a cost of doing business but are not billed, you pay on the spot, you will need to set up an expense. This lesson also covers the writing of checks. You will learn how you record the check into the QBO system.

Lesson 16: Fixed Assets:

Most businesses need resources that include machinery, buildings, equipment and maybe even land. In accounting we call those Fixed Assets. How will you add those resources to your business? In this lesson you learn how QuickBooks Online deals with the adding Fixed Assets.

Lesson 17: Depreciation:

Accounting uses the concept of depreciation. This is the process of spreading the cost of an asset out over the time that asset is used in the business. QuickBooks Online has made this easy using journal entries and the chart of accounts. This lesson covers the essential elements of using QBO to report the depreciation.

Lesson 18: Owners Equity:

The owner or owner of a business became that because he or she invested his or her own money into the business. That is where the original money came from to begin the operation. From time to time the owner(s) may need to add more money. Perhaps for additional funds to expand the business. This lesson explains how to add money to the owners’ equity. We also look at how the owners can take a draw of funds from the business when it is time for the owners to reap their reward of owning a business.

Lesson 19: Loans:

Most businesses need to take out business loans from time to time. How would that transaction be input into the QuickBooks Online system? What if the loan was received but not deposited yet? How can we input the deposit later? This lesson will explain how to enter a journal entry for a business loan.

Lesson 20: Employees:

Intuit offers a payroll service. But it is not required to use the service and still use QuickBooks. If you calculate payroll on your own, you can then add the payroll transactions manually. In this lesson we begin the journey through payroll by learning how to add an employee to the list as you grow your staff.

Lesson 21: Payroll Expense:

Payroll entails withholding money from the employee and calculating the net amount to pay the employee as ‘take-home pay’. In this lesson we will NOT learn HOW to calculate payroll. That is for a different course. However, you will learn how to input the payroll transactions into QBO once you have done the calculation.

Lesson 22: Payroll Tax Expense:

Another aspect of payroll is the employer matching of Medicare and social security. Although, you will not learn HOW to calculate the match, you will learn how to input the information into QBO.

Lesson 23: Payday:

Few days are as exciting to the overall business as pay day. In this lesson you will learn how to write pay checks to the employees for the amounts due to them based on past work.

Lesson 24: Reports:

Just putting the transactions into QuickBooks will not help you as a manager, owner, or accountant. To understand the business, you need to turn that data into information. QuickBooks Online has a robust feature of reports. You can find out anything you need. You can customize the reports to suite you! You can create your own. This lesson will show you that and more.

Lesson 25: Cash Vs Accrual Basis:

QBO is just a reporting system. But it does allow management or the accountants to decide which basis of reporting they will use. There are two types of reporting in accounting. In order to understand how to use QBO in either basis, we’ll take a look at how both the Cash and Accrual basis works.

Lesson 26: Supplies:

In this lesson you will see how to use the cash basis and then accrual basis to account for supplies. Of course, a business does not use both methods. A business uses one or the other method. But by understanding both methods, you are ready for whatever client or business you find yourself working!

Lesson 27: Prepaid Expenses:

Your business manager is going on a long vacation and has decided to pay for the rent in advance for the next 3 months. How can we handle this in QuickBooks Online? If we use the accrual basis we will treat the transaction differently than if we use a cash basis. Let’s see how both methods are accomplished in the system.

Lesson 28: Unearned Revenue:

It may surprise many people to find out that Unearned Revenue is NOT revenue. That may seem strange. However, if you were paid to help someone move in advance, you have not earned the moving fee until you go through with the move. Unearned revenue is a method to match the revenue with the month in which that revenue is truly earned.

Lesson 29:Bank Reconciliations: An important part of protecting cash is to do regular bank reconciliations. QuickBooks Online has an easy method to make sure you can match your books to what is going on at the bank.

Lesson 30: Sales Tax:

Any business that sells products must collect and remit sales tax. If your business sells in multiple locations, you will have to collect and organize the sales tax for each and every place. QuickBooks Online makes the task of sales tax a little easier.

Lesson 31:Conclusion:

Thank you for joining me in this course. We have covered so much ground! You now have the knowledge to begin using QuickBooks Online for your business needs or to begin helping others in that capacity if you so choose!