The Top Ten Things You Didn't Know QuickBooks Could Do

Introduction

QuickBooks is such a rich software that it contains several features that are rarely or never used, simply because the small business owner doesn't take the time to explore all of these valuable features. In this article we are going to examine several of these features that if used, would be of a great benefit to the small business owners. Most of these features are free, some of them require a nominal fee to purchase add-ons, but each one is far cheaper than the industry specialized software packages and best of all, each integrates seamlessly into your QuickBooks data.

1. The Shipping Manager

If your company does a lot of shipping with either Fed Ex or UPS, the shipping manager can integrate your costs and flow all information into your QuickBooks files. Click on the create invoices key and look for the word, "Ship" on the top menu bar of the invoice itself. You can enter your FedEx or UPS account number and shipping information once, and use this feature to schedule a pickup, track packages, and even to print the end of day reports. It allows you to skip the step of connecting to the Fed Ex or UPS site and will ease some of the time restrictions that this step places on your business.

2. The Feedback Button

The feedback button is located on the main menu icon bar right after 'search'. The changes that are made every year to improve QuickBooks software are ideas that have come from actual users of QuickBooks like yourself. It is an Intuit rule that the Feedback sent must be read, so whatever the idea is, SEND IT! They get everything from 'can I get a different color screen' to 'does my chart of accounts really NEED numbers?'

3. Intuit Marketing Tools

Google has teamed up with QuickBooks to allow users to market their business on Google through the QuickBooks software. Typically, the offer is $50 of free pay per click advertising for you business. Google will also allow you to market your products or services online by adding your business to Google Maps. Clicking on the Google icon will take you to a page where it will direct you to Marketing tips, ideas and more! Paying for the per click advertising has become a little overdone online, so as soon as you have reached your $50, I would recommend ceasing this promotion. There are ways to promote your business using search engine sites without paying for it but that is information for another article.

4. The Loan Manager

To find the loan manager, you must click on the help key and enter 'loan manager' to begin using it. This application allows you to enter in all your debt, short and long term, with the interest rates and payoff amounts. Then, you can experiment with different monthly payments to see how fast you can pay off the debt your company owes. Your debt can be significantly reduced by simply paying every other week instead of once a month. This feature will allow you to strategize the best possible scenario for you to get out of debt quickly.

5. Third Party Solutions

QuickBooks works with many different types of software packages. The place to find it is at the Marketplace site on Intuit's main website. The third party solutions page contains Industries that have unique needs. Construction companies for example, sometimes use separate software for estimating costs, and will have completely different software needs than the Retail or Professional industries.

6. Electronic Payments Sent Through QuickBooks

In general I discourage people in my training classes from downloading information into QuickBooks; this can lead to some difficulties if the information is not formatted according to QuickBooks needs. However, for those entities that can accept electronic payments, the small business owner can create the parameters to electronically pay these payments, all information flows into the program and there are fewer transcriptional errors made.

7. Customer Manager

Many business owners with more than 100 customers have purchased a program called ACT which retails at about $300. The Customer Manager is $70 off of an affiliate website and will do what ACT will do. It keeps track of each communication (email, letter, or phone calls), each document (invoices, sales receipts, etc) and each job or project associated with that customer. It also keeps track of your referrals, scans, pictures and customer history.

8. QuickBooks Merchant Service and Online Web store

If you have a web store for your business that wasn't set up through QuickBooks, chances are you paid too much for the setup and maintenance. QuickBooks has arrangements with the top online store generators which will allow you to be open 24/7 on the web and have all the information flow into QuickBooks while you are away. The companies that QuickBooks uses are: Go Daddy, Homestead, Network Solutions, Prostores (EBAY), and Website Pros. With the seamless integration of your merchant services account and the online web store, you can rest assured that your business continues operating, and customers can keep paying you, even while you are closed, or on vacation.

9. Gift Cards

For those Point of Sale users, they may not be aware that they can create Gift Cards that are unique to their business. Statistics show that upwards of 60% of all gifts during Christmas are Gift Cards to various stores. That's money in the pocket of the small business owner that cannot be used in any other store! A gift card represents money exclusively to your business so that you can now be on a level playing field with the larger retailers who can offer gift cards of any denomination to all their customers.

10. Document Manager

The Document Manager is part of the customer manager program which is available separately. This feature allows you to scan and keep all copies of invoices sent to you and filed under the individual customers or vendors. All of these scans are available to you with the touch of a button or click of a mouse so that all those filing cabinets become obsolete.

11. Extra tip

With all of these scans, files and more kept on your hard drive it is more important than ever to have a back up of your information that is readily accessible to you. Intuit offers an online backup service for your hard drive for $149.95 a year. It is thorough and will do what you need to have done. However, as complete and convenient as that is, there is a better choice out there which for $50.00 a year will back up everything on your hard drive from QuickBooks files and music, to documents, pictures and everything else. This service is called Carbonite and is located on that companies' website. I've had too many clients lose valuable data to viruses, Trojan horses, and worms to sit back and allow them to not back up their data.

David Roberts, CFE, CQBPA, MBA, lives in Kissimmee, Florida with four girls, three dogs, two snakes and one wife. He has been a member of the ACFE for 5 years and has been studying fraud for longer than that. He is the owner of Homesoon Accounting Services which specializes in Quickbooks Consultations and Fraud Prevention and Detection.

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