QuickBooks® Procedures

Setting Preferences in QuickBooks®

Preferences are one of the ways you can customize QuickBooks to fit your business needs or personal style.

Preferences can be found under the Edit menu.

The sections that you can change preferences on are:

· Accounting

· Bills

· Checking

· Desktop View

· Finance Charge

· Integrated Applications

· Items & Inventory

· Jobs & Estimates

· Multiple Currencies

· Payments

· Payroll & Employees

· Reminders

· Reports & Graphs

· Sales & Customers

· Sales Tax

· Send Forms

· Service Connection

· Spelling

· Tax: 1099

· Time & Expenses

Each section has a My Preferences tab and a Company Preferences tab. Each user is able to make changes under the My Preferences tab but only the Administrator can make changes to the Company Preferences tab.

Changing My Preferences only changes the way the user uses QuickBooks and the Company Preferences change the way all licensed users use QuickBooks.

Shown below are some preferences we recommend you change from the defaults that QuickBooks® has selected.

1) General preferences – My Preferences:

a. Click on Pressing Enter moves between fields. Now you can press Enter or Tab between fields.

b. Click on Automatically recall last transaction for this name. This makes entering repetitive enters easier.

c. Click on Use today’s date as default. This helps errors on posting dates.

2) General preferences – Company Preferences:

a. Change the default to Decimal – unless you track time in minutes.

3) Reports & Graphs – My Preferences:

a. Click on Prompt me to modify options before opening a report. Instead of opening a report with the prior modifications this allows you to modify the report before it opens saving you time waiting for a report to open.

b. Click on Refresh automatically. With this checked you will not have to click on the Refresh button when you have made a change to an entry which will change your report.

After making these changes you may want to review the other preference sections to see if there are other preferences you can change to make entering data easier for your business.

To read previously posted tips & procedures click here.