What Is QuickBooks & How Do Businesses Use It?
QuickBooks may be a small business accounting software program businesses use to manage income and expenses and keep track of the financial health of their business. you'll use it to invoice customers, pay bills, generate reports, and steel oneself against taxes. The QuickBooks line includes several solutions that employment great for anyone, from a solopreneur to a mid-sized business.

Since there are several QuickBooks solutions, it’s important that you simply pick the proper one. Before you commit, take QuickBooks for a spin by signing up for a free 30-day trial; the trial may be a fully functional version of QuickBooks, so you'll test all of the bells and whistles. better of all, no mastercard is required–but if you opt to shop for , the software is currently 50% off.

8 Ways Small Businesses Use QuickBooks
Small business owners typically use QuickBooks to manage their invoices, pay their bills, and track their cash flows. They also use it to get month- and year-end financial reports also as steel oneself against quarterly or annual business taxes. It’s common for business owners to manage QuickBooks themselves or use an in-house or outsourced bookkeeper.

1. Manage Sales & Income
You can manage sales and income in QuickBooks by creating invoices to trace sales by customer. stay top of what customers owe you (also referred to as your assets balance) by reviewing your assets Aging Report, which incorporates the small print of both current and overdue invoices. Below may be a sample assets (A/R) Aging Report from QuickBooks Online.

2. Keep Track of Bills & Expenses
QuickBooks automatically keeps track of your bills and expenses by connecting your bank and mastercard accounts to QuickBooks so all of your expenses are downloaded and categorized. If you would like to trace a check or cash transaction, you'll record it directly in QuickBooks in only a couple of minutes.

QuickBooks also will assist you pay your bills when they’re due. for instance , you'll make sure that you pay your bills on time by creating an Accounts Payable (A/P) Report. This report will provide you with the small print of your current and overdue bills so you'll make certain to quickly address any issues. Below may be a sample A/P Aging Report from QuickBooks.

3. Gain Key Reporting Insights to Your Business
By managing all of your cash inflow and outflow activities in QuickBooks, you're ready to access several reports that provide valuable insights into your business and its financial health. All of the reports are prebuilt in QuickBooks and may be run in only a couple of clicks; reports are updated in real-time as you enter and save transactions.

This can be beneficial if you would like to supply financials to a possible investor or to your lender for alittle commercial loan or line of credit. additionally to the assets Report and therefore the Accounts Payable Report, you'll run the three key financial reports you would like so as to assess the general status of your business:

Profit and Loss Report
Balance Sheet Report
Statement of money Flows
Below may be a brief description of every of those reports along side a snapshot of what it's like in QuickBooks Online.

Profit & Loss Report
The profit and loss report are often run during a few minutes. it'll show you ways profitable your business is by summarizing its income minus its expenses. The report shows you rock bottom line net (loss) for a selected period of time , like every week , a month, or 1 / 4 . Below may be a sample Profit and Loss Report.

Balance Sheet Report
The record Report shows the assets, liabilities, and equity for a business at a specific point in time. you'll create a record report in QuickBooks Online quickly and simply . Below may be a snapshot of a record report.

Statement of Cash Flows
You can quickly create a press release of money Flows in QuickBooks. This report will show you all of the activities that affect the operating, investing, and financing cash inflow and cash outflow for your business. Below may be a snapshot of the statement of money flows.

4. Run Payroll
Payroll is a neighborhood that you simply don’t want to scrimp on by trying to try to to it manually. Mistakes made in calculating paychecks may result in steep penalties and unhappy employees. QuickBooks has its own payroll function which will automatically calculate and run payroll as often as you would like it.

The best part about using QuickBooks payroll is that it's integrated with QuickBooks so your financial statements are always up so far as of the newest payroll run. the acquisition of a QuickBooks payroll subscription is required so you've got access to the newest payroll tax tables used when calculating employee and employer payroll taxes.

Running your payroll through QuickBooks will allow you to:

Pay employees with a check or direct deposit
Calculate federal and state payroll taxes automatically
Have QuickBooks fill within the payroll tax forms for you
E-pay directly from QuickBooks

5. Track Inventory
If you would like to stay track of the inventory you sell, like on-hand amounts and unit costs, QuickBooks will automatically track and update this for you as you enter transactions. In QuickBooks, there are several reports available to manage inventory.

While keeping track of inventory is doable during a spreadsheet, it are often time-consuming and susceptible to errors. Below may be a sample Inventory Valuation Summary Report from QuickBooks Online. This report shows an inventory of your inventory products, quantity available , monetary value , and their total value.

6. Simplify Taxes
If you've got to consolidate several spreadsheets or organize a shoebox filled with receipts, it can take longer to urge your tax professional what they have than it takes to organize your income tax return .

Here at Fit Small Business, we use QuickBooks Online to manage all of our business accounting and taxes. we've found out our tax professional with a user ID and password to access our QuickBooks data and pull the knowledge they have to file our tax returns. Since everything is tracked in QuickBooks, we don't spend tons of your time organizing receipts and bank statements. This not only ensures that we've accounted for all income and expenses, but also improves accuracy as a result.

7. Accept Online Payments
One of the simplest ways to enhance your income is to supply customers the choice to pay their invoices online. With QuickBooks, you'll add the Intuit Payments feature.

Once activated, all customer invoices you send via email will include a “Pay Now” button. Your customer can click thereon button and pay their invoice employing a major mastercard or by entering their checking account information to authorize an automatic financial institution (ACH) payment directly from their checking account .

8. Scan Receipts
Another key to creating tax time a breeze is having the ability to arrange your receipts in QuickBooks. All QuickBooks Online (QBO) subscribers can download the QuickBooks app to their mobile device for free of charge , take an image of a receipt, and upload it to QBO in only a couple of minutes.

No more lost receipts or manually matching up receipts with downloaded banking transactions. QuickBooks allows you to connect a receipt to the corresponding banking transaction. you'll upload a vast number of receipts to QBO, which are stored within the cloud along side your data. this will be really helpful for companies that track tons of expenses.