From the course: QuickBooks Pro 2020 Essential Training

A tour of the interface - QuickBooks Pro Tutorial

From the course: QuickBooks Pro 2020 Essential Training

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A tour of the interface

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- [Instructor] Let's go through the interface of QuickBooks, so that you can become familiar with the terminology, the layout, and you'll know right where to go to find the tools you need while we're going through this course. I'm using the Sample Company file right now. At the very top of the screen, you have your File menu. Here is where you can access all of the items that I'm going to show you below, plus some extras that you can't get to via the centers. When I say centers, I'm talking about this middle screen here, you'll notice that, if I hover my mouse over any of these items, it's going to take me in to a certain area of QuickBooks. All of these areas are accessible via this File menu. This means that if you have a window open and you do need to get to any of these items, you can always do that by clicking on these menus here. It also makes QuickBooks a little bit less overwhelming when you realize that everything here is the same thing that's here. Directly underneath the file File menu are two tabs, there's the Home Page tab, which brings you back to this center screen, and something called Insights. Insights is a company snapshot of how you're doing, this was introduced in an earlier version of QuickBooks. These are tabs, so to get back to the Home Page at any time in these centers, click the Home Page tab right next to Insights. All the way on the right-hand side of the screen is the reminder bar. If you have any reminders, such as upcoming bills, deposits to make, or invoices to send, those will show up here. Let's move on to the bottom-left hand side of the screen, here's where you can purchase services and add-ons from QuickBooks, such as Payroll, accepting credit cards, and ordering checks and supplies. Above that is the navigation bar, here's where you can access shortcuts that you can get to in your company file. Any window that you open here will keep this navigation bar still open so that you can access things quickly, and you'll always be able to see it. If you don't like this navigation bar, or you don't want to use it, you can minimize it by clicking this arrow on the top-right hand side to collapse it. To bring it back again, click the arrow again, and it will expand the pane. In the very middle of the display, here are all of the centers that we can access that I was talking about. There's a vendor center, a customer center, and an employees center. On the right-hand side are all my banking accounts, and at the top are any records that have to do with your actual company, like setting up your chart of accounts, and all of your records that have to do with items, and services, and products. Clicking on center label directly, such as customers, will bring up an entirely new area of QuickBooks. For example, now I'm in the customer center, I can see all of my customers, what their balances are, and their contact information. You can get out of this area, and any area that opens up, by clicking the X on the top-right hand side of the screen. It's going to bring you back to the Home Page. I can do the same thing with vendors and employees. You'll notice that the link text is highlighted in blue. Anything that you can click on where the cursor changes to a hand, some things will open up reports, some will open up check registers, but you can always get out of any area by clicking the X on the top-right hand side. On the Home Page itself, you'll notice these arrows. The arrows are meant to illustrate the business workflow process, although you certainly don't have to use any of these areas in QuickBooks or even follow the process. For example, creating an estimate will lead to an invoice, so that's why the arrow is pointing from the estimate to the invoice, however, you may not use estimates, you can simply just choose not to use them, and that's perfectly okay. You can always create an invoice without creating an estimate first if you business doesn't do that. I'll go over that later in the course but I do need to drive home the fact that not everything here will be used, it's all according to how your business works, and there's no right or wrong. Now that you know your way around QuickBooks, in the next video, let's talk about each individual center.

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