February 2024 Managing the Money with Megan Schmitke

The 3 Best Time-Saving Features of Quickbooks Online (AND 1 to avoid)

by Megan Schmitke

I know that bookkeeping is probably not your favorite business-related task, but it is probably one of the most important ones. And I’m not talking about the year end scramble to gather all your numbers together - I mean keeping up with it each and every week so you can USE those numbers to help you make smarter business decisions.

Since it’s not your favorite task, I want you to be EFFECTIVE with the time you are spending on your bookkeeping. My #1 tip to do so - use a software like Quickbooks Online (QBO).

Today I’m going to share 3 of the best time-saving features of QBO that will help you spend as LITTLE as time as possible on your bookkeeping while ensuring it all stays up to date and accurate.

Bank & Credit Card Connections

In my opinion, this is the single greatest feature of using a software like Quickbooks to help with your bookkeeping: the ability to connect your bank and credit cards. This means that Quickbooks will automatically pull in every single transaction that flows through those accounts, so you’re not having to manually enter all of these into a spreadsheet - thus, saving you time.

With all your transactions already loaded into Quickbooks each time you log in, all you have to do is simply tell Quickbooks what that money was for!

Bank Rules

If you have regularly recurring expenses, such as monthly software subscriptions, or if you frequently purchase from the same suppliers, you can set up automations so Quickbooks will automatically fill in the vendor name & the category for all those transactions for you.

So not only will QBO pull in all those transactions for you, it will literally fill in all the necessary information for you. All you have to do is hit “Confirm”!

Template Entries

Quickbooks has a feature called Recurring Transactions that you can use to create certain template entries to record things that aren’t as straight forward as a simple expense transactions. Things like:

• Recording payroll for your employees to ensure the gross wages & applicable taxes are broken out and recorded appropriately
• Recording all the details from your point of sale system - gross sales, discounts, refunds, sales tax, etc…

By using these recurring transactions, you will be able to set up templates for yourself where you can plug in the necessary numbers from your payroll reports or point of sale reports, update the date of the entry and voila! That’s it!

Without these 3 features, I would EASILY be spending at least twice the amount of time on my client’s bookkeeping each and every month. All of these features are available on the Simple Start subscription level (the cheapest one for businesses)!

The One to Avoid

Quickbooks really boasts about the wide variety of apps & integrations that will help you connect your Quickbooks to your point of sale system, but I will NEVER recommend that someone use them. I have seen and heard way more horror stories than success stories with these.

If you have been using them, and want to continue using them, then I just want to encourage you to keep a VERY close eye on your income statement & be sure to consistently compare those numbers to your point of sale system.

By not using them, I’m not dooming you to spending a ton of extra time manually recording all your sales information. Using the Recurring Transaction feature I mentioned above, you can record a month’s worth of sales information in about 5 minutes. And doing it this way, you can be CONFIDENT that your numbers are accurate instead of just hoping they are.

If this has finally convinced you to leave your bookkeeping spreadsheets in 2023, then send me a DM on Instagram (@findingfreedomfinancial) or send me an email at [email protected]! I have a special discount of 30% off your first 6 months I’d love to share with you! (Sorry to all you existing QBO users, this is only good for new users of QBO)

If you have any other questions about how to make Quickbooks work for you, then feel free to reach out in the same ways, and I’d be happy to help you out!