QuickBooks Online For Dummies. Elaine Marmel
slider to toggle between a short-term discount or a free trial."/>
FIGURE 3-1: Use the slider to toggle between a short-term discount or a free trial.
FIGURE 3-2: Fill in the information needed to start the free trial.
QBO sets up your free trial, logs you in to QBO, and displays the Set Up wizard … read on.
Setting Up a New Company
When you first sign up for a QBO account, Intuit logs you in to your QBO account and, by default, displays the Set Up wizard. The first screen of the wizard, shown in Figure 3-3, asks for basic company information.
FIGURE 3-3: Provide basic company information.
Click Next in the lower-right corner, and QBO displays the screen shown in Figure 3-4, where you select activities for which you intend to use QBO. Don’t worry about making a mistake here; this is just a “get up and running” page. You don’t need to select all activities. If you don’t select an activity now, you can always add it later. As you select a particular activity, QBO displays a check in the box for that activity. You can choose any or all of the following that apply to you:
Send and track invoices.
Organize your expenses.
Manage your inventory.
Track your retail sales.
Track your bills.
Track your sales tax.
Pay your employees.
Track billable hours.
When you finish selecting activities, click All Set.
FIGURE 3-4: Select activities for which you expect to use QBO.
QBO displays a short tour and then your company’s Dashboard page (formerly called the Home page) as well as links to options you might want to set up to get started (see Figure 3-5).
We examine the Dashboard page in the next section, but essentially you’ve just completed most of the initial setup work; we cover other program settings later in this chapter.
FIGURE 3-5: Your QBO Dashboard page just after creating your company.
Understanding the Dashboard Page
When you first see your QBO company, your Dashboard page contains boxes with links to options you can use to set up features in QBO that are important to you (refer to Figure 3-5). You can use those links and set up those options now, or you can wait until later. To hide the options, click Hide in the upper-right corner of the box. Don’t worry, you can still set up the options associated with any of these boxes; in Figure 3-6, notice the Resume Setup link in the upper-right corner of the Dashboard. Click it to redisplay the setup options. And, once you close the boxes, your Dashboard page displays information specific to your company.
In the center of Figure 3-6, using most of the Dashboard page real estate, you find information that changes depending on what you have clicked while using QBO. For example, when you initially open QBO, the information is overview company information. If you click an entry in the Navigation bar (on the left side of the screen), the information in the center of the Dashboard page changes to information related to the entry you clicked. If you select an option on the Gear menu (discussed later in this section), the information you see relates to the option you select.
FIGURE 3-6: The QBO Dashboard page after closing the additional setup box.
As we just mentioned, the Navigation bar runs down the left side of the screen. You use the Navigation bar the same way you’d use a menu; click an item in the Navigation bar to, well, navigate to that part of QBO. For example, you can click Sales in the Navigation bar to see existing sales transactions in QBO and to create a new Sales transaction.
The highlighted entry in the Navigation bar helps you identify the section of QBO that you are using.
On the right side of the Dashboard page, you find a list of the bank accounts you’ve set up; if you scroll to the bottom of the list, you find options to connect your accounts to their banks, select an account and