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Get started and adjust settings after you sign up for QuickBooks Online

by Intuit•30• Updated 1 week ago

Welcome to QuickBooks Online! When you first sign in to your QuickBooks Online account, you'll be directed to the homepage dashboard. Your dashboard displays an overview of your company, a checklist to help you get set up, and a Task list for anything that may need your attention.

In this article, you'll learn how to:

This is Katheryn from the QuickBooks team. Welcome to QuickBooks Online. First, let’s explore how to get around, where to find your settings, and how to get help when needed! Select Dashboard to see shortcuts to some of the most common activities in QuickBooks. You can also view your sales & get paid funnel, an overview of your bank accounts, and charts and graphs. Select Add widgets to customize what you see. Intuit Assist uses the business feed to share work it does for you and give you suggestions on how to run your business. Reports and Analytics is where you run valuable reports on your company’s performance. This is also where you can take a look at budgets, forecasts, and other financial planning tools. Select My apps to find where to perform your work in QuickBooks. You can also use the search tool. Accounting lets you connect your bank and credit cards to QuickBooks. You can securely and automatically import transactions, which are either categorized for you by QuickBooks, or you can enter required data yourself. Connecting your accounts keeps your books up-to-date and accurate, and is an important first step in the setup process. Integration transactions is where you see transactions from all your connected sales channels, like Shopify or Amazon. You can also upload and review receipts, reconcile your books, and customize your Chart of Accounts to manage how you want to categorize and track transactions. In Expenses & Pay Bills, you can see suppliers and contractors, record expenses, and enter and pay bills. You also track your business Mileage here. Sales & Get Paid helps you manage your money-in options such as sending Invoices to customers, accepting payments, and tracking the products and services you sell. You manage your customers and leads in the Customer Hub. Select Team to add and view your Employees and Contractors. And Time lets you enter and approve the hours your team works. Depending on your QuickBooks plan, you can track and plan your Project financials under Project Management. Sales Tax lets you set up and pay your Sales taxes, And you can view and manage year-end taxes and filings for your business under Business Taxes. If you want to apply for a line of credit or credit card, you can do so under Lending. This is also where you sign up for a QuickBooks Checking account. Use Payroll to pay your team and Mailchimp to reach customers faster. You can customize your navigation at any time. Pin apps, or drag and rearrange pinned apps. You can add bookmarks for the pages you use most often. When you need to quickly create something, such as a new invoice or expense transaction, hover over Create to choose which transaction or entry you need to open. Now that you can get around, select the gear icon to see your Settings options. Here, you can do things like add and manage users, manage your billing and subscription info, and set your preferences to optimize QuickBooks for your business. Finally, when you find something you have questions about, help is just a click away. Select the Help icon to chat with our online assistant, see topics related to the page you're on, or search for more info. Plus, you can contact experts here. Now that you know your way around, what’s next is up to you. Visit our video centre to find even more videos on how to get set up. Welcome to QuickBooks.

To learn more about your Home Dashboard click here.



Get to know your Home Dashboard

The QuickBooks dashboard is your home base for everything you need to do in QuickBooks Online. It's divided into three tabs: Home (Take me there), Cash flow (Take me there), and Planner (Take me there). These tabs help you focus on the most important tasks in QuickBooks and get your work done faster. You can quickly set up and explore how your business is doing.

In addition, you can customize the homepage to highlight the info that is most important to you. Select Customize layout to add individual widgets, resize them to your needs, and drag widgets to reorder them. Gain massive insights at a glance. You can track Cash Flow, your business's profitability with profit and loss, expenses, income and sales widgets, and see all your connected bank account balances in one place.

Modify the Shortcuts widget to include your most frequently used transactions. Create an invoice, review banking transactions, record a bill on the fly, quickly set up customers, and check on your payroll health.

Note: The dashboard view may vary from one company user to another. QuickBooks Online determines what information it displays by each user’s access rights.



Set up your company

There are two ways to start your QuickBooks setup:

Option 1: Go through the list of company settings and set them at once

  1. Open Account and Settings.
  2. Navigate using the sections on the left menu and edit as necessary.

Check out these videos for more details on how to set up sales, expense, and advanced settings:

Image Alt Text How to set up Sales settings

Image Alt Text How to set up Expense settings

Image Alt Text How to set up Advanced settings

Option 2: Configure settings as you work

When it's your first time creating a report, a setup interview window will open for you. Each setup interview has simple, straightforward questions about what you’re looking to do and how you’re planning to use the function you're using at that time.

When you answer these questions, you automatically configure your settings. You can answer some or all of the interview questions right away, or you can select Cancel. If you cancel, the next time you sign in to QuickBooks and create a report, the setup interview opens at the point where you left off.

If you want to change a setting, you can always open Account and Settings.



Manage users and their access

Users include the primary administrator and any other users the administrator has added. These users count toward your current user limit.

You must be a Primary Administrator or a Company Administrator to add, delete, or change a user's access. To manage users, open Manage Users.

Check out this video for more info on how to add users and manage their settings:

Image Alt Text How to add and manage users



Edit contact and sign-in information

QuickBooks Online allows you to change your own name, address, phone number, email address, and user ID. If you have the appropriate access, you can change another user's name, email address, and access rights.

To change your own contact and sign-in information:

  1. Open Company, then select Edit ✏️ in Contact info.
  2. Edit the information as necessary.
  3. Select Save and then Done.

To change contact and sign-in information for another user:

  1. Open Manage users.
  2. Select the user that you want to change then Edit.
  3. Update the information as necessary.
  4. Select Save changes.
Note: You must have the appropriate permissions to change another user’s information.