You’ve heard me sing its praises before, but Quickbooks Online is hands down my favorite accounting software.
Accounting is the process of organizing all the financial transactions in your business. Check out this blog post for a guide to (almost) everything you need to know about accounting!
When you start out on your entrepreneurial journey, you might want to just use pen and paper, or a spreadsheet. But when you’re ready, progressing to software is one of the best things you can do.
Compared to other accounting software, Quickbooks Online is incredibly user friendly, and extremely powerful. I have a link to purchase QBO with a discount, which you can access here (disclaimer: I do get a small amount from every sign up).
I want to take you behind the scenes of actually using Quickbooks Online, so I suggest you check out my training video on YouTube to see exactly how it looks inside…
Quickbooks Online allows you to take a test drive!
In the United States, you can access a full, workable demo of Quickbooks without so much as needing to enter an email address!
You’re given access to a completely fictional landscaping company, that allows you to really poke around and have a go at all the amazing features QBO offers.
Have a play around here!
Using Quickbooks Online
Remember when I said that bookkeeping is going in and organizing all your financial transactions for your business bank account? Quickbooks allows you to connect your account and pull those transactions automatically!
This means you no longer have to worry about manually entering anything!
Connecting your bank accounts is pretty straightforward:
- Go to the banking section to the left of your screen
- Choose link accounts
- Select your banking institution from the options
- Click connect
You can see me walk through this in my YouTube training video.
Once you’re connected, you can see all your financial transactions through that account, and you can start actually categorizing them!
Quickbooks allows you to add labels to your vendors, making it easy to categorize. Spent money at Staples? You can categorize that as Office Supplies. Paid your bookkeeper? Categorize it as Accounting. You can choose the labels so this system can really work for you.
That’s one of the many, many reasons I love Quickbooks: it’s fully customizable! And I know that if your accounting doesn’t make sense to you, you’re not going to do it!
Make strategic business decisions using data
If you’re not using data to drive the business decision you make, you’re totally flying blind.
You can’t build and sustain a profitable empire without using concrete, numerical facts to help you along the way.
I don’t want to see you slowly go out of business because you’re not aware of where your money is going – there’s only so long an entrepreneur can wing it for.
Quickbooks helps you see all the data you need to make those decisions, and it also saves you a ton of time doing it!
Quickbooks really CAN be quick!
Another feature I absolutely love about Quickbooks is the ability to automatically categorize transactions as they come in, saving yourself a bunch of time!
You need to do this in bank feeds (and remember, you can follow along with me LIVE on YouTube!) You could have hundreds of financial transactions to sort though, and that’s going to eat up a huge chunk of your time.
This nifty trick allows you to group all similar transactions as one – both backdated and going forwards!
By clicking on a particular transaction, you’re able to create a rule: let’s say a payment to your bookkeeper. You can set a rule that states this is an accounting expense, meaning that any transactions to this vendor will be automatically categorized as an accounting expense.
And you’ve just gained so many hours back in your day!
Customize your Quickbooks
As well as being fantastic software for managing your business finances, Quickbooks can also maintain your professionalism.
By clicking the gear icon and choosing accounts and settings, you can completely set your invoices etc to match your branding.
Add a logo. Change the colors to match your company colors. Everything you need to deliver a crisp, clean and professional invoice to your clients is there.
And you can email it out to them with one simple click! No more downloading PDFs and attaching to manual emails. Quickbooks does it all for you.
Track spending on the go
Quickbooks also allows you to upload receipts to track your expenses on the go. This is absolutely amazing, and saves so much time later!
You can upload receipts directly from your Google Drive, from your computer. You can even snap a photo on your cell and upload them through the Quickbooks app! Or set up an email address dedicated to emailed receipts which can be directly input to Quickbooks!
Quickbooks really can overhaul your business – and your life!
As you can tell, I really love Quickbooks Online. I’ve tried and tested so many accounting softwares as a CFO, and Quickbooks wins hands down every time. It’s so user friendly, and even I got the hang of it quickly!
If you want to give it a try, you can sign up to Quickbooks here, and if it all seems overwhelming, make sure to read this blog post on the different versions available.
Automating your finances is one of the best things you can do for your business. Running a company is a huge responsibility, and keeping on top of your finances needs to be a priority if you want to make a sustainable profit.
Quickbooks Online really can do all that for you.
I strongly recommend watching my behind-the-scenes tour video on YouTube to really see how simple this software is to use, and remember I am always available to chat. Just shoot me a message on Instagram, or join The Profit Factor on Facebook.
