Company Menu Commands
GENERAL DISCUSSION
These are the menu commands under the Company Menu. Please note that some of these menu commands may be worded slightly differently, and some menu items not even appear on your menu simply because the QuickBooks menu will change depending upon how many times you’ve opened the file, how long you’ve been using that particular version of QuickBooks, and how you have your preferences set.
For example, when you first install QuickBooks, they will try to sell you a number of their other services by placing these items on the menu. These other services include creating a Website, buying postage online, etc. As you use the program over a period of time without signing up for these services, the menu items will stop appearing.
Another factor that will influence what menu commands appear on your menu is your preferences. For example, if you turn the Navigator off under the preferences, then the Navigator menu commands will not appear on your menus.
If you think all of this is confusing, you should try to write a manual about it.
| Company Menu Commands | ||
| Menu | Description | |
| Company Navigator | This menu command will start the QuickBooks Navigator Company page, which is a specially designed screen that attempts to bring certain general information about your company (total funds in the checking account, total amount in A/R and A/P, etc.), along with menu commands related to the company menu (Reminders, Chart of Accounts, etc.), activities (Write Letters, Synchronize Contacts, etc.) and some memorized reports.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. If you like using the Navigator, then use it. However, for me personally, I find it useless and a bit cumbersome, largely because everything displayed in the Navigator is already available on the regular menu bar, so why would you want to wait for it to load up and anyway why do you need a second way to access the same commands? |
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| Business Services Navigator | This is an advertisement to sell you additional services.
This menu command will open the Business Services Navigator, which is a specially design screen that displays a number of menu commands that will each open your Internet connection and take you to the QuickBooks Website, where they will attempt to sell you a number of “services” including:
This is just another tiresome attempt by Intuit to sell you additional services. |
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| Company Center | This menu command will open the Company Center, which is a specially design screen that displays the totals of your major balance sheet accounts (A/R, A/P, bank accounts, etc.) along with a chart of your profitability for the past several months.
If you find the information to be helpful then use it. Personally, I find it to be a bit simplistic, and all the same information can be readily viewed just by looking at your Chart of Accounts. |
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| Company Information… | This is an important screen. This command will open the Company Information dialog box where you will enter the basic information about your company. The QuickBooks Template Files has prompts to help you, but most of the required information is obvious.
As with earlier versions of the QuickBooks Template File, we recommend that you enter the company phone and fax numbers in the last line of your address, largely so that this information will be displayed in on your invoices. Curiously, version 2001 provides a place to enter your phone and fax numbers in the Company Information, but it is not available as a selection when customizing invoice templates. |
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| Set Up Users… | This is the function that allows you to enter your own password as the file Administrator, whereupon you can setup additional users each with their own passwords and each with the restrictions you set. For the most part this function is not needed in a single user environment.
The Closing Date can be a very useful useful tool. It’s purpose is to limit accidental changes to prior entries in years where your tax returns have already been prepared using the existing numbers. In other words, if your accountant has prepared your taxes using the figures in your QuickBooks file, you can use the password function to “freeze” the books for that year, and thus no one could accidentally change a transaction in that period. This is much easier that being artificially tortured by having to “close out” these reporting periods. |
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| Change your Password… | This function allows you to change your Administrator password at any time. The procedure is rather straight forward. | |
| Set Up Budgets | This is the function you use to enter and revise budgets for your construction projects and, if you so choose, for your business overhead.
Detailed instruction for using this function can be found in the QuickBooks Users Guide and in the Full Manual, both of which are part of this Website. |
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| To Do List | This function will open the To Do List, which allows you to enter detailed notes of things to do along with a reminder date. You can set the Preferences to show the To Do List each time you start QuickBooks, and you can print your To Do List for review at any time. As you complete items on the List, you may indicate them as having been Completed.
I personally don’t use the To Do List because I prefer to use another program called SideKick, but I do know Builders who use it quite successfully to keep up with all the calls and events they have to pursue every day. |
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| Reminders | The Reminders List is similar to the To Do List except that the items on the Reminders List are generated by QuickBooks based upon your books, as opposed to being manually entered by you.
The Reminders List reviews your books and displays reminders like “You have bills to pay” if in fact there are any bills in the Accounts Payable ledger that are due or past due. You may also Collapse or Expand the list to show the details of each category (what bills need to be paid, for example). You can set the QuickBooks Preferences to determine what type of items are displayed in the Reminders List, and you can also set the program to show the reminders list when you first open QuickBooks. I personally don’t use the Reminders, especially when I’m starting QuickBooks, mostly because I always have Bills to Pay, and I don’t want to be reminded (bugged) about it each time I sit down to use QuickBooks. Nevertheless, many QuickBooks users like the Reminders to quickly advise them of what tasks they need to attend to each day as they keep their books. In any event, all the information displayed in the Reminders dialog box is also available by reviewing the corresponding ledger. |
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| Chart of Accounts | This menu command will open your Chart of Accounts list, from where you can add, edit, move or delete accounts on the Chart of Accounts. | |
| Make Journal Entry | This function displays a dialog box that allows you to make a Journal Entry, which essentially means you can by-pass all the regular QuickBooks functions (Write Checks, Enter Bills, etc.) and force numbers into your books.
When making a Journal Entry, you are required to enter both sides of the transaction, which means you must confront the dreaded D and C words (Debit and Credit) and it requires that the transaction is in balance. This is the only time in QuickBooks where you control both sides of the entry, in all other transactions you enter in QuickBooks, the program automatically enters the opposite side of the entry for you. Remember: QuickBooks is a double entry program with a single entry interface. Nevertheless, there are certainly occasions where you (or your accountant) will need to make Journal Entries, for example:
To make things easier, you can memorize Journal Entries and use them (after changing the numbers) repeatedly when needed, thus once you have properly figured out the correct Debit and Credit for a particular type of entry, then you don’t have to experiment the next time you need to perform a similar entry. |
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| Write Letters | ||
| Print Mailing Labels | This function will allow you to select one, several or an entire group of mailing labels to be printed on a number of standard label formats.
This is a cool feature. I previous versions of QuickBooks I had to use a specially customized invoice in order to get the program to print a mailing label. This function makes it easy. You will probably want to set the label fonts in the Printer Setup before you begin using this function. |
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| Postage Services | This is an advertisement to sell you additional services.
This is just another tiresome attempt by Intuit to sell you additional services, in this case it’s trying to get you to use their service to buy postage over the Internet. |
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| Synchronize Contacts | This function will synchronize your names, addresses and other contact information between QuickBooks and either Microsoft Outlook or ACT. The function does not support Outlook Express. | |
| Decision Tools | This menu will open a flyout menu with various submenus items that will each subsequently open a short article on the selected subject, coupled with a graph containing developed from data in your file. The specific topics presented in the submenu items apparently varies each time you open QuickBooks.
I found the discussion of the subjects to be somewhat elementary to be of real use, but you may find them interesting to read the first time. |
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| QuickBooks Products & Services | This is an advertisement to sell you additional services.
This function will open a flyout menu with submenu items that will each open your Internet connection and take you to the QuickBooks Website, where they will attempt to sell you a number of “services” including:
This is just another tiresome attempt by Intuit to sell you additional services. |
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| My Company Web Site | This is an advertisement to sell you additional services.
This function will open your Internet and take you to the QuickBooks Website, where they will attempt to help you setup a Website for your company on their site. This is just another attempt by Intuit to sell you additional services. Because I run several Websites myself, I decided to check out their hosting package for comparison purposes. I know from past experience, the devil is always in what they don’t talk about. While I’m sure the site will work as they described, here’s what their offer is lacking:
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| Company Services | This is an advertisement to sell you additional services.
This function will open a flyout menu with submenu items that will each open your Internet connection and take you to the QuickBooks Website, where they will attempt to sell you a number of “services” including:
This is just another tiresome attempt by Intuit to sell you additional services. |
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