It may seem a hassle to keep every small slip of paper or weirdly-sized receipt you receive with your purchases, but these are critical to keeping accurate records and categorizing your expenses correctly. Have a designated place where you can keep them, or make it a habit to take a picture of every receipt on your phone right away.

Updating your records on a regular basis will save you an enormous amount of time and stress when tax time rolls around again.

Another great feature about creating unique usernames, is the transaction created or edited by the user can be tracked via the ‘audit trail’ report. This report tracks who posted or removed transactions.

This is great information for training purposes. The ‘audit trail’ becomes very handy to recall transactions that were deleted in error. This report will give you the entry and it’s original details.

This report is can be found in: Reports/Account & Taxes/Audit Trail.

To create users, use the person’s name for easy reference or use work titles such as Accounts Payable, Sales, or Accountant. You will then click the “Add User” button.

In the next window you will create a user name and password. Please note this will be a temporary password. As soon as the user logs in it will prompt them to create their own unique password. If the password is ever lost or forgotten or the user is no longer with the company, the Admin can reassign and set or reset the password.

Creating users in QuickBooks is a great practice in your accounting procedures. QuickBooks allows you to assign specific areas the user can view and make changes.

As you go through the process of setting up user preferences, keep in mind what areas the user may need to perform their tasks and areas you may want to keep hidden such as financial reports and payroll.

Admin – is the master control. It is the default user and is best to reserve this user for non-daily use.

To create a user: Log in as Admin. Go to Company/Set Up Users and Passwords/Set Up Users

Just for fun you can personalize the color of your QuickBooks company file. Go to “Preferences” and choose the “Desktop View” on the right-hand side. Use the drop down in the “Company File Color Scheme” to choose your favorite color. If you manage several Quick Books files for different companies, choosing a unique color for each company file can be a nice visual que as to which company you are working in.