QuickBooks give you a broad range of options to customize your invoices. Using your logo and selecting a color palette on your invoices can keep your branding consistent with your customers.

In the upper right-hand corner of the invoice window, click the ‘Formatting’ tab. From there you can click ‘download templates’ and you will find an array of different types of templates to choose from.

Or you can choose ‘customize data layout’ and you can adjust the current template however you choose.

Technology moves quickly and it can be daunting where we should put our focus. You may hear from your customers do you accept Zelle or Venmo? It seems like daily, new apps are introduced that make our lives more efficient.

With any new technology, finding the time to research and then deciding if it’s worthwhile can be overwhelming. Making it easy for your customers to pay is always a great idea. If you notice your customers consistently requesting easier payment methods, you may want to invest the time to review a new payment option.

By adding the new payment option, you may discover how quickly your cash flow improves and that may be motivation alone to research and add new technology in the future.

Using the classes functions in QuickBooks is a great way to expand the way you track revenues and expenses. And once you have your classes set up you can also create financial reports specific to the different parameters. You can create classes based on how you would like to view your business.

Let’s say, for example, you have two locations for your business. And when you create an invoice or receive a bill you can designate which location the revenue or expense occurred. Or say you want to provide another type of service and you want to track if the new business is profitable.

You create a class for the new business and after you have tagged that data for a period, you can pull the financials just on that specific business. It’s unlimited and up to your imagination how you want to see your numbers.

Whether you are set up for cash or accrual accounting, using the A/P and A/R function is a great tool to help you stay organized.

In accrual accounting, you enter your bills and invoices for the period they occur. QuickBooks uses the date of the bill or invoice to put the expense or revenues in the right period even if you decide to pay the bill later or if you give your customers terms and they pay you at a later date.

For cash accounting, even though you will record your income and expenses at the time you pay and receive your payments, it’s a great way to keep your bills organized for due dates. If you give some of the customers terms, you can easily keep track of who owes you money and when they owe it.

Another time saving tip for your vendor entry is setting up the expense to automatically prefill. If there are some vendors that use the same expense account monthly, you can set it up in their vendor profile.

In the vendor profile, click on the “account settings” tab. Let say, for example, your monthly bill from ABC Telephone Company always books to telephone expense. Enter telephone expense for this vendor setting and each time you pull up ABC Telephone Company in enter bills, the telephone expense will prefill. 

If you ever need to change the expense, for example, to repairs and maintenance you can always manually override and update the expense account for that bill.