5 Easy Ways to Automate your QuickBooks Online Accounting

If you are an early-stage or growing business, there is a good chance you are using a basic accounting system like QuickBooks because at that stage, accounting is relatively simple. But soon your business will grow and the need for US GAAP-compliant financial reporting requires greater time and effort for accounting to keep up. Many QuickBooks users may not be aware of the software’s growing capabilities for automation even within its most basic version – saving you the time needed for other strategic initiatives. Read on as I share a few pro tips to update your QuickBooks experience – whether you’re an employee or contractor.

 Tip 1: Creating recurring custom reports 

Automated reports can be a huge time saver. By scheduling reports to run at different frequencies you can save both time and effort of having to go in and run reports yourself. You can even have QuickBooks Online automatically send those reports out in an email with custom text.   

A few of my favorite recurring reports are Weekly AR or AP Aging, and monthly Income Statement and Balance Sheet financials. To schedule a recurring report: 

• Go into Reports

• Click on any report you want to generate  

• Customize it by clicking Customize. There are plenty of options to customize and add different data fields. Once you’re done, click Save.

• Save the report by clicking Save Customization

  • You’ll have the option to save this report to a certain group, like Weekly Reports 

  • You’ll also have the ability to share the report with other people 

• After you’ve saved your customization, you can access the report you just created under Reports then Custom Reports 

Once you’re in the Customer Reports module, you’ll be able to click Edit on the right-hand side. A pop-up will enable you to Set Email Schedule. You can decide the frequency, recipients, and whether you want to attach the report as an Excel file. 

Tip 2: Use the time module for project-based work

The Time module works great for companies that need to track working hours. You’ll have to make sure that you add your employees (you can add contractors as well) and assign them a Time Tracker user type to be able to have them input your time. Don’t worry, you don’t need to purchase an additional user license to have them added. The Time module also leverages the Project module and the Products and Service modules to help populate the Customer, Project, and the Revenue Type.   

When an employee (or contractor) enters their time, they will be prompted to select from a drop-down menu to enter in their Customer, Project, and Revenue type. All they need to do is enter a description of the service they provided, and they are all set. Trust me, it’s shockingly simple. 

The true power of this process comes from invoice creation, where you are able to instantly bill a client based on the time entered by your employees. QuickBooks Online will ask you if you would like to link your time to the newly created invoices and that’s it. Link it, update the description, and get paid! 

Tip 3: Creating recurring journal entries 

Any time you go through month close, there are some entries that just don’t really change that much unless an event happens. Some of these entries that pop into my head are amortization expense and depreciation expense. Instead of spending the time creating the same journal entry every month, you’re actually able to create a recurring entry.   

When starting from a new journal entry, click on Make Recurring. That will prompt you with another window that looks like a journal entry, but has a few more features, namely the cadence of when that entry should be posted. Make sure you provide your template a name for future use, check the type, interval, and start and end date and you’re all set. 

Tip 4: Viewing double entries and audit trails 

A common problem that I hear from QuickBooks’ users is that it’s made for the non-accountant.  Unfortunately, there are plenty of companies that have accountants that need to be able to access underneath the hood of QuickBooks’ user interface. I remember starting out and not knowing how QuickBooks handled an invoice or a credit memo. How do I know the double-sided entry?! Who booked this entry? Guess what? There is a QuickBooks feature for that. 

When looking at a transaction, click on “More” at the bottom of the screen. You’ll see two important options: Audit History and Transaction Journal. Audit History provides information on who posted the original entry and if there were any modifications, who made the modification, when the modification was made, and what was modified. On the other hand, the Transaction Journal provides insight into the double-sided journal entries that accountants are used to looking at. You can finally see what a credit memo is doing in the general ledger. That’s an incredibly useful tool when you are investigating the source of an unreconciled account.

Tip 5: Merging similar accounts

You’ve heard me say it before, but this one is a huge time-saver. Imagine you have two accounts; let’s call them Sales Revenue #1 and Sales Revenue #2. Sales Revenue #1 is the main account that all revenue flows into, but at some point, Sales Revenue #2 was created incorrectly. It’s been used wrong for months and there are a ton of transactions that flow into both accounts. We need to combine the two accounts into one account again and delete the other one. You might think, am I really going to have to go through each transaction and change the revenue from Sales Revenue #2 to Sales Revenue #1? 

The answer (thankfully) is no. You can go into your chart of accounts, change the name of the Sales Revenue #2 to Sales Revenue #1 and QuickBooks Online will automatically merge the two accounts.  Done and done. This even works for classes and departments too!

Now you’re armed up with 5 handy tips to automate your QuickBooks accounting. Still looking for the trick to fix your QuickBooks woes? Comment below and I will do my best to make your QuickBooks life a little easier.