Elaine Marmel

QuickBooks Online (QBO) and QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA) fall into the category of Software as a Service (SaaS). As such, you don’t buy the software. Instead, you rent it; that is, you buy a subscription to use the software for a time period specified by the seller. Traditionally, you buy a license to use software that you install on your computer, and typically, that license permits you to install the software on only one computer.

When you convert a QuickBooks Desktop company to QBO, some data fully converts, some partially converts, and some doesn’t convert at all. In addition, QBO contains comparable alternatives for some desktop QuickBooks features and doesn’t contain alternatives for others.You can import any QuickBooks Desktop for Windows company or any QuickBooks for Mac company using QuickBooks U.

You’ll probably want to review the company setup information for client QuickBooks Online (QBO) companies to make sure that things are set up properly for your client. You can take advantage of the Client Overview, which provides, well, an overview of the state of the client’s QBO company. And, you’ll want to review the settings, the Chart of Accounts, and the lists within each client’s QBO companies.

The Products and Services list is the QuickBooks Online (QBO) equivalent to the QuickBooks Desktop product’s Items list. You display the Products and Services list by choosing Gear→Products and Services. In the following figure, the compacted view of the list is shown so that you could see more products; you select the compacted view from the table gear on the right side of the page.

You can use the Customers, Vendors, and Employees pages in QuickBooks Online (QBO) in a variety of ways. The Contractors page is more limited than the rest; from it, you can search for contractors and prepare 1099s. From the Customers, Vendors, or Employees pages that list all the people in those categories, you can sort the people in the list, export the list to Excel, and perform actions on a selected group of people on the list.

Accountants often need to reclassify transactions, examine voided and deleted transactions, write off invoices, and perform other activities. QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA) contains tools to make performing these activities easy.To view and use the tools QBOA makes available to accountants, open any client QBO company.

Before diving into using the QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA) tools available while you work in a client’s QBO company, take a look at the Work page in the Navigation pane, which functions as a practice management tool. Having such a tool in QBOA enables you to centralize practice management, because all team members in your firm have access to the Work page in QBOA.

When you first see your company in QuickBooks Online, your Dashboard page contains boxes with links to options you can use to set up features in QBO that are important to you. You can use those links and set up those options during setup, or you can wait until later.To hide the options, click Hide in the upper right corner of the box.

You can make the most of your work in QuickBooks Online (QBO) and QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOL) using handy and time-savings shortcuts and tool buttons. Using QBO keyboard shortcuts means that you can seamlessly access various windows and pages without touching a mouse. The various icons at the top of the QBO page help you quickly search for items, create new items, or display transactions.