QuickBooks 2013: The Missing Manual

Chapter 23. Configuring Preferences to Fit Your Company

An organization’s approach to accounting often depends on the type of business it is and its objectives, policies, procedures, and industry. For example, maybe you want inventory tracking and payroll—but maybe you don’t. The way you and your accountant like to work also influences your organization’s accounting practices. For instance, you might prefer the simplicity of cash accounting to the more intimate pairing of income and expenses that accrual accounting offers (see page xxiii).

Enter QuickBooks, which has the Herculean task of satisfying every nuance of business operation and personal proclivity. The program’s preferences are configurable settings that accommodate different business approaches and personal tastes. During installation, QuickBooks picks the settings likely to work for a majority of organizations. And if you set up your company file by using the QuickBooks Setup feature (Options for Creating a Company File), you might already have most preferences set the way you want.

But you can change the program’s preferences to match the way you work, such as whether you create estimates for jobs you go after and how you calculate the amount of inventory that’s available. Preferences also let you turn on QuickBooks’ features, such as estimates, sales tax, inventory, and payroll. Using QuickBooks for a while can make it clear which preferences you need to change. This chapter presents all the program’s preferences and ...