QuickBooks 2017 All-In-One For Dummies. Nelson Stephen L.
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bit about how to work with your computer.
✓ You have, or will buy, a copy of QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier, or QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions for each computer on which you want to run the program.
In other words, I don’t assume that you’re a computer genius or an MBA, or that you’re superexperienced in the arcane rules of accounting. I assume that QuickBooks and accounting are new subjects to you. But I also assume that you want to understand the subjects because you need to do so for your job or your business.
Icons Used in This Book
Like many computer books, this book uses icons, or little pictures, to flag things that don’t quite fit into the flow of things.
Beyond the Book
QuickBooks 2017 All-in-One For Dummies includes some extra content that you bought with your book but didn’t actually get inside the book. Okay, I know that sounds bad at first blush. But don’t worry. This extra, premium stuff is available online:
✓ The Cheat Sheet for this book is at
In the Search field, type QuickBooks 2017 All-in-One For Dummies Cheat Sheet to find the Cheat sheet for this book.
✓ Updates to this book, if we have any, are also at http://www.dummies.com. Search for the book’s title to find the associated updates.
Where to Go from Here
This reference combines eight short books, including a minibook about accounting, one about setting up the QuickBooks system, one for bookkeepers using QuickBooks, one for accountants and managers using QuickBooks, a minibook about small-business financial management, a minibook about business planning, a minibook about taking care of a QuickBooks accounting system, and a minibook of appendixes of further useful information.
I’m not going to go into more detail here about what’s available in the book. If you have a specific question about what’s covered or where some topic is covered, refer to the table of contents in the front of this reference. Also remember that the book provides an index to help you find just the pages that have the information you need.
While I’m on the subject of what’s in this book and how to find information, let me make four tangential points:
✓ You’ll never read this book from cover to cover unless you’re someone who has an obsessive-compulsive personality (like me) and many hours to devote to reading. But that’s okay. This reference isn’t meant to be read from cover to cover like some Val McDermid page-turner. Instead, chapters within the eight minibooks are organized into largely self-contained descriptions of how you do the things that you need to do. You just read the paragraph, page, or chapter that provides the information you want.
✓ I haven’t discussed in any detail how to use the QuickBooks Premier and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions features for business planning. The wizard-based approach that QuickBooks Premier and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions provide for business planning is not, in my humble opinion, the right way to do this. Instead, I discuss in detail alternative, superior approaches to business planning and budgeting (using spreadsheets) in Book 6. (Just so you know: The approach I describe and recommend here is the same one that any business school teaches its students.)
✓ At a few points in the book, you’ll find me saying things like “Well, I really don’t think you should use this part of the product.” I just want to explain here, up front, where I’m coming from on this. First, know that I think QuickBooks is an outstanding product, but not every feature and every command is good. I’ve already mentioned that the new business planning tools aren’t ones that I can recommend. And payroll, very frankly, is another pain-in-the-butt feature that most businesses should avoid. (I do briefly discuss payroll in Book 3, Chapter 5.) So if I think that a particular feature is one that you shouldn’t use, I don’t take up page space (or much page space) describing the feature. I’d rather use that space to describe other stuff that I believe is going to be valuable to you and other readers.
✓ I should also mention one final thing: Accounting software programs require you to do a certain amount of preparation before you can use them to get real work done. If you haven’t started to use QuickBooks yet, I recommend that you skim Book 1 and then read Book 2 to find out what you need to do first.
Book 1
An Accounting Primer
Chapter 1
Principles of Accounting
IN THIS CHAPTER
❯❯ Figuring out the purpose of accounting
❯❯ Taking a look at the common financial statements
❯❯ Understanding the philosophy of accounting
❯❯ Discovering income tax accounting and reporting
Any discussion of how to use QuickBooks to better manage your business begins with a discussion of the basics of accounting. For this reason, in this chapter and the next two, I attempt to provide the same information that you would receive in an introductory college accounting course. I tailor the entire discussion, of course, to QuickBooks and the small-business environment. What you’ll read about here and in the next chapters of this book pretty much describes how accounting works in a small-business setting using QuickBooks.
If you’ve had some experience with accounting, if you know how to read an income statement and balance sheet, or if you know how to construct a journal entry, you don’t need to read this chapter or the next. But if you’re new to accounting and business bookkeeping, take the time to read this chapter carefully. I start the chapter by giving you a high-level overview of the purpose of accounting. Then I review the common financial statements that any accounting system worth its salt produces. I also discuss some of the important principles of accounting and the philosophy of accounting. Finally, I talk a little bit about income tax law and tax accounting.
The Purpose of Accounting
In the movie Creator, Peter O’Toole plays an eccentric professor. At one point, O’Toole’s character attempts to talk a young student into working as an unpaid research assistant. When the student protests, noting that he needs 15 credit hours, O’Toole creates a special 15-credit independent-study course named “Introduction to the Big Picture.” In the next section, I describe the “big picture” of accounting. At its core, accounting makes perfect, logical sense.
The big picture
The most important thing to understand about accounting is that it provides financial information to stakeholders. Stakeholders are the people who do business with or interact with a firm; they include managers, employees, investors, banks, vendors, government authorities, and agencies that may