Introduction

      Most small business owners do something besides accounting; they sell products or services. Many small business owners address accounting only because they have to address it — to meet legal requirements, such as reporting earnings and paying employees.

      QuickBooks helps take the pain out of the process; in fact, accounting can become downright tolerable. And QuickBooks Online (QBO) makes accounting almost easy. Because QBO is a web-based product with mobile versions, you can securely do what you need to do from anywhere at any time of day. And, because QBO is web-based, you can easily share your data with your accountant — again, anywhere and at any time.

      In most cases, QuickBooks Desktop users who want to stick with something they know but now yearn for the flexibility of a web-based product won’t be disappointed. QBO’s functionality will feel very familiar to them, and they can migrate their QuickBooks Desktop company to QBO.

      Accountants can easily support QuickBooks clients via QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA), the sister product of QBO that enables seamless collaboration between accountants and their clients.

      Use this book to help you learn how to use QBO and QBOA.

About This Book

      Intuit’s web-based accounting product is really two products: End users who want to do their accounting on the web or on mobile devices use QBO, whereas accountants use QBOA, which enables the accountant to log in to a client’s books and make changes and queries as needed. Although much of QBO and QBOA look and behave alike, QBOA incorporates tools that an accountant needs while working on a client’s books. And accountants need to manage multiple client companies, whereas end user clients typically do not.

      QBO and QBOA are not for everyone. Before you commit to Intuit’s web-based solution, you need to explore the available editions and examine the requirements for the products.

Because these products are both similar and different, we’ve divided this book into three parts. In the first part of the book, we examine what QBO and QBOA are — and what they aren’t — and we describe what you need to be able to use QBO and QBOA. We explain the various editions available and the product costs at the time we wrote this book, and we describe the available features.

      The second part of the book focuses on using QBO and is aimed at the end user; but, the accountant who opens a client’s company via QBOA will be able to use the same tools that the end user uses to manage lists, enter transactions, and print reports.

      The third part of the book is aimed at the accountant and covers using QBOA.

      We don’t pretend to cover every detail of every feature in QBO or QBOA. Instead, we’ve focused on covering the tools we think most users will need as they navigate QBO and QBOA.

      Before diving in, we have to get a few technical convention details out of the way: