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Alyssa McBride, CPA •

As you prepare your QuickBooks file for your accountant, make sure you don’t have any other changes that need to be made in 2017 before sending your accountant a copy of the file. If you use QuickBooks Online, be sure to communicate when you are done making changes to your accountant. 
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​As you wait for your tax return to be prepared, you want to make sure you don’t make any changes to the past year. A simple solution is to add a closing date and password in QuickBooks. 

Alyssa McBride, CPA •

​If you use QuickBooks, familiarizing yourself with the QuickBooks App Store can prove to be a great resource for when a need arises that may be beyond the capabilities of QuickBooks. If you are considering the move to QuickBooks but need a feature that isn’t offered, the App Store may be able to provide a solution.
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Do you receive mid-month bank statements or credit card statements that you reconcile in QuickBooks? You can change the statement date in the QuickBooks reconciliation screen to the end of the month and reconcile to the month-end or year-end balance using your bank balance for that date. Then, when you get your next statement you will reconcile your account as you normally would, changing the statement date to match the statement, and then only reconciling the new transactions on the statement.

An important feature you should be aware of in QuickBooks bank reconciliations is the “Hide transactions after the statement’s end date” button. Checking this button will filter activity to only show transactions through your statement date. This feature makes sure you don’t clear transactions in the wrong period. If you need to uncheck the button to find missing activity, you should change the date of the transaction to be in the correct period. This button is available in both the desktop and online versions of QuickBooks. This is even more useful when you are behind on reconciliations. 

For more information on QuickBooks bank reconciliations see our first post in the series: QuickBooks Bank Reconciliations: Part I

If you use QuickBooks, you likely already know how to use the Bank Reconciliation feature. However, did you know that you can also use this feature with credit cards and loans? 
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​The accounts receivable and payable aging reports are helpful tools in QuickBooks to find out who you owe and who owes you quickly. The reports show the age of the receivables and payables so you know if you’re behind on a payment or if a customer is behind on a payment. However, you may have noticed that you have some zero balance lines. 
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Did you know that QuickBooks has a built-in calculator?
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​QuickBooks has a multitude of keyboard shortcuts for the person who wants to speed up their accounting as much as possible. The following is a list of handy shortcuts for entering transactions and opening various screens in the desktop version of QuickBooks.