QuickBooks gives you options for paying your bills, depending on how closely you want to track bills and payments. Once you’ve chosen a method for a particular bill, you need to stick with it — otherwise you might end up paying your bills twice. Here’s what to do:

• If you enter a bill in the Enter Bills window, always use Pay Bills to pay it. (If you use Enter Bills and Pay Bills, you can still pay by check or credit card.)
• If you're sure you don't need to track your bills and bill payments, you can use the Write Checks or Enter Credit Card Charges window instead of using Enter Bills and then Pay Bills.
• Don't use Pay Bills if you've already used the Write Checks or Enter Credit Card Charges window to record your bill payment.

If you are entering invoices in QuickBooks to record your sales, be sure to use the Receive Payments screen to apply the payment against the invoice. Sometimes people make the mistake of skipping that step. But if you go right to the Make Deposits screen, the invoice won’t show as paid, and your sale might end up being counted twice.

When you receive a payment from a customer, you have two options:

• You can record that payment as a deposit to a bank account in QuickBooks at the same time that you apply the payment against the customer’s account. The payment will be automatically recorded as a deposit to your bank account on that day. (All you need to do is get the check to the bank, if necessary.)
• Alternatively, you can group several payments together and then record the entire group as a deposit in QuickBooks later. In this case, QuickBooks holds those payments in the Undeposited Funds account until you move them to the bank account.

When you receive a payment for an invoice and enter it in the Receive Payments screen, QuickBooks automatically puts that money in the Undeposited Funds account. Sometimes people do this but then also make a separate deposit for the same amount, and that makes a mess of their records. Instead, when you go to the Make Deposits window, include the payment in the Payments to Deposit window that comes up. This will move it from Undeposited Funds to your bank account.

When they’re using the Write Checks window, sometimes users don’t realize that the check is already affecting their bank account, so they select their checking account as the expense account. This causes the money to go out and immediately back into your checking account instead of reducing the checking balance. Typically, you’d want to specify one of the expense accounts you’ve set up, such as Utilities, not the bank account the check is drawn on.

To simplify the job of setting up your company file, QuickBooks creates critical accounts like Retained Earnings and Sales Tax Payable for you. Changing the names or account types it assigns, or moving these accounts, can seriously impair QuickBooks’ ability to work for you.

QuickBooks automatically sets up other accounts as well: Accounts Receivable, Cost of Goods Sold, Estimates, Inventory Assets, Payroll Liabilities, Payroll Expenses, Purchase Orders, Retained Earnings, Sales Tax Payable, and Undeposited Funds. Moving or editing these accounts can easily introduce errors to your financial records. Worst case: You might have to dedicate hours (or days!) recreating these accounts and correcting all the errors, and we bet you’ve got better things to do!

There is no such thing as too many backups. You should back up your company file at the end of each session or each day. You can back up to a network drive, external drive, CD, or to the Intuit Data Protect service. Before you do anything in QuickBooks that you’re are unfamiliar with, make a backup, and only then move forward.

QuickBooks has sample data files that you can use as examples for setting up your own QuickBooks company file. The sample files contain items and services typically performed by particular business types. Use these files to try out new features you may not be familiar with and to experiment. Never tinker with your primary company data file—that can cause serious problems!

You can hide items you no longer use. This makes managing your lists easier and enables you to easily find what you really care about. Remember that once you’ve created and used an item in a transaction, you can't delete it, even if you no longer use or sell that item.

Whenever you change the settings for a report (modify it), you can record those changes by saving the report in the Memorized Report list. Then when you want to create a similar report, you can just go to the Memorized Report list to reuse those settings.

If you don’t know something, don’t hesitate to ask someone who does — it can save you a lot of time. In addition to this Support web site, the Intuit Community is a good place to go to ask questions and find answers. Or, if you want one-on-one assistance, consider finding a ProAdvisor to help guide you.

Consider customizing your icon bar by adding the features and reports that you open daily or weekly. You can add most windows to the icon bar by going to View menu and choosing Add [Window name] to Icon Bar.

To save time and avoid confusion, from the View menu, choose Open Windows List. The list shows all your open windows, and you can move from one to the next with a single click.