Our BSST Team works in QuickBooks daily, for varying size clients, in varying industries.  They know all the ins and outs and the best techniques for recording activity in a timely, efficient manner. We have asked them what their most used time saving feature of QuickBooks is.  Here is what our team has to say.

There are two time saving features that come to mind right away. 

1. The Find feature in QuickBooks.  You can use Find to search for any transaction that is in your QuickBooks file.  The best part is there are several different options to filter your search.  You can do a Find by amount, invoice or check number, date, customer, vendor, etc.  This is very helpful to quickly find transactions.
2. I use the Copy feature often.  If I have to input transactions that are similar, I will copy a transaction and just change the pertinent information to apply to the information I’m inputting.  If you choose to copy transactions, it is important to be sure you have created a copy before you override with the new information.  Otherwise, you will lose the original transaction.     

-Julie Roe

Utilizing the bank feed option in Quickbooks Online is a great tool for maintaining up to date information and reduce data-entry. Frequently matching transactions will help with month end reconciling. This will save you time if an item needs to be researched, you catch it early and don’t put yourself in a time crunch later on.

-Emily Zuver

Connecting your bank and credit card accounts in QuickBooks Online to your bank is a great way to quickly record bank transactions in the accounting software without having to manually enter every transaction. It only takes a few minutes to establish the secure connection between QuickBooks and your banking institution. Once the connection has been made, it will begin pulling through bank transactions daily. The program will match existing entries already in QuickBooks Online and will add new records for transactions based on bank rules that you create. Besides saving you time, the automation also prevents data entry errors that may occur with manual data entry and makes the month end bank reconciliation seamless.

–Danielle Cottle

One QB feature I find to be very helpful is “FIND”.  This can be found in QuickBooks Desktop versions under the Edit menu; or just use Ctrl+F.

FIND allow you to search for a specific transaction using any number of filters.  For example, if you are looking for a transaction for $155, you can use the Amount filter.  This will then show all transaction in QuickBooks for $155.  You can further filter this search for a specific date range.  This feature has saved me quite a bit of time!

QuickBooks Online also has the FIND feature.  Click on the magnifying glass in the upper right corner, choose Advanced Search & then apply filters based on what transaction you are looking for.

-Linda Lehman

Connecting the bank accounts in QuickBooks online is a huge time-saver.  This tool is not new but saves so much time each month.  This allows your bank transactions to flow into the software.  It matches with transactions already entered and you can create banking rules to automatically categorize transactions that happen on a recurring basis.   With your bank account updated in real time, you will have an accurate and up to date picture of income and expenses.

-Carmen George

So far, I would say the copy feature under the more button/link…..it is great!

It may sound simple – but QBO copies all the information – you can just update amounts, dates etc. and then review your changes and hit Save and Close >>>saves keystrokes on the journal entries that need repeated, as well as when you need to enter multiple bills under same vendor etc.

I also like when a client has linked their bank account in Quick Books Online (QBO).

The bank transaction history flows into the software, it will match transactions that have already been entered, and helps to have proper categorization.

-Christine McCoy

QuickBooks Apps are one of the biggest time savers that I use on a day-to-day basis.  These save a significant amount of time by automatically entering activity in QB from the app, thus reducing data entry.  For example, a bill pay app will record the bill, and payment in QB from the app.  This reduces the time to enter the bill and manually print the check.  Many payroll providers also have apps to sync payroll activity to QBO.  By syncing with the payroll provider, the manual time in entering each employee’s paycheck and payroll information is reduced significantly.

-Natalie Bruns

Whether they are looking for a specific transaction, or trying to be efficient in entering activity, it seems the “Find” Feature and bank feeds are amongst the most common used by our team.  If you are a small business owners or bookkeeper and would like assistance with time saving techniques in data entry or in QuickBooks Online, please reach out to one of our QuickBooks Proadvisors on our BSST team.