How to Create Your Company File in QuickBooks Pro 2017 Part 1

During this QuickBooks Pro 2017 tutorial video, we will demonstrate how to setup a company file using the EasyStep Interview.

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Video Transcript

Alright we’re working in module 2 which is the Getting Started module and this is going to be section 2 and the first part of section 2, Creating Your Company File.

Each time you create a file in QuickBooks it’s called a company. You can have as many company files in QuickBooks as you would like. So I want to show you how to go ahead and set up a company file and then how if you need to open a different one you’re able to do that.

This is the screen that you will always see when you first open QuickBooks. It should also be the last screen you see before you close QuickBooks for the day. This is where you’re going to be able to actually open an existing file. You would see it in the list here. You could also create a new company, which we’re going to do in just a second. And you could also open a restored company here. Now this open is really the same as this one. It just allows you if you don’t see the company file you’d like in this list you can go ahead and just search your computer for it. And briefly let me tell you what restore means.

We’ll talk a little bit later in another module about backing up your company file. If you ever need to use that backup you would have to go through an option called Restore and this is where you would get to that particular option. Also notice the sample files and there’s a down arrow because you’ll have several you can choose from. If you don’t know how to do something see how they did it in one of the sample files and that’ll help you out quite a bit. So everyone has these, just so you’ll know.

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What I want to do now is go through and create a new company file with you. Now this will be a onetime thing you have to do for each company file that you create. And it’s going to take a couple of minutes but once you get it setup you’ll be glad you went through it.

This is going to walk us through something called the EasyStep Interview. Now this first screen that comes up it always asks you if you’d like to go ahead and use the Start Setup option here or just notice also that down here you can actually look at some of these other options. Like sometimes people have other software packages they’ve been using to do their accounting and you’re able to convert some of that data into QuickBooks, like Quicken. That’s a popular one. Also if you want to open an existing file they give another choice to do it here or you can go through this Advanced Setup here. I’m going to go ahead and click on this Advanced Setup because sometimes this basic one doesn’t always give you everything you need to do a really good, firm setup. So I’m going to choose Advanced Setup and this walks us through what they call the EasyStep Interview.

You’ll notice on each of these screens that you have a Next and a Back option down at the bottom. So you can always go back. Here it asks you to put in information about your company. Now I’m just going to put in a fake company for now. I’ll call it My Company. You’ll want to go ahead and type in all the information that you can in these particular fields. Now notice the only one you have to put in is the company name. See the little red star? Now as you tab down it’s going to bring in the company name as the legal name. It also will ask you about your federal identification number. Be real careful about filling in some of the fields in QuickBooks because there’s a lot of information that are just there for you to hold information in those fields and it really doesn’t need it in QuickBooks. The less personal information you can put in, like social security numbers and FIN numbers and things like that the better off you’ll be. The only reason you would need a tax ID number in QuickBooks is one, if you’re going to actually create 1099s and also if you use the QuickBooks Payroll surface they’ll need it. But there’s really not any other options why you’ll need that.

Now you do want to plugin like a street address or wherever you want the mail to go to. So I’ll just plug in a P.O. Box here. And then you can put in city, state and zip. So you could fill that out. Also you’re going to see that it has a place for the phone number, the fax, email, and website. Again you don’t have to fill that in but if you’re going to send correspondence out to customers or vendors it’s going to pull from these fields so you’ll want to fill this information in. Yes you can go back and edit this information at any time and I’ll show you a little bit later how to do that.

I’m going to click Next and here it says Select your industry. Now there’s no wrong answer here. So you want to pick something close to what you do. You’ll notice that if you happen to be in lawn care or maybe you happen to be in manufacturing. Up at the top here I skipped over a couple like accounting and bookkeeping. It might be automotive, religious organization. There’s really a lot of different industries to pick from. There’s also the general product or service based business at the bottom. You can choose one of those. Don’t get hung up on this answer. Like I said, there’s no wrong answer here.

I’m going to click Next and now it asks How is your company organized? Now this is one that a lot of people get really stumped on. Here’s what I have to say about this screen. If you have an accountant that does your taxes for the business then choose Other or None. You don’t need to worry about any of this. What’ll happen is if you pick any of these options here when you’re entering different information in QuickBooks you’re going to see an additional field sometime that will allow you to put in a tax line on a tax form. You’re not going to have a clue what to put there if you’re not an accountant or a seasoned bookkeeper. And I don’t want you to get hung up on that so you can just pick Other or None so you don’t have to worry about it.

Alright I’m going to click Next at the bottom and it asks for us to select the first month of the fiscal year. I’m going to leave it on January but you could change that if yours happens to be different.

And then it asks about setting up your administrator password. Now we’re going to talk a little bit later in module 3 about working with users. In QuickBooks you have the ability to have up to five users without purchasing additional ones. You are the administrator so you are one of the users. And it’s asking you now if you want to go ahead and setup your password. It is very highly suggested that you do setup users in QuickBooks. I’m not going to set this up now but a little bit later you’ll see where this comes into play.

Here it’s telling us that we’re going to create our company file when we click Next. And this is like the Save screen. So you could really save this anywhere you want. I’ll go ahead and put it on the desktop and hit Save and then if you give it just a minute you’ll notice it’s starting to actually create your company file in the background.

You’re going to start seeing in just a minute there’s some icons that will appear on the left. You’re going to also see that it’s going to give you your home screen and that sort of thing. There you go. Now my icons are, let’s see where it puts them here. If they show up at the top that’s okay because I’m going to show you how to put them on the top or the left, whatever your preference happens to be. There you go. They’re on the left over here.

Alright I’m going to click Next and keep going.

Now as we go through here you may get some different screens if you’re trying to follow my video. The reason for that is because the next question is based on how you answered the previous questions. So just kind of hang tight if I’m behind you or ahead of you one and you’ll see that we come together shortly.

This says What do you sell? Services, products or both? If you don’t know, maybe in the future you’re going to sell products, turn the option on. It’s not going to hurt anything. As you go through these you’re actually just turning icons on or off on the screen. That’s all you’re doing.

I’m going to click Next and it asks Do you charge sales tax? Again all it’s saying is do you charge it? Yes or no? It’s not where we’re going to set up the tax or any of that.
Do you want to create estimates in QuickBooks? A great example of an estimate would be a construction company. If I want to have my kitchen remodeled I’m going to ask for a quote or an estimate from the construction company and that’s what this is. So I’ll say Yes here.
The next thing it asks about is using statements in QuickBooks. Remember that statements go out to customers typically at the end of the month and it’s just a summary of any invoices that went to the customer, payments made and what their balance is. Again I’ll just leave that on Yes and click Next.

This question is about progress invoicing and actually if I were setting up QuickBooks I would have put this question right after the question that asks if you want to use the estimate feature. What progress invoicing allows you to do is if you create an estimate you can invoice your customer for portions of the estimate, maybe a percentage of the estimate until it’s completely invoiced. So if you’re going to use estimates you probably do want progress invoicing.

The next thing is managing bills that you owe. Now you probably do want to keep track of your bills. A lot of people will actually get the mail and they’ll just have a pile on their desk where the bills go and you just pull out the ones that you think you might want to pay. That will work except if you really want to use QuickBooks you want to run reports that will show you the total of the bills that you’ve received. It’ll show you what’s 90 days, 60 days, all the way down the list. So you probably do want to keep track of the bills you owe.

So I’ll click Next and now it asks if we want to track inventory. True inventory means that I sell chairs and I’ve got six in the backroom, tell me when I have two left so I can order some more. You’re going to hear another term in QuickBooks called non-inventory. This might be physical things that you’ve purchased or you’ve bought and you don’t really need to track that you have so many in the backroom but you might want to run reports frequently to see how many of them you’ve sold or how many you’ve purchased. So again it doesn’t hurt to turn on the inventory option here.

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The next question asks about tracking time in QuickBooks. Now a couple of ways you can use this. You can actually use this if you’re in a particular business where you actually charge your customers by the time you spend working on a particular job for them. There’s actually a timer you can turn on and you can actually let it go and then when you’re ready you can turn the timer off and then invoice the customer based on that time. Another way to use this is for employees. If you need to track the time that they’re spending on a particular job then you can use that for your job costing. So I’m going to go ahead and leave it on Yes and click Next.

Now our timing is up to about ten-and-a-half minutes here so why don’t we go ahead and stop the video here and let’s go ahead and finish up over in part 2. I will see you shortly.

Cindy McGuckin

Cindy McGuckin is an IT trainer with over 20 years of experience. Cindy currently manages the IT Training Department at Trident Technical College, she's a Member of the Association of IT Professionals, Charleston, SC chapter and the Treasurer of the South Carolina Association of Continuing Higher Education. Cindy is a Microsoft Office and QuickBooks expert and her online courses have received hundreds of 5-star reviews. Her no-nonsense approach to teaching complicated topics makes her classes engaging and interesting.