welcome to our video on creating a new QuickBooks company file as you know computers save all their
information in the format of files but not the paper type of files that we used in the
days before the computer computers save their information in files that are in computer format
it's the same information except physically it's stored as digital information inside the computer
now how does this work well we've all heard of the program called Microsoft Word you can type
many many pages of information into Microsoft Word but when you save the information it gets saved
as one file with one icon that could represent a document that has either one or 10,000 pages
the same thing with a picture program like paint you're putting colors and you're drawing objects
and all that information gets saved into a file that's represented by an icon but if you're using
a picture program the file is an actual picture if you're using the program microsoft excel
then all of the information that you type into a spreadsheet will be saved in an excel file call
the spreadsheet this is also true for QuickBooks if you have a company with a small amount or even
a large amount of information all of the company information including all of the transactions and
reports will be saved in one file represented by one icon and the entire set of company information
will be represented by an icon that you can save on a USB stick the same way you can save any other
file type on a USB stick you could also take the entire set of company information and email it to
someone very easily as an attachment because if it's only one company all the company information
is stored in one file and that file behaves like any other file in the computer as far as copying
it or managing it or sending it to someone the sample company that I chose for us is Hattie's
corner store I chose this company because they have the most simple accounting situation and they
have the least amount of bookkeeping requirements they are a simple cash business that simply pays
money when they buy their merchandise immediately and they immediately pay all their expenses and
customers pay them cash they do not have employees they are not required to file for sales tax they
have the simplest possible situation regarding record-keeping and accounting and that's what we
will use just to learn the beginning of QuickBooks when you first try to create the file QuickBooks
will ask you for three pieces of information the three minimum pieces of information that you must
put in to create a new file obviously you have to tell QuickBooks the name you also have to
tell QuickBooks what industry type it is and we will choose other none from the pulldown list you
also have to tell QuickBooks what business type it is and we will choose other none from the pulldown
list we will learn about what the other options are later in future videos but the this is the
three pieces these are the three pieces of minimum information that we need to create a file of
course in a real situation we would also put the address and phone number and some other additional
information about the business you could always go back to the company information window and add
or edit that extra information but for now let's just put in the minimum that we are required to
put to create a new company file you can start the quickbooks program like you start any other
program you can click on the windows icon to bring your main menu from your Windows computer
and when you find the quickbooks software just click right on that main menu choice
and the quickbooks program will start it's okay if your startup screen looks different from mine no
matter what your startup screen looks like you can always click file from the top left of the
main menu and there will always be a choice for new company so don't worry if it looks different
just follow along click by click some of you watching this video will have the same thing
that I have no company open some of you might already have a different company file open it
doesn't matter there will always be a file main menu choice in the top left where you can click
new company when you do that the new company set up window will open up the quickbooks setup window
allows advanced options for different situations these are things that usually an accountant would
use if they are in the middle of a big consulting engagement the most normal way to start a file is
to click Express start once you do that you get the company information window and this is the
place that we will put the minimum QuickBooks information of course we will have to put the
name Patty's corner store the industry type we have to click this link help me choose we get a
list of industry types and we scroll down and we click other none then we click OK when it comes
to business type we will do the same thing we will click the link help me choose and at the
very bottom of the window we will choose other none we will learn what these other
options mean in future more advanced videos once we click ok we have determined that we
have put all the information or let's say the minimum amount of information that QuickBooks
requires in order to be able to create a new file now all we have to do is click the
create company button and you can see QuickBooks is physically creating a brand new blank company
file for us to do our accounting in as soon as you create the new company file you will get
this window this window will help you add all the set up lists to prepare your company file
for usage we will put in the set up lists in a future video and we will not use these shortcuts
we will open the same windows that these buttons will open from a different place so right now all
we need to do is click start working and here we are in the QuickBooks file after you click start
working there will be one or several windows that open up in the body of the window we will not use
these windows for example this home window simply has shortcuts to opening the same windows that
you can open from the main menu in our course we will only use the main menu and we will not
bother using this home window so I suggest that you close it out and have a nice clean desktop
for our class I would like you to make one more adjustment to the file before we start putting in
the setup lists everybody please move the mouse to the top left of the main menu and click view and
change left icon bar to top icon bar by clicking here this will move the icon bar on the left to
the top in a future video we will learn what the icon bar is basically it's just a set of
shortcuts to opening the same windows that we can open from the main menu for example if we click
the vendors icon we get the vendor Center we can also open the same window up by clicking vendor
vendor Center so these icons are simply shortcuts to the same windows that will open from the main
menu but to get a more traditional QuickBooks view instead of having the shortcut icons listed on the
left it's better to click view and put it across the top now that we have created a new company
file we might need to find this file so that we can copy it onto a stick or email it to our
accountant okay we also might want to bring it to the desktop so we can always find it very easily
so how do we find the physical location of the file that we just created well all you have to
do is push f2 from the top of your keyboard the f2 button from the top of your keyboard will open
the product information window this window has a lot of different information about your product
however the most important piece of information for this video is this file information location
this is the path that your file is physically sitting in so we would have to open from the my
computer icon the C Drive the users folder the M folder and then the desktop folder and then find
Hattie's corner store represented by a QuickBooks icon you will have a different path and you will
have to find it yourself quickbooks does not give you the option of where to save your file as you
create the file you simply have to push f to get the file information and find the path yourself
if you want to copy or move the file and finally you should know that you could always reopen the
company information window and add any information that you did not put when you created the file or
you can edit that information from the main menu click company my company and this is the
information that we put in when we first created the file okay notice all it has is the name and
then the income-tax type if you want to edit any of this information you should click the pencil
tool and then the company information window will open up you can always add an address or any
other piece of information you could add a phone number or any other piece of information that we
left out at the moment that we created the file remember whatever you type in here is what will
show up when we run reports for our company and we print transaction documents for our company okay