hello again and welcome to the second video in our attorneys video series the file setup we will set
up a law firm file however you should know that the first few steps are the same for every type
of company whether your company is a law firm or not please note if you already know how to
create a company file how to find the company file after you create it or how to change the
company name address tax type or tax form then you could skip this video you could go directly
to the original first video which is either the fourth or fifth one down in a row where the file
is already set up for you and you could download the follow along file starting from that point
if you did not want to waste time relearning things that you already know however the file
creation is similar to most other software you have to choose a name and location okay
the latest versions of QuickBooks do not let you choose the location you must search for the
file after you create the file and then you can skip inputting the company information and tax
information when you create the file because I'm going to show you how to change these at the end
of the video right now let's just follow step by step to see if we can set up QuickBooks so
first we'll double-click the old software QuickBooks and I'll restore it down so it
fits our little show here now it doesn't really matter what you see on the screen in front of you
you will click create a new company file which is the same thing as clicking file new company
now you just have to click Express start and in this case the example law firm name will be Ross
shai ster law firm and remember spelling doesn't count when it comes to industry to keep the setup
simple click help me choose scroll to the bottom and choose either none this means we
don't want QuickBooks to put in a sample chart of accounts for us we want to put in only the
accounts that we need because that will make it easier and there will be a video about putting
in the accounts that we need for business type also choose other none so that we can put what
we need instead of QuickBooks putting it for us for now we will skip all this other information
and I'm going to show you how to come back and edit this information anyway so you can put in
this information the same way you would edit this after the file is created but for now all you have
to do is click create company and wait a moment and QuickBooks is physically creating a brand
new company file that is blank and ready for you to put in all the information for your law firm
congratulations your file is created now I'm going to see if I can just close this silly setup window
by the way I think you can click an option down there so that it won't pop up and let's see if I
can fit this into our little show now of course when you first create a file it's going to give
you a tour of the new stuff when you close it it's going to remind you that you can always look back
at help now I do not like the home window I find it distracting so I close it so you now have a
thio called Ross shyster law firm where all of the company financial information and clients records
and vendor records and so forth bank records for this particular law firm everything should be in
this file the problem is QuickBooks did not tell us physically in the computer where this file is
so what do we need to do well did you know that when you're inside any QuickBooks file you can
press f2 to get the location of the file and any other information so here I am and I push f2 on
the keyboard and the product information window opens up notice there's a section for location
now what I like to do is right before the name highlight this path and copy notice you can get
other information about the file and go back to it and that's a very handy thing to do but once
I have the path I like to open up a folder whereby I could click and paste the path there and when I
hit enter no see actually when I control V for paste ok so actually Oh actually it's here so I
don't really know why it chose this folder I like that it put it in the correct folder but turns out
it was already here but if it weren't what you would do is you would click in the file path in
the in the path you see here of the folder and you would paste the path and then hit enter and
then you would see the file then once you see the file you could copy it to the desktop and paste it
on the desktop and and then you'd be all set and that's how you find the file now we skipped over
putting the company address and so on as well as the tax type you can change the company name
and address as well as the tax type by opening the my company window so you click company my
company now this window gives you the ability to change both the name and address of the company
as it will appear on printed forms and checks and reports as well as changing the tax form
that you need for your company type so after you open the my company window you can click
the pencil tool and you will see you can change each of these different four types of information
for example contact information Ross shyster law firm you can put you know Great Neck or men pass
it whatever it doesn't really matter you can go back and change it and whatever you put here will
show up on reports and forms phone number five five five five five five five whatever and put
whatever you like and then click OK now as far as legal information you can put the legal address if
it happens to be different company identification you would normally put in your EIN number or the
social security number if it's a sole proprietor report information you could put the first month
of your fiscal year and you would only change this to whatever month is beginning your fiscal year
if and only if your fiscal year were different then a normal calendar year you would just put
the correct month and here is where you choose which income tax form you will use and if we
assume that you are a LLC your partnership or you know you choose whichever a tax form your
tax professional tells you to choose in this case you know Ross is a sole proprietor just
click OK and you could always after you click OK you update your legal address that's fine do you
want to go back and no okay so now we changed our regular address and you could change any
of that setup information by clicking company my company and then clicking the pencil tool