welcome to video 3 in our minimum QuickBooks series preparing your file
there are two windows that we use to prepare the file for the most simple use possible they
are the Preferences window and the customize icon bar window the Preferences window is like
the default window it controls the settings the options or the automatic behavior of the file
every software program has a default window that controls the general behavior and in QuickBooks
it's called the Preferences window from the top left of the main menu click Edit preferences and
the Preferences window opens up notice on the left you can click to get different categories
of preferences notice that each category of preference is broken into two tabs from my
preference section and the company preference section let's start on the top click accounting
and let's come down here and remove these two checkmarks you see if you're playing catch-up
and you're putting in all of your entire fiscal year's transactions after the year is over you
will continuously get these two annoying messages warning you that the transactions are too old or
too far in the future and that will take up your time and distract you as you create your file so
let's click these checkmarks to remove them now let's go to a different category of preference
when we click desktop view you'll get a warning asking us to save the changes from the previous
category let's go ahead and click yes to save the changes and now we're in the desktop view section
of the Preferences window notice there's company preference and then there's my preference click
the my preference tab and remove this checkmark to show the homepage when the company file is
opening if you click this and then click OK it means this annoying home window will not pop up
when you start your file you might believe that you need the home window but you don't because we
will not be working from the home window it's much faster to work from the icon bar which is what
we're about to prepare so you can go ahead and close the home window of course we can reopen the
Preferences window by clicking edit preferences and now let's go down to general and we should
click this box make sure the my preference tab is chosen and click the box that says turn off
pop-up messages for products and services this will make sure that we don't get distracted by
on any unnecessary pop-ups and of course the last category that we're going to adjust is reports and
graphs click yes to save the changes in the previous category and then click here where
it says refresh automatically that means if a QuickBooks report is open at the moment we record
a transaction the report will immediately reflect the changes from that particular transaction click
OK and you've finished adjusting the Preferences window and the rest of the course will go much
more smoothly now that the file will behave the way that we need now let's prepare your icon
bar this is the quickest and easiest way to use the minimum amount of QuickBooks for the minimum
amount of bookkeeping that you need from the top left of the main menu click view and choose top
icon bar this will give us a traditional view of the icon bar now again click view and go down to
customize icon bar in the future you can explore and experiment with all of the options in the
customize icon bar window for now you should scroll all the way up choose the top choice
here and then keep clicking the delete button until every icon in the icon bar gets removed
now if you close it without clicking okay they will all come back you have to make sure that
after you delete every single icon that they stay off so click delete as many times as you can and
when your icon bar is empty click OK now we're ready to start entering your setup information