(upbeat music)
- [Jess] QuickBooks makes it easy to get started,
by walking you through many of the first crucial steps
to setting up your company file,
and then you can be off and running.
You can create a new company file
by clicking create a new company,
in the no file open screen,
or at any time, click file and select new company.
From here, I'll click the blue start setup button.
I'm going to click the skip button
to see if I already have an Intuit account.
Let's tell QuickBooks about the business.
The only information I have to put in here are the ones
with a red asterisk.
I'll start by putting in the business name.
For this course,
I'll be using the fictitious company Two Trees Olive Oil.
Now I can choose an industry.
I can either start typing,
or I can click the blue help me choose link.
The reason that you'd want to set up an industry in QuickBooks
is so QuickBooks can automatically set the preference
and the accounts based on what type of business you have.
You can scroll through this list of industries.
If your business isn't listed here, it's okay.
And it's also okay if your business changes
or you don't get it right the first time.
You can always change the preferences,
and you can always remove or add accounts.
So the decision that you make here is absolutely not crucial
to the success of your business.
In fact, if you don't see your industry here at all,
you can scroll all the way to the bottom,
and choose general product-based business
or general service-based business.
And if your business does both products and services,
it's okay.
In this case, this is what happens
for Two Trees Olive Oil.
I'll click general serviced-based business.
I can see the accounts that are automatically going
to get created for me on the right hand side.
So I'll click the blue okay button.
And I'm brought back to this main screen.
Now we can choose a business type.
Are you a corporation or an LLC?
And you may already have an Employer Identification Number,
and you can put that in also.
That would separate the business from your own entity,
and the business will have its own tax forms,
while you keep your personal tax income to yourself.
Or maybe you're running a sole proprietorship,
in which case, you conduct business as a DBA,
which stands for doing business as.
The business taxes in this case are filed
using your Social Security number.
This way, you fill out your personal taxes,
and then you fill out a special tax form,
itemizing your business expenses.
Then you add in your own business income as profit
as an additional income,
while you're doing your own personal income tax.
It's up to you if you want to put your tax ID into QuickBooks,
You don't have to.
So in this case, I'll leave it as sole proprietorship.
And you can also change this later.
For example,
your business may start out as a sole proprietorship,
and as it grows,
you can change it to a corporation or an LLC.
Finally, it's up to you to decide
whether you want to put in your business address
and phone number in here.
When you're all set,
click the blue create company
on the bottom right hand side of the screen.
And in just a few moments, the company file will be created.
Now, you're brought to a screen
where you can learn some more
about the services that QuickBooks offers,
like payroll and ordering checks.
I'll click the blue start working button
on the bottom right hand side.
And this is going to take me directly to my home page.
To maximize the screen view,
I'll click this maximize button on the top right hand side,
and I'm also going to collapse this navigation pane
on the left
by clicking the arrow
on the top right hand side of the pane.
This gives us a bit more room to work with.
(smooth music)