and now we will learn how to set the Preferences in an attorney's company file what our preferences
well in QuickBooks and we say preferences what we really mean are the defaults of the way the
software will behave unless you specifically say different you could also call them the settings
of the file or the options that are available basically it's the automatic behavior of the
file until you specifically tell QuickBooks you want it to behave differently some preferences
are for convenience and we will change some preferences for convenience and some preferences
are necessary to activate the features of the software that attorneys need and will activate
one of them here in this video and this will give you an overview of how to do it the first
preference for convenience that we will change is the warning a message about the dates of the
transactions you know sometimes you have to put in very old transactions that you missed or for
some reason data transaction far in the future it might be necessary to do so but there's a warning
message that pops up I don't like it I want to shut it off so from the main menu we click Edit
preferences and that opens the Preferences window notice on the left you can click to
get the different categories of Preferences and you can even scroll up and down so that you can
see every category and every time you click on a different category your choice is in the middle
change the first category we will click on is the accounting category and you'll notice that in each
category there's a my preference tab and a company preference tab in the accounting category click
the company preferences tab and remove these two checkmarks this way the computer will not warn us
if we record a transaction it's more than 90 days old or 30 days in the future we have to click OK
to save the preference after each preference that we change now let's change the desktop view to our
convenience again click Edit preferences and this time the category is desktop view I think
you should remove the homepage because I find it distracting and we will be using something
even easier than the homepage that we will set up in the very next video I also don't want to save
whatever you have opened on the desktop that might take it unnecessarily longer to boot the next time
you start QuickBooks so those are the preferences we're changing in this section and we click OK now
we're also changing the pop-up ads in the general category of preferences we can shut off all those
distracting ads edit preferences click the general category make sure you're not in the company
preference tab you're in the my preference tab and you're going to click this box turn off pop-up
messages for products and services switching that preference will help prevent it distracting you
while you're trying to learn QuickBooks and of course to save this option or this default we
click OK what else will be changed well we want to make the reports and graphs refresh automatically
if they happen to be open at the moment we record a transaction so we will click Edit preferences
and go to reports and graphs and we want them to update the report information automatically on any
report that happens to be open at the moment we record a transaction and that's what it will do
now that we change this preference click OK now we will discuss two specific preferences that a law
firm would need and if your law firm runs a little bit differently you might need to set another
preference at least you'll know where the window is but right now most law firms need to adjust the
payments deposited to bank accounts preference so that you have the ability to record transactions
when clients deposit money directly into the law firms bank account the way to give QuickBooks the
ability to do that is to click Edit preferences and go to the payments category of preference then
choose company preference and go here where it says use undeposited funds as the default deposit
to account if we remove this check mark QuickBooks will give us the ability to record payments that
are directly deposited into the company bank account into the law firm bank account and
there will be a separate video about undeposited funds later in the course for now let's just click
OK and of course the last preference we'll discuss we won't really change anything but very often law
associates who work for the firm need to track their time and expenses and sometimes expenses
paid for for things like supplies and travel can be charged to the client as billable and marked
up in order to do that you would come here edit preferences and you would scroll down to the very
last preference time and expenses when you click the company preferences tab you'll notice you have
the option to track time which is actually set as default you also could mark all time entries
as billable by default when your law associates the lawyers that work for the firm fill out their
weekly or bi-weekly or monthly timesheets and then of course if you charge expenses
like supplies and travel to your client and you wish to mark up the expense before you charge
them you would do that here but again that would be only if you were allowed to and every state
has different regulations about how lawyers can charge their clients so that's the general idea of
preferences and if your law firm needs additional preferences you'll know where to go and what to do