now that we've created a QuickBooks online account we're going to learn how to navigate
around the account and in this video we will also learn how to adjust the account settings so here
we are in the account that we just created in the previous video and notice you come straight to the
dashboard which I mentioned is a general summary of your operations and you can browse this later
but there are only three different areas that you will have to click in order to operate and manage
your books and records and manage your QuickBooks Online account three simple areas there either the
cog symbol here or the plus sign here or this list on the left so let me explain what each of
these are first of all what's this cog well very simple the cog symbol is for basically the setup
and maintenance of your QuickBooks Online account if you look at the choices you can see that these
are things you only do once in a while and once you do them your QuickBooks Online account will
behave differently what or have different things available once you set this up so then what's
this plus sign here well let's talk about that if you look at the plus sign you'll see that
the choices that is offering are things that you would do on a day to day basis these are most of
the transactions that you'll do and some of the other day-to-day tasks and that's how you can
think of it now the third area is very simple it's this list on the left and mind you once you click
on any of these a lot of these choices are simply a repeat of a lot of the choices that you can get
from the plus sign and from the cog however there are some things very few but the some things that
you have to go to the dashboard to that you have to go to this list on the left to be able to do
for example if you want to do bank fees the only way to get into bank fees is to click banking in
the list on the left if you want to look at or manage your reports the only way to do that is
to look at this list on the left but most of the other choices that come up when you click here on
the left or choices that are repeated from the plus sign or the COG icon now let's adjust the
settings when I say settings I mean defaults this means the options or the automatic behavior of the
file or the online account in the desktop version this is called the preferences for example let's
track expenses by customer or job now when you first create the company it is not set up to track
the expenses by customer or by job and I'm going to prove that to you before we change the settings
if I click expenses and I tell QuickBooks I want to enter an expense and I click add an expense
okay you will notice right now that there is no field to put for which particular customer or
which particular job this expenses for I can put the name of the vendor on paying I can put how I'm
paying I could put which expense account it goes to I can describe it I can even put a money amount
but right now when you look over here there is no field there is no place to put which customer job
the expenses for so will leave without saving yes now what you need to do is click the COG
and then click account and settings that's where you go to change the preferences and the defaults
now there are different categories if you click company up here you can change the information
that appears on your reports and documents when you print for your own company name and address
this would be the place to put in the details of your own company and of course there are other
categories of defaults but let's click expenses notice automatically track expenses by items and
by customer is switch go off that was the reason there was no field to enter for customer or job
when you record an expense but watch what I'm going to do I'm going to click on OK there we
go track expenses by customer and item now when I click Save I have changed the settings this one is
on now I'm going to click the X in the top right you might not be able to if I do this you could
see there's an X on the top right to close out the window now when I come back to expenses and
I click add an expense notice the change notice there's an additional field here called customer
I now have the ability to add a customer to a transaction where I record an expense so I know
which cut which customer the expense is for and that's an example of changing one of the settings