hello friends and thank you for taking this course QuickBooks for contractors this video is a brief
overview of the course and I will show you how to do the file setup contractors should use most
of QuickBooks the way every other business does however contractors have some unique challenges
that are only unique to contractors that these videos are meant to address now the first five
videos in this series are optional and that's because the original course material started after
the setup steps and assumed the student knew basic QuickBooks these first five videos were made after
the rest of the course was made to come and they were created to help understand will help students
understand the basic setup of files and how it relates to the rest of the contractors course you
still must use the preset files for video number six because there's too many details in the setup
file for us to spend time on video putting in extra data so these first five videos show you
the idea and then video number six has all the ideas that we learned but with a lot of extra day
to put in once you start with the file for video number six if you want you can use the same file
going forward for every video or you could jump to a specific video and download that file so you
can follow step by step for that particular video I strongly recommend you take the course in order
and watch the videos in order but if you want to refresh your memory after taking the course you
can jump to a specific video download that file and follow step by step now we're going to create
a new company file and I'm going to show you the most simplified steps there are many more advanced
steps that you could add when you create a company file but they're not necessary and you can explore
an experiment with those features when you're not watching the video but the video is meant
to give only what's necessary and not what's just extra features now the name of the company we will
setup is Thomas Steven company he's the example contractor that we will use and we will put the
file on the desktop all you have to do is follow step by step so when you first open QuickBooks
either you'll have some company name appear for a company file that's already open or you'll see
what you're seeing here no company open it does not matter what's on the screen if you're creating
a new file if you are creating a new file all you have to do is go to the top left and click file
new company then to make it simple just click Express start the business name Thomas Stephens
company now these two fields are the only required fields in this window all the other company
information like the business identification number or the company's address phone number and
so on are optional fields that you could always type in later when you come back to this window
and before I finish this video I will show you how you can come back to this window and put in
the address and name of the company so that when you print your reports the address and the name
of the company prints on the reports for now we're just going to choose an industry and business type
and the most simple way to do that is to click help me choose scroll to the bottom click other
none and then click OK that's because we will put in our own chart of accounts instead of using the
sample chart of accounts that QuickBooks gives because there is no sample for landlords when
it comes to business type again click help me choose go to the bottom are there none and click
OK and of course you have the option to change this after you save the file so we will not put
in any more company information we did everything we need but there's one more thing we need to do
if we want to be able to choose the location of the file we are creating we click preview your
setup your QT preview your settings and you have three tabs here in the preview settings for the
file now you can explore an experiment with these tabs but the one we will focus on is company file
location now it already says the desktop because it remembers what I like but on your computer you
have to click change location and you have to choose the desktop because it's nicer if it's
on the desktop you can click it right away so I click OK and then click OK here then now that I
know that my settings are correct I will click create company and as you can see QuickBooks is
physically creating a blank brand new company file for you to use for your contractor course now when
the window opens you know this is the setup you could just click start working because we will do
these in separate videos so right now just click start working and the first thing I need to be
able to show you well the first thing you should know is whenever these extraneous windows open
like the new feature tour or the whole window in this class just close them out they're not
going to help you because we're going to work from the main menu in the icon bar and those are only
different ways of opening the same windows that we will open more efficiently but if you want to
be able to add your company's address and phone number so that when you print reports it won't
only have the name it will have other company data the way to do that is to click company and
then come down to my company now notice you put the name but all the other information is blank
because we left it blank a moment ago click the pencil tool here and then we can add address you
know 1 2 3 Sesame Street you know you could put the phone number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 or whatever
you want then when you click OK and then click yes that will be a legal address I you know I
don't I don't know what they want to put 1 2 3 Sesame Street ok then click OK now you can see
that this is the information that will print on your reports when you print reports and QuickBooks