Get More Value From QuickBooks With These Seven Features

By Adrianna Gray, CPA, and Lisa Kelly

Many organizations use QuickBooks to record transactions but do not take full advantage of its ability to improve reporting, strengthen month-end controls and explain what is driving financial results.

These seven features can help close that gap. (Feature availability and terminology may vary by QuickBooks product and subscription.)

1. Connect bank and credit card accounts

Connecting bank and credit card accounts to QuickBooks can reduce manual data-entry and related errors by bringing transactions into the system automatically. However, a bank feed is only as reliable as the review behind it. Each transaction should still be matched or categorized thoughtfully.

For example, a contractor may receive a customer payment that matches an open invoice while also paying a vendor deposit from the same account. Reviewing the feed helps ensure both transactions are recorded correctly, avoiding duplicate income or misclassified job costs.

Matching deposits to invoices, categorizing expenses correctly, and reconciling accounts each month keep the books cleaner and help avoid duplicate income or expenses.

2. Use bank rules with judgment

Bank rules can help QuickBooks recognize recurring vendors, customers or transaction patterns. For example, a monthly software subscription can be assigned to the proper expense account automatically. That does not mean every rule should run without review. Poorly built rules can repeat the same mistake every month, so it is worth reviewing rules periodically and checking whether they still reflect the way the business or organization operates. 

3. Set up recurring transactions

If you enter the same invoice, bill, journal entry or rent payment every month, recurring transactions can reduce repetitive work. QuickBooks allows users to create scheduled, reminder or unscheduled templates, based on the level of review required. This can be especially helpful for monthly donor invoices, membership billing, rent, loan payments, depreciation entries or other predictable activity.

4. See Results by Program, Location or Service Line

Many users rely only on the chart of accounts, which can make reporting too broad. Classes, locations and tags can help separate activity by department, program, grant, event, location or line of business. For nonprofits, this can mean tagging expenses to a youth program, annual fundraiser or restricted grant so leadership can see whether each activity is staying on budget. For businesses, it can clarify which services, locations or divisions are driving revenue and costs.

5. Build Reports Leadership Will Use

QuickBooks reports become more useful when they are tailored to the questions management asks most often. A standard profit and loss statement may be enough for tax preparation, but leaders often need budget comparisons, cash flow views, unpaid invoice reports, grant reports or sales by customer.

Saving customized reports for regular review can turn QuickBooks from a recordkeeping system into a more useful decision-support tool.

6. Protect Prior-Period Financial Reporting

An often-overlooked control in QuickBooks is the ability to close a reporting period after month-end activity has been reviewed and reconciled. Closing the books helps prevent accidental changes to transactions that have already been reported to management, lenders, boards or tax advisors. If a prior-month transaction is changed after financial statements have been distributed, the difference can be difficult to trace later. Using a closing date and password protects prior-period reporting while permitting authorized adjustments.

7. Measure Job, Grant or Event Results

When everything is tracked only through income and expense accounts, it can be hard to tell whether a specific job, fundraiser, grant or event was profitable. Projects allow related income and expenses to be grouped together so managers can review financial results for a specific initiative without cluttering the chart of accounts. A nonprofit, for example, can monitor a fundraising event’s revenue and expenses, while a contractor can measure job profitability by project. That added visibility gives managers project-level information without expanding the chart of accounts.

The bottom line

• Are employees repeatedly entering transactions that could be imported or scheduled?
• Can leadership see results by program, grant, location, event or job?
• Are prior-period reports protected after the month-end review?

A “no” to any of these questions points to a practical place to begin.

Start with one or two improvements, build consistent review habits and revisit your setup periodically. Small changes often lead to cleaner books, stronger internal controls and better decisions throughout the year.

The most useful QuickBooks improvements are often not new features. They are better connections between transaction coding, month-end review and the reports leaders actually use.

If your QuickBooks reports do not clearly show what is happening in your organization, Boyer & Ritter can help assess your setup, reporting structure and month-end processes. Contact your Boyer & Ritter professional to identify practical improvements that fit your organization’s needs.

About the authors

Adrianna Gray, CPA, is a senior associate in Boyer & Ritter’s Small Business practice group, providing tax and accounting services to businesses and individuals.

Lisa Kelly is a paraprofessional at Boyer & Ritter assisting clients with accounts payable and receivable, reconciliations, financial records and QuickBooks.

For more information, contact Adrianna at agray@cpabr.com, Lisa at lkelly@cpabr.com or your Boyer & Ritter professional.