Subtitles of the Movie

The home page in QuickBooks is by far the most popular method of maneuvering through QuickBooks. It is broken into a series of what are called centers; vendor center, customer center, employee center, that allow us access to the most common tasks. The home page has also been set up as a learning center also. You'll notice on the right-hand side of your page that you can get to the QuickBooks coach. First there are a series of tutorials that'll take you through the basic setup of QuickBooks. Secondly, we'll have some coach tips. The tips are set to explain to us the series in which we would perform our transactions within a particular area. For instance, I'm going to click on the coach tips. Notice the background changed to gray and you'll see that it takes me step by step through the methods in which I would perform the transactions. Again, if you pause your cursor on any of these transactions, it tells you specifically what that task is. For those of you that are starting out with QuickBooks or starting out with accounting, you will find that this is a wonderful technique to learn the system that we use to make an accurate set of books. Secondly, you'll also notice that in each of the areas, we can simply click and get to whatever information that we need. Let's take, for instance, our chart of accounts. When I select the chart of accounts, it takes me to the background information for that data. Again, I'll close off with the X and I'm right back to the home page itself. This home page becomes my central station or square one. If I want to find more information out about my vendors, you'll notice that there is a bar on the left-hand side of the screen. When I select this bar, it's going to take me immediately to my vendor center. Here I can perform any activity that I need to with my current vendor layout. First you'll notice a list of all the vendors on the left-hand side. Secondly, on the right-hand side is as much detail as I need. We'll talk later in the vendor section of the program on how to go about specializing this for your needs, but for right now, let's just talk about the basics. First, do know that on all the screens I have the ability to open them up or I can close them in just a tad. I can also go to a specific vendor by double clicking on that vendor itself. In the background, you'll notice my address information and other tabular information that will give me full access to vendors. If I again close out, it takes me back to the vendor center. Once again, I will close out and I'm back to my main screen. If I'd like to look at my customers, I'll see exactly the same thing. This time you'll notice in my customers it's giving me payments, estimates, invoices, even giving me maps, directions and notes to where to go to when I need to get information about my vendor itself. And as always, I simply close out of it and I'm back to the home page. Now, do remember that any of the information we see on this home page can be accessed in any of the other methods that we talked about earlier. However, do keep in mind that one of the fastest ways to get in and out of QuickBooks is to use this particular page. Also notice towards the bottom on the right-hand side, if you're looking for more services, you need to expand what you currently have in QuickBooks, it'll give you the information to go in there right away, recommended services, ordering checks and supplies, even payroll options that are set up for you off to the side. For those of you that have worked with QuickBooks for a while and are no longer in need of the coaching area, I'd like you to know that you can turn that off. If we go up to the word edit and go down to the word preferences, it'll take us to the setup display for QuickBooks. On the desktop view, you will notice that it allows me to choose whether I show the home page and choose whether or not I show the coach. Should you choose not to use the home page, just remove this checkmark. Next time you start QuickBooks, the home page will be gone. In this case, I'm going to remove the checkmark from showing the coach, I'm going to be happy with it, say ok and now when I close out, you'll notice the coaching center is gone. You'll also notice the series of plus and minuses on each of these areas to the side. This allows me to close this information up. It's particularly useful for account balances, as you may not want everybody passing by to see what they are. Take advantage of all these features the home page has to offer. Take some time, look through the features, determine which works for you and which does not and customize the screen for your liking.