Subtitles of the Movie

Whenever I am in the Register and I am adding a number of transactions I'm always looking for the quickest way to do it. Shortcuts, tips and tricks are my favorite aspect of learning any accounting program. If we go to the word Edit on our menu and down to Preferences, you may recall from earlier that we could change our Quicken program to set it up for our own convenience. One of the options that we're able to set under Preferences is Quick Fill. The Quick Fill preferences are all about aiding in data entry. I'd like to talk about these in detail, and to do so, I'm going to turn to a Power Point presentation. Remember as we're doing these Quick Fills that the true trick is to take the ones that suit you best. No need to memorize them all, the whole idea is what works for you. First, when you're moving from one field to another, meaning one transaction to the next, you can use the Enter key. When you use the Tab key you can actually go to each columnar entry within the field itself. So, for instance, I can go from transaction to transaction with the Enter key, and I can go to column to column with the Tab key. If I'd like to actually continue with the same information that I've used prior, it will be memorized for me. What this will allow is that the check number will automatically come up with the next sequence. If I write the same check to the same supplier each month, it will memorize the Categories, the Sub-categories, Tags, etc You do, however, need to remember that need to be turned on in the Preference menu. I can also recall all of the information for a Payee from the last transaction. Now this can be anything that was on a prior check, prior bill, or any other transaction that I worked with. When we continue I can also provide a drop-down list on a field entry. This will allow me to come up with the selections that have been used in the past. This, of course, can be a nice time-saving, and it also eliminates a lot of duplication of the same information when we spell it just slightly differently. I appreciate the ability to capitalize the first letter of every word for a Category and a Payee. Now, as a note of interest, I encourage people to stay away from using all caps when you're working with accounts and payees. It is actually the most difficult type to read on the screen. The easiest to read on the screen is what we call Proper Case. Proper case is the first letter of the word capitalized and the rest in small letters. You may want to consider this, and you can always do a little test. Type something in all caps, read it on the screen, and then type the exact same thing in on Proper Case, and see for yourself if it's not easier to follow. You'll also be able to show buttons on your Quick Fill fields. This will give a little notion on the side to let you know that you've set up some Quick Fill lists that you can work with. When you're going through this you can then set it up to automatically save every new Payee to put in your Quick Fill list. A warning here: if you have a great deal of suppliers that you're working with, your list can get way too long. You may need to clean it up from time to time, and actually delete out some of the items that you put into this Quick Fill list. We can also have our information automatically memorize our events to the calendar. The idea here is if you have a bill that you know you want to pay in a couple of weeks it'll pop up on your calendar; when you view your calendar you can easily see what needs to go out for your planning and your research purposes. Finally, we can actually add an Address Book group to our list. The nice part is that it lets you reuse the names in your Register when you're writing checks. You won't have to actually re-input address information on a Payee every time you create a check. Now, the idea here is as you're going through these items choose the preferences that you would like. Start with just one or two, and then go through the list. You'll notice in Data Entry, I do not have “Use the Enter Key to Move Between Fields” turned on. I'm so used to using the Tab key that this one actually confuses me, so I've turned it off. And that's the concept behind these preferences. Go in and out of them regularly. Remember, they're progressive; they're meant to be changed not to set up once and forget about in the future.