Setting Up Accounts in Quickbooks

After you installed Quickbooks and created your company file some basic accounts were created. (If you need help setting up a new company file, go here: QuickBooks Desktop Support: Create a new company file in QuickBooks.)This article tells you how to create additional accounts.

Disclaimer: I am an upholsterer, not an accountant. So check what accounts you need and how your accounts are set up with your accountant.

This article will not go into opening a new company file 

Creating New Accounts

If you don't know how to create new accounts look in the Quickbooks Help to learn how to create and set up Accounts and Items. (OR just Press "Ctrl+A" to open the Accounts Window. Then press "Ctrl+N" to create a new Account.)

The idea is for you to set up the accounts first, based upon your own needs, then all the Items (see below) will flow into the Accounts. Create and use whatever names on the accounts make sense to you. The accounts will flow into the tax lines. You can see which tax lines I use. You should have your own accountant check over the tax lines to see which ones are right for you.

When you create the accounts, you can either create a lot of accounts or just a few. You can either create one account for all types on one use (such as an "Advertising" account for types of advertising, or you can make additional sub accounts for the various types of advertising (Advertising/Newspapers, Advertising/Phone Directories, etc.) OR, you can also add sub accounts to each type of account for each specific advertising business. (For example: Advertising/Newspapers/Valley Gazette). This all depends on how much detail you want to be able to generate in the reports. You only have to set it up once. I generally opt for having more detail, so I generally created my accounts like the last example, as you can see on the accounts Worksheet..