Book closing can become a hassle if left till the last minute. It looks like a whirlwind of invoices and transactions which can easily make you feel overwhelmed. The good news? QuickBooks Online (QBO) is equipped with built-in tools that can help you streamline your entire process.

So here is a quick look at the essential tools for a faster closing process

Creating recurring transactions

• Recurring transactions is a feature in QBO that helps you match periodic transactions such as subscriptions, rent and other utility transactions as well as retainer or professional fees.
• This feature can be used by clicking on the recurring transaction tab in the transactions section.

Auto Recall(Pre-fill)

• QuickBooks has the ability to prefill various fields on bills and invoices based on a customer or vendor's last saved transactions. This feature can help you fill up customer information, payment terms and line items and category.
• You can enable this feature by clicking on the settings icon, selecting accounts and users, going to the advanced tab in the settings and turning on prefill

Categorization Rules

• One of the most important tools QBO has and one that helps accountants the most is creating rules. Any transaction that satisfies a criteria is automatically filled with a particular category.
• You can create rules on the rules tab in the transaction section. A few that cast a wide net on the transactions:
  1. Rules that recognise deposits from your invoicing system like Stripe, Paypal etc.
  2. Rules to split up loan transactions into interest and principal as they come in
  3. Identifying transfers and creating rules to categorize them as such

Keyboard Shortcuts

• Excel power users assemble. QuickBooks, much like all tools built for accountants, also enables users to skip mouse use through keyboard shortcuts. So here's a couple of the most useful shortcuts:
  1. Ctrl+Alt+I: Invoices
  2. Ctrl+Alt+W: Write checks
  3. Ctrl+Alt+X: Expenses
  4. Ctrl+Alt+R: Receive payment
  5. Ctrl+Alt+E: Estimates
  6. Ctrl+Alt+A: Accounts
  7. Ctrl+Alt+V: Vendors
  8. Ctrl+Alt+F: Search transactions
  9. Ctrl+R: Refresh the active window

Periodically review charts of accounts

• A gaping problem that was pointed out was that in a lot of cases there are multiple Charts of Accounts that are created for the same purpose and a lot of CPAs forget to clean these up. These create clutter for every close because teams have to look into the register to identify the correct account
• Keep your account descriptions up to date. Firm owners do not realise how often when a new team member joins they have to spend hours looking through the transactions of certain charts of accounts to understand the purpose of that account and where it should be used.

Month-end or year-end closing doesn't have to be a mad dash. By utilizing these tools. A little regular upkeep today saves a lot of time and headaches tomorrow.

If you're looking to go one step further and leave all this behind, you can check out Dunlin.ai—our AI helps you close in minutes so that you focus on advisory.