QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual

Chapter 6.  Configuring Preferences to Fit Your Company

An organization’s approach to accounting often depends on business objectives, policies, procedures, and the industry in which the organization operates. Maybe you want inventory tracking and payroll and maybe you don’t. The way that you and your accountant like to work also influences your organization’s accounting practices. For instance, you might prefer the simplicity of cash accounting (page 150) or the more intimate pairing of income and expenses that accrual accounting (page 150) offers.

Enter QuickBooks, an accounting program with the Herculean task of satisfying every nuance of business operation and personal proclivity. QuickBooks preferences are configurable settings that accommodate different business styles and personal tastes. During installation, QuickBooks sets its preferences to settings likely to work for a majority of organizations. And if you set up your QuickBooks file using the EasyStep Interview (page 17), you might already have preferences set the way you want.

But you can reset preferences to control all sorts of QuickBooks behaviors and features, such as whether you use an audit trail or assign a password to access your QuickBooks file. Preferences also let you turn on QuickBooks features like inventory and payroll. Using QuickBooks a little can make it clear which preferences you need to change. If you find that some of the preferences that QuickBooks chose initially don’t work for you, this chapter ...