QuickBooks ProAdvisor key terms

The master list of every account QuickBooks uses to record money coming in, money going out, and what the business owns and owes. Each account has a name, an optional number, and a type.

The category assigned to a Chart of Accounts entry, such as Bank, Income, Expense, or Accounts Receivable. The type decides where the account appears on reports and financial statements.

A built-in account QuickBooks uses to balance the books when you enter starting balances for bank accounts, customers, or vendors before you begin working in the file.

Permission levels given to people who log in to the company file, such as Standard, Accountant, or Reports Only. They control which areas a person can view, create, or change.

The twelve-month period a business uses for accounting and reporting. If it does not start in January, you set the start month in company settings so reports cover the right dates.

A setting that lets you record transactions in foreign currencies and converts them to the home currency using exchange rates you enter, producing gains or losses when rates change.

The tax authority that collects sales tax from your business. You record a remittance to the agency as a tax payment, which reduces the sales tax payable balance in the ledger.

A transaction that tells a customer what they bought and how much they owe, and records the sale in Accounts Receivable until the customer pays.

A transaction that records a sale and the payment at the same moment. It is used when the customer pays in full at the point of purchase instead of being billed later.

A quote for products or services given to a customer before work starts. It does not affect the ledger, but it can be copied into an invoice once the customer accepts.

A transaction that reduces what a customer owes, used for refunds, returned goods, or a billing correction. It can be applied against an open invoice or refunded directly.

A billing method that lets you invoice part of an estimate at a time, such as a percentage of a project, while QuickBooks tracks how much of the estimate has already been billed.

The transaction that applies money collected from a customer to one or more open invoices, moving the balance out of Accounts Receivable and into a deposit account.

Automated pricing that changes a price by a percentage or dollar amount for selected customers or items based on conditions you set, applied automatically to invoices and sales receipts.

A cost paid on behalf of a client that is marked as billable in QuickBooks so it can be added to that customer's invoice and recovered later.

A transaction recording money you owe a vendor for goods or services already received. It increases Accounts Payable until you pay it.

A direct record of money spent that is not tied to a vendor bill, often created from the bank feed or entered by hand using the payee and the account it should hit.

A record of a credit received from a supplier for returned goods or an overpayment. It reduces the amount you owe and can be applied to an open bill.

The screen where you select one or more open vendor bills, choose a payment date and bank account, and record the payment so Accounts Payable decreases.

A document sent to a vendor to order goods before they arrive. In QuickBooks it does not affect the ledger until it is copied to a bill or an expense.

The total amount a business owes vendors for bills entered but not yet paid. It is reported as a liability on the balance sheet.

A vendor setting that flags payments made to unincorporated contractors so the totals can be reported on a 1099-NEC at year end. It requires the vendor's tax identification number.

A holding account that temporarily stores customer payments until they are grouped into a single bank deposit, keeping individual receipts separate from the line on the bank statement.

A connection that downloads bank or credit card transactions into QuickBooks so each one can be reviewed, matched to an existing record, or added as a new transaction.

Saved instructions that tell QuickBooks how to categorize or match incoming bank feed transactions automatically, based on conditions such as payee name, amount, or description text.

The process of comparing QuickBooks transactions to a bank or credit card statement and confirming each one, so the statement ending balance agrees with the book balance.

A transaction that moves money between two of your own accounts, such as checking to savings. It should not be recorded as income or as an expense.

A manual transaction made of debits and credits, used to adjust account balances when no standard form fits, such as recording depreciation or reclassifying an amount.

Voiding keeps a zeroed record of a transaction for the audit trail with its date and memo intact. Deleting removes it entirely, which can break links to other transactions.

A report that groups unpaid customer invoices by how long they have been outstanding, such as current, 1-30 days, and 31-60 days, so overdue balances are easy to chase.

A report showing income minus expenses for a chosen period to arrive at net profit. It is also known as the income statement.

A report at a single point in time listing what the business owns as assets, what it owes as liabilities, and owners' equity, where assets equal liabilities plus equity.

Two reporting choices. Cash basis counts income when money is received and expenses when paid; accrual basis counts them when the sale is invoiced or the bill is entered.

A report listing every account with its debit or credit balance to prove that total debits equal total credits. Accountants often run it before making adjusting entries.

A report you modify by changing filters, rows, or columns and then save with a name, so the same layout and settings can be reused later.

A plan of expected income and expenses by account and period that can be compared against actual results in reports to highlight variances.

Clicking a number in a report to open the list of transactions that make up that total, so you can verify how the figure was built.