Stephen L. Nelson - QuickBooks 2014 For Dummies

QuickBooks 2014 For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. , 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Media and software compilation copyright 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013944874

ISBN 978-1-118-72005-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-72110-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-72123-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-72102-5 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Introduction

Running or working in a small business is one of the coolest things a person can do. Really. I mean it. Sure, sometimes the environment is dangerous kind of like the Old West but its an environment in which you have the opportunity to make tons of money. And its also an environment in which you can build a company or a job that perfectly fits you.

In comparison, many brothers and sisters working in big-company corporate America are furiously trying to fit their round pegs into painfully square holes. Yuck.

Youre wondering, of course, what any of this has to do with this book or with QuickBooks. Quite a lot, actually. The whole purpose of this book is to make it easier for you to run or work in a small business by using QuickBooks.

About This Book

As you start your reading, though, I want to tell you a couple of things about this book.

First off, know that I fiddled a bit with the Windows display settings. For example, I noodled around with the font settings and some of the colors. The benefit is that the pictures of the QuickBooks windows and dialog boxes in this book are easier to read. And thats good. But the cost of all this is that my pictures look a little bit different from what you see on your screen. And thats not good. In the end, however, what the publisher found is that people are happier with increased readability.

Next point: To make the best use of your time and energy, you should know about the conventions that I use in this book, which are as follows:

When I want you to type something, such as With a stupid grin, Martin watched the tall blonde strut into the bar and order grappa , its in bold type. When I want you to type something thats short and uncomplicated, such as Jennifer , it still appears in boldface type.

Except for passwords, you dont have to worry about the case of the letters you type in QuickBooks. If I tell you to type Jennifer , you can type JENNIFER or follow poet e. e. cummingss lead and type jennifer .

Whenever I tell you to choose a command from a menu, I say something like Choose ListsItems, which simply means to first choose the Lists menu and then choose Items. The separates one part of the command from the next part.

You can choose menus, commands, and dialog box elements with the mouse. Just click the thing you want.

When I provide step-by-step descriptions of tasks, something I do regularly within the pages of this tome, I describe the tasks by using bold text and then below the boldfacing give a more detailed explanation in the text that follows the step. You can skip the text that accompanies the step-by-step boldface directions if you already understand the process.

Foolish Assumptions

I make three assumptions about you:

You have a PC running Microsoft Windows. (I took pictures of the QuickBooks windows and dialog boxes while using Windows 8, in case youre interested.)

You know a little bit about how to work with your computer.

You have or will buy a copy of QuickBooks for each computer on which you want to run the program.

This book works for QuickBooks 2014, although, in a pinch, you can probably also use it for QuickBooks 2013 or 2015. (I have to say, however, that if you have QuickBooks 2013, you may instead want to return this book and trade it in for QuickBooks 2013 For Dummies by yours truly. Furthermore, even though Im no fortuneteller, Im willing to predict that youll be able to buy a QuickBooks 2015 For Dummies book when QuickBooks 2015 comes out.)