Watch a video on how renaming rules work >>

Renaming rules example

Say you’re a landscaper, and you’ve bought supplies from several locations of the Guzman’s Nursery. When you download or import transactions from your financial institution with the Downloaded Transactions window, the names under Downloaded Payees are GUZMAN’S NURSERY – 010 and GUZMAN’S NURSERY – 020 and so on. It clutters up the payee list and, with the all caps, it sounds like your payees are yelling at you. You can set up a rule so that any transaction with a downloaded payee with the text “GUZMAN” is renamed to the vendor “Guzman’s Nursery.”

Creating a new renaming rules

When you create a renaming rule, it applies to transactions currently listed on the Downloaded Transactions window or future transactions you will download.

There’s two ways to create a renaming rule. In either case, the first thing you do is choose Banking > Downloaded Transactions and download or import transactions from your financial institution. If QuickBooks recognizes a downloaded payee name that is the same as one of your vendors, it goes ahead and creates a renaming rule.

Note: After you create a renaming rule, you may find it’s too strict or maybe not enough. You can always edit a rule if you need to.

One way to create a renaming rule:

1. On the Downloaded Transactions window, click the Payee column next to a Downloaded Payee you want to create a rule for.
2. In the Payee columen select or enter the name you want to use for the downloaded payee. QuickBooks creates a new rule that renames the downloaded payee.
3. If the account is not prefilled for you, select an account for the transaction.

Another way to create a new rule:

1. On the Downloaded Transactions window, download or import transactions from your financial institution. If QuickBooks recognizes a downloaded payee name that is the same as one of your vendors, it goes ahead and creates a renaming rule.
2. Click Renaming Rules at the top of the window.
3. On the Renaming Rules windows, click the + button at the bottom of the window.
4. Set up your rule. Think of your rule as an if/then sentence. “If this happens, then I want QuickBooks to do this.” Use the first line (the “If” line) to tell QuickBooks what text to look for in the downloaded payee name. So, for the first part of your sentence, pick an action and enter text.
   • begins with—Apply the rule to any downloaded payee that begins with the text you enter.
   • contains—Apply the rule to any downloaded payee that contains the text you enter.
   • ends with—Apply the rule to any downloaded payee that ends with the text you enter.
   • exactly matches—Apply the rule to any downloaded payee that exactly matches the text you enter.

   Note: The text you enter is not case-sensitive, so don’t worry about uppercase vs. lowercase.

5. Use the second line (the “then” line) to tell QuickBooks what you want to do with transactions that meet the criteria of the first line.
   • rename to—Renames the downloaded payee to  a vendor name you select. If you don’t see the  vendor you want, you can just enter the name and QuickBooks will prompt you to set up the vendor.
   • don’t rename—The downloaded payee stays as it is and is not renamed. This is useful for transactions such as checks. The downloaded name is probably the word “Check” plus a number and you need to choose which payee that check actually went to. You can create a rule that if the downloaded payee name contains “check” then don’t rename it. Then you can choose the payee name manually for each check to make sure it’s correct. QuickBooks adds a default list of these “don’t rename” rules for checks, deposits, and withdrawals automatically.
6. Click OK.

Editing a renaming rule

Once you create a rule, you can edit it to get make it work just the way you want.

1. Open the rule you want to rename:
   • In the Downloaded Transactions window, select a downloaded payee that has the rule applied that you want to change. Then click the arrow next to the name, and click Edit Rule.
   • Click Renaming Rules. On the Renaming Rules windows, double-click the rule you want to edit or select it and click Edit.
2. Change the rule, and click OK. (For details, see the previous section on creating a new rule.)

So that’s what you need to use renaming rules. If you want to see all of this in action, watch our video on renaming rules and Add Multiple.

The first time you use Web Connect, you must go through a setup process, but after the first time, you can skip the setup process.

To use Web Connect for the first time:

1. Choose Banking > Online Banking Setup.
2. Select your financial institution from the list and click Next. (Sometimes financial institutions will have multiple listings, one for Direct Connect (DC) and one for Web Connect (WC). If you see this be sure to select the WC option. (No giggling about “water closets” you anglophiles out there.)
3. If you’re asked to select either “Direct connect” or “Web connect,” select “Web connect” and click Next. (If you do not see the screen, go to the next step.)
4. Click Website to go to your financial institution’s website.
5. On your financial institution’s website, find the download area for your account and choose the QuickBooks Web Connect option to download your account statement. Your financial institution may call the option “Download account activity,” “Download account history,” or something similar. Follow the onscreen instructions to download the file, which will have a .qbo file extension. Contact your financial institution for more information.
6. In QuickBooks, choose File > Import > From Web Connect, select the .qbo file you want to import, and then click Open.
7. For each account shown in the Web Connect file, select the QuickBooks account you want to associate with it, and then click Continue. The account pop-up menu shows available QuickBooks banking accounts if the account you are importing transactions from is:
   • a checking, savings, or money market account
   • available QuickBooks credit card accounts (if you are importing transactions from a credit card accounts
   • available QuickBooks Other Current Liability accounts if you are importing transactions from a line of credit account

   The account pop-up menu will not show a QuickBooks account that is already associated with a Web Connect file. If nothing appears in the account pop-up menu, create a bank, credit card, or Other Current Liability account first.

8. When QuickBooks finishes importing transactions, click OK. QuickBooks displays the transactions in the Downloaded Transactions window.
9. (Optional) Click Align Windows to display the Downloaded Transactions window and its corresponding account register. You can also display the windows side-by-side by customizing the Downloaded Transactions window toolbar.
10. Now you can update your register.

Now that you’ve used Web Connect the first time, the next times will be easier. All you have to is:

1. Choose Banking > Downloaded Transactions.
2. Choose an account from the pop-up menu.
3. Click Download to log in to your financial institution’s website and download a Web Connect file.
4. Click Import File to import the Web Connect file into QuickBooks.

Setting up online banking

• What do I do if my financial institution is not listed?If you don’t see your financial institution name when setting up access to your online banking account:
  • If you have the “Select the financial institution” window open, click Cancel and reopen the window to refresh the list.
  • Be sure your financial institution supports online banking with Quickbooks.
  • Check for typos in the name you entered.
  • Be sure to look for the formal name of the bank. For example, the formal name of BofA is Bank of America.
  • Use the search field in the top right corner of the Online Banking Assistant.
  • Be sure you have the most recent version of QuickBooks. Choose QuickBooks > Check for QuickBooks Updates.
  • QuickBooks updates the list of financial institutions once a day. To get to most recent list, quit QuickBooks and open it again. You must be online for the list to be updated.
• What if I don’t know where my account is held? A financial institution may offer online services in different ways or at different costs in different areas. Usually, the options represent geographical areas. Select the option that best represents your location. If you are not sure, contact your financial institution.
• Customer service at my financial institution is telling me to enter information that isn’t in QuickBooks. The customer service representative at your financial institution may be giving you instruction on using Direct Connect when you using Web Connect or the other way around. With Direct Connect, QuickBooks needs more information to access your online banking account automatically. With Web Connect, you download a file manually from the financial institution’s website. Be sure the representative is clear about which service you want to use. Not all financial institutions support both services.

Using Direct Connect

I can’t get Direct Connect to work. If you’re having trouble setting up Direct Connect, use this checklist:

• Check your Internet connection. You must be connected to the Internet for Direct Connect to work.
• Be sure your financial institution supports Direct Connect. Check your financial institution’s website or call their support line.
• Be sure you are providing the correct username and password. When setting up Direct Connect, you must provide the username and password the financial institution provided you.
• Be sure you have the most recent version of QuickBooks. Choose QuickBooks > Check for QuickBooks Updates.

If you complete this list and you still can’t get Direct Connect to work, you can using Web Connect if your financial institution supports it.

Using Web Connect

• When I importing the .qbo file, the Continue tab is grayed out (not active) and I don’t see the account.This problem may occur for several reasons. To resolve it, go through this checklist:
  • Register QuickBooks if you haven’t already.
  • If you are importing a .qbo Web Connect file for the first time, be sure you have set up Web Connect before importing the .qbo file.
  • If the bank account is missing when you import the .qbo file:1. Choose Lists > Chart of Accounts.
    2. Select the account to unlink from imported online transactions and select Edit.
    3. Select the Online Settings tab.
    4. In the Download Transactions window, select “Not enabled” and click Save.
    5. In the Edit Account window, click OK.
    6. Create a new bank account with the same name as the existing bank account, except add the number “1″ at the end of the name (for example, if the original bank account is “ABC,” create a new account named “ABC1″).
    7. Rename the original, existing account to the new name (for example, rename “ABC” to “ABC1″).
    8. Import the file.
• I’m no longer able to download bank transactions after converting from QuickBooks for Windows to QuickBooks for Mac. After you convert the file to QuickBooks for Mac, you must set up your online banking again within QuickBooks for Mac. You can use either Web Connect or Direct Connect.
• I’ve downloaded a .qbo file and QuickBooks tells me it can’t import the file. You’re .qbo file may be corrupted. Return to your financial institution’s website and download the .qbo file again, then choose File > Import from Web Connect to import the new file into QuickBooks.

Video script

I’m Will and I’m the Product Manager on QuickBooks for Mac. I’m going to show you two features in online banking, new for QuickBooks 2012 for Mac: renaming rules and batch entry, also known as “add multiple to register.”

If you’ve ever checked a bank statement or downloaded transactions into QuickBooks, you’ve probably noticed transactions with extra numbers and letters. Some are dates, others are transaction numbers to give a couple of examples. In previous versions, QuickBooks would add these as new payees and ask you to set them up or you’d have to change each payee to the corresponding name in QuickBooks. That could add up to a lot of work.

Renaming rules solve this problem by helping QuickBooks recognize the names of payeees downloaded from your bank. To take advantage of renaming rules, just choosing payee names in the Downloaded Transactions window. If you downloaded a transaction for this payee before, QuickBooks will automatically choose the last used account. You can change this if you need to.

You can also edit rules to get more control over renaming. For example, If the rule includes some of those extra characters downloaded from my bank, I can remove them so QuickBooks will recognize more transactions. As QuickBooks learns who my payees are, more and more transactions will automatically be renamed when I download them. Then it’s just a matter of clicking Add Multiple, and QuickBooks will enter all downloaded transactions with the payee and account to the register.

One last thing, there are some downloaded payees you may not want to rename. For example, if the payee is CHK, you probably don’t want QuickBooks to rename that to the same payee every time. To stop this, just click the arrow next to that payee name and use Don’t Rename.

Reminders list

Using reminders. Say you’ve entered a bill or put something on your QuickBooks® To Do list. These things can then go onto your Reminders list. Watch this video to find out more:

QuickBooks and iCal

If you’re a Mac user, you’re probably already familiar with iCal, the calendar application that comes with Mac OS X and higher. But did you know you can add QuickBooks® transactions to an iCal calendar to help remind you of important dates, such as when payment for an invoice is due? These videos shows you how.

QuickBooks 2012

QuickBooks 2011 and earlier

You can add iCal events for any of these transactions:

• Due dates for invoices, sales receipts, and credit memos (sales forms) you create
• Deposit reminders for payments you receive
• Records of checks you write, bills you pay, and purchase orders you create
• Memorized transactions
• Reminders for items on your company To Do list (displays in iCal’s To Do pane)

Working with iCal events

• To add an event: Create or edit any of the transactions listed above, and then select the iCal checkbox to add an event to iCal. For example, to add an event for the due date of an invoice, click “Show in iCal” when you create the invoice.
• To remove an an event: Open the transactions and clear the iCal checkbox. The next time you open iCal, the event will be gone. If you delete an event in iCal, the transaction stays intact within QuickBooks.

If you edit a transaction in QuickBooks that you already added to iCal, the corresponding event in iCal is also updated.

Working with calendars

QuickBooks creates a new iCal calendar in a different color for each company file. This helps you distinguish the calendar items when working with multiple company files.

When you spend your days working outdoors, you probably don’t want to spend every evening glued to your computer, fighting with your accounts. Here’s the trick: Make the best use of QuickBooks for Mac, so you can get your bills paid, get your customers to pay you, and track how your ag enterprises are doing financially—all slick and quick so you can get back to work.

Sales receipts or invoices? The eternal QuickBooks question

If you’re selling stuff and getting paid on the spot, create sales receipts. If you’re selling services like trucking or animal boarding, create invoices to send to your customers.

Now what about selling your produce at farmer’s markets? You can’t create a sales receipt for everyone! That’s nuts! You can create just a couple of sales receipt for the whole day—one each for the types of payments you’ve accepted (cash, credit cards).
Here’s how a fictitious farm called All Organics tracks their sales at the Mountain View Farmer’s Market:

1. Dave’s Organics created a Customer for each day of each farmer’s market you sell at. For example, Sunday Mountain View Farmer’s Market. (All Organics also sells at the Campbell farmer’s market on Sundays—that’s why they use both the market name and the day in the Customer name.)
2. In her Items List, Dave creates Other Charge Items for the fees and expenses he incurs when he sells at the farmer’s market. (He uses Expense accounts for these items.) These include gas money, booth rental, and grande lattes for their sellers.
3. Still in the Items List, All Organics also creates an Item called Total FM Sales.
4. After the market day, All Organics creates a Sales Receipt for each type of payment they take—cash, credit cards. It includes:
• the Total Sales item with the amount they took in listed as the rate
• Other Charges items for expenses incurred
5. Finally, Dave’s Organics records the deposit for each Sales Receipt.

Hooray! Dave’s books are up-to-date. And to see how much money Dave’s Organics takes in at the Mountain View farmer’s market (and compare that to how much they take down in Campbell on the same day), he can run Sales by Customer reports.

This way, Dave can quickly see how much money he’s taken in at any given farmer’s market.

Getting deep into your Item list

The way you track the things you buy to keep your business running and the crops, animals, and services you sell is to add them to your Item list. Then you can use subitems to get specific about types of crops. Say you’re growing several different kinds of potato—you can create an Item called Potatoes, then create subitems for Yukon Gold, Peruvian Purple, and Russet.

Be sure to add your equipment and vehicles to QuickBooks so you can track their maintenance costs and depreciation!

Tip: We don’t usually recommend that ag businesses use the inventory feature of QuickBooks for Mac. Instead, enter the crops and animals you sell as Non-Inventory Parts.

Do it your own way with custom fields

Do you need to keep specific notes on the crops you grow, the stock you keep, or the animals you board and train?  A great way to do this is to create custom fields, then add them to your Customers, Vendors, Employees. A different set of custom fields can go with your Items.

The South Paw Acres dog boarding facility, a real QBMac user, uses custom fields to keep notes on their canine customers—things like Breed, Diet, Exercise, and Special Needs.

Use Classes to track your enterprises

Lots of ag businesses actually run a variety of enterprises. One QuickBooks for Mac user, the Batie Cattle Company has four enterprises: corn, soybeans, alfalfa, and trucking. (Nope, no cattle!) The Baties uses the Classes feature of QuickBooks for Mac to track each of these enterprises.

When you use Classes to manage your enterprises in QuickBooks, you can generate reports that track your expenses and income for each of those enterprises separately, which gives you a window into how well each of those businesses is doing.

Perennial Crops and Breeding Stock as Fixed Assets

Got a vineyard, an orchard, or a horse breeding program? A great way to track these kinds of long-term items in QuickBooks for Mac is to use Fixed Asset Accounts.

Why do this? So you can track how much money you spend on growing your grapes or apples or horses, then use QuickBooks to determine how much money you make once your vineyard is producing great grapes or you’re selling your yearlings.

How do you used Fixed Assets Accounts to track your perennials or your stock? Say you’ve just planted a new vineyard with Chardonnay grapes. First, go to Chart of Accounts. Create a Fixed Asset account called Chardonnay Vineyard. Then create Fixed Asset accounts, choose Subaccount, and pick Chardonnay Vineyard as the parent account. Use these accounts to track the things you need to get the grapes growing—fertilizers, herbicides or sheep rentals, trellis materials, and so forth.

So that’s it!

I hope this sheds a little light on your agriculture business. Thanks so much to all the businesses I talked to in writing this article. You guys are so awesome!

Use a checklist and those ducks will line right up!

Checklists make work faster and easier, and even a simple checklist can save you hours of time at year-end.

A Year-End Checklist

• Saves time:  Your checklist helps you do each step in order, keep from back-tracking, duplicating work, or doing unnecessary work.
• Increases accuracy: A checklist can help you make sure to use the same system to tackle the issues the that come up only once a year, like Inventory, Fixed Asset depreciation, Owner’s Wages, etc. That way the books stay consistent year over year.

Here are a few tasks that should be on everyone’s QuickBooks Year-End Checklist:

1. Go to Banking > Reconcile: Use the reconciliation function to match your QuickBooks balances to the balances on your bank and credit card statements and eliminate duplication and errors in your accounts. Expert Tip: Run a QuickReport, and filter for uncleared transactions.
2. Go to Reports >Company and Financial >Balance Sheet Prev Year Comparison: Start with the first checking account at the top of the report, look at its balance and ask yourself this very important question: “Does this make sense?”.  Look at the “$ Change” column,  it shows you exactly what changed from one year to the next, like if you added a new “Fixed Asset”, and then  ask yourself that same question.  Wherever possible, confirm balances with outside source documents such as statements, bills, etc. Expert Tip: Toggle the report basis between Cash and Accrual, does A/R or A/P appear on cash basis? If so, watch the short video “QuickBooks cash basis Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable” 
3. Go to Banking > Make Deposits:Never close the year without doing this step.  If a window pops up showing that you have money waiting to go to the bank from last year, you don’t want to close until you find out where that money went. Expert Tip: Save time by using “Fix Undeposited Funds” in the Client Data Review.
4. Go to File > Back Up: When the year is completely wrapped up and all the numbers are finalized, make a backup.  If you are ever asked to give your QuickBooks file to the IRS , you’ll be ready to give them the info they need, and nothing more.
5. See if you need to upgrade: Every May 31 Intuit “sunsets” software and it’s really not wise to run a business on un-supported software.  To check your version go here:  QuickBooks service discontinuation policy and upgrade information.  Expert Tip: Before upgrading make sure you listen to this short training:  ”Upgrading QuickBooks? Make sure your data file is healthy before you do it! “

Want more info?

Listen in as two QuickBooks Experts walk through their year-end, sharing the secrets they’ve learned from years of experience: Prepping the QuickBooks data for your CPA at Year-End

Related Posts: QuickBooks checklist: Periodic tasks that make your life easier

Only looking at the bottom line is the equivalent of “sucking it in” when you look in the mirror. Sure, it looks like you’ve lost some weight, but what happens when you exhale? Breathe in and you might appear skinny for a moment, but that version of the situation isn’t accurate.

Get real

In terms of your business health, the balance sheet is the “real” you. Think of the income statement (also called the profit and loss statement) as your diet log. It tells you how well you did in a specific time period—last week, last month, or last quarter. We all know there are good weeks and bad weeks on a diet. If you look at only one week or month, are you getting a true picture of your overall health? Of course not.

The balance sheet, on the other hand, is based on everything you’ve ever done. In our diet metaphor, it accounts for how much you’ve exercised and what you’ve eaten over your entire lifetime. The sum of all that information in the balance sheet is what you see when you stop sucking it in.

To understand this metaphor, you need to understand what the balance sheet is and how it relates to the income statement. Your income statement contains information about what’s happened in the current period only. It includes these account types (as well as some others):

• Revenue (money coming in)
• Cost of goods sold (what it costs to make what you sell)
• Expenses (other business costs)

It’s all in the timing

To get an accurate picture of your business health, you must use the matching principle. In accountant-speak: The balance sheet accounts hold revenue and expense items until the period in which they are earned or used occurs. That is, related expenses and revenue have to be accounted for—matched up—in the same period.

That means you record expenses and cost of goods sold when you earn the revenue that they are related to. (If an expense isn’t related to revenue, you record it during the period it’s used.)

Let’s say your business makes Super Awesome Widgets. You buy widget parts one month. Those parts belong to cost of goods sold when you sell the Super Awesome Widgets. When you buy the parts, they’ll be “held” in inventory on the balance sheet. Six months later, you make and sell some Super Awesome Widgets. When they’re sold, you record the revenue and cost of goods sold on the income statement. (The balance sheet inventory account is reduced when cost of goods sold is increased.) The income statement (also known as the profit and loss statement) accounts for the money you made (revenue) and the parts you bought (COGS) during the period that you earned the revenue (when you sold ‘em). The balance sheet “held” the COGS until it could be matched with the revenue it was related to.

In contrast, income statement accounts reflect transactions in the current accounting period only. This is the equivalent of sucking in your gut. It looks good in the moment (or not!), but isn’t a true picture. With our widget example, your income statement accounts would look unnaturally awesome when you sold the Super Awesome Widgets if you didn’t record the cost of goods sold in the same month. Conversely, the income statement would look terrible in the month you bought the parts.

In addition, the net profit or loss moves to the equity section of your balance sheet (to retained earnings) at the end of the period. This means that the balance sheet reflects all prior period revenue, cost of goods sold, and expenses in the form of retained earnings. The equity section also shows how much you’ve invested in and drawn out of your business. The equity section, therefore, shows what the company is worth to you.

Do I look fat?

So, how do you know if your business is “overweight”? Take a look at your debt to equity ratio. (Divide your total liabilities by total equity.) Compare that to your industry average and you’ll have a pretty good indicator of your business weight. Too much debt and not enough equity means your business is, in fact, overweight—even if your current period income statement looks healthy and you have money in the bank. Because everything shows up on the balance sheet, you can rely on it to depict the true financial health of your business.