Adding Your Contacts to Quickbooks

Business Owner Options

Are you a business owner? Do you accept credit cards with a top ranked merchant account provider for payment? Do you understand all of your fees that you pay each month? Most business owners don't and are paying much higher fees than they should and also paying high "unneeded" fees that they are unaware of!

One of the most efficient ways to manage the finances of your business is by using Intuit’s Quickbooks. Regardless of the size of your business, Quickbooks allows users to have a great amount of control covering various aspects of everything financially related to the organization. As this program is customizable and easy to use, it can be set up for a variety of management capabilities that are tailored to exactly what you would need.

Adding contacts to Quickbooks can be accomplished easily depending on what method you’re more comfortable with. If you use Outlook, Yahoo, or Gmail as your email application, you can import these contacts directly into the financial management software. When importing contacts from email, you are able to select which of these people are to be included into the software. This allows you to keep personal email contacts out of your business profile. If you prefer not to use your email accounts to generate the contact list, the option for importing directly from Excel spreadsheets or creating the list manually is also available.

Contact names can be created using different styles of format such as last name first, first name first, or by company name. Once this has been established, this format is how Quickbooks will utilize the contact when running reports, creating forms, or one of many other abilities that are included in the software. However, these names can be easily edited at a later date should you feel that information is missing or you simply want to change how the person is viewed in the database.

When people are added to the contact list in Quickbooks, they are categorized in one of three ways. These may be set up automatically and you might have to change the setting of each depending on what kind of business you conduct with each person. These categories are:

Customer : These are the people you sell goods to or perform services for. Customers are people who give your business money, and they can also be called clients and/or donors.

Vendor : This list represents those you acquire products or services from. Whether you are buying goods to resell or hiring a professional to fix the air conditioning, this consists of the list of those you write checks to. You could refer to these people as dealers, sellers, consultants, or one of many other names.

Employee : Those who work for you are referred to as employees. This is a list of those you pay for the work they perform for your business. This is inclusive of those who are direct employees or those who are contract labor.

Each contact can be easily found by navigating the software to the respective category each person or business is located under.

Once you have your list of contacts created, Quickbooks allows you to conduct several aspects of business. By using the name of the contact, you are able to:

Create Invoices : These are the forms you send to customers or clients in order to facilitate payment to your business.

Write Checks : Any time someone is paid for a service or work performed, you enter the data here.

Pay Bills : For those contacts that are considered bills such as vendors, utility companies, or rents, you track the information in Quickbooks within this area.

Reports and information can be accessed according to each person’s individual account name. This includes any bills, invoices, checks, and other reviewable information for tax purposes and tracking. At a glance, you can see what money is being sent to what contact or if someone has paid an invoice on time.