{"id":94,"date":"2025-05-14T18:45:32","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T18:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.simon-cpas.com\/blog\/?p=94"},"modified":"2025-05-14T18:45:33","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T18:45:33","slug":"how-to-set-up-a-bookkeeping-cycle-in-quickbooks-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.simon-cpas.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/14\/how-to-set-up-a-bookkeeping-cycle-in-quickbooks-online\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Set Up a Bookkeeping Cycle in QuickBooks Online"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Do you have a regular schedule you follow with your QuickBooks Online work? It can be a good strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bookkeeping is cyclical. You tend to do the same things over and over, which may get to be a bit of a drag for you. QuickBooks Online can automate some processes, and it certainly helps minimize duplicate data entry, but you\u2019ll undoubtedly find yourself growing weary of repetitive tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can\u2019t help you avoid this drudgery completely, but we\u2019d like to suggest a new, more organized way to attack your accounting tasks in 2025. It could be especially helpful if you\u2019re a new QuickBooks Online user and don\u2019t have a routine established yet. But even long-time users might find this routine helpful. It can keep things from slipping through the cracks and simply make you more productive and confident that you\u2019re addressing all of your accounting issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Give it a try and see what you think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Should You Do Every Day?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if you don\u2019t have expenses to enter or invoices to process, it\u2019s a good idea to log into QuickBooks Online every day. If you\u2019ve connected your online bank and credit cards to the site (which you absolutely should), there will probably be transactions to go over. So after you\u2019ve taken a look at your Dashboard<\/strong> (especially your Tasks), hover your mouse over Transactions<\/strong> in the toolbar and click Bank transactions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click Update<\/strong> in the upper right to make sure you\u2019re seeing the most recent transactions. If you\u2019re doing this every day, it shouldn\u2019t take long to go over the income and expenses that have been imported since you last logged in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You should be looking at newly imported transactions daily and completing the fields provided as comprehensively as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you don\u2019t know what Match<\/strong> or Record as transfer<\/strong> mean, we should schedule a session to go over transaction management in QuickBooks Online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every Week<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You need to be monitoring your accounts receivable and payables on a weekly basis \u2013 at minimum. There are two ways to do this. You can:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Run reports.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Click Reports<\/strong> in the toolbar and scroll down first to Who owes you<\/strong>. Run Accounts receivable aging summary<\/strong>. QuickBooks will display past-due transactions in several columns (Current, 1-30<\/strong> days, 31-60<\/strong> days, 61-90<\/strong> days, and 91 and over<\/strong>). If you\u2019re keeping up with your receivables, you shouldn\u2019t be seeing numbers in most of the columns, unless you\u2019re in a known collections process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Scroll down to What you owe<\/strong> and run Accounts payable aging summary<\/strong>. This works like the aging receivables report. Again, you shouldn\u2019t be seeing much activity here unless you\u2019re in a payment dispute with a vendor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 You can also run the Open Invoices<\/strong> report to quickly see the Due date<\/strong> and Open balance<\/strong> entries here. Ditto the Unpaid Bills<\/strong> report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consult the All sales page.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hover your mouse over Sales<\/strong> in the toolbar and click All sales.<\/strong> The colored bars and numbers at the top of the page show you the status of your sales. Click the orange bar in the middle to see a list of overdue invoices. If there are any, you can set a Send reminder<\/strong> by clicking the corresponding down arrow in the Action<\/strong> column. While you\u2019re there, look at estimates<\/strong> and unbilled income<\/strong> and take any action needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every Two Weeks<\/strong> (or more often, depending on product volume)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you sell products and track inventory in QuickBooks Online, you should keep a close eye on your stock to see if you need to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Reorder,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Bring in a larger supply because something is selling well, or,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Discount or discontinue a product because it\u2019s not selling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click Reports<\/strong> in the toolbar and run Product\/Service List<\/strong> under Sales and customers<\/strong> and look at the Quantity on hand<\/strong> column.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every Month<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reconcile your accounts (Transactions | Reconcile).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s really, really important that you reconcile your accounts every month. We can help you with this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one likes to do this, but it\u2019s way easier to do regular reconciliations than it is to have to go back several months to track down a problem. If you\u2019ve never done this in QuickBooks Online, it works similarly to how you used to reconcile your accounts by comparing a bank statement and your paper checkbook register. Only you\u2019re comparing your bank or credit card statements to your accounts in QuickBooks Online. Before you start<\/strong>, make sure you\u2019ve matched and categorized all of your downloaded transactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Run a Profit and Loss report for the last month.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click Reports<\/strong> in the toolbar and click Profit and Loss<\/strong> under Business overview<\/strong>. Did you make a profit last month?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every Quarter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re planning to apply for a loan or looking for an investor, or if you just want a deeper understanding of how your business is doing, consider having us create and analyze standard financial reports for you, like the Balance Sheet<\/strong> and Statement of Cash Flows<\/strong>. You can run these yourself in QuickBooks Online, but it really takes an accountant\u2019s eye to understand and interpret them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you decide that you want to work with us in any capacity, like helping you with reconciliation and\/or modifying your Chart of Accounts<\/strong>, there\u2019s another way we can help. If you ever have trouble categorizing an expense, select Uncategorized Expenses<\/strong> as the Category<\/strong>. If we\u2019re meeting with you once a month, we can run a report on these and help you categorize them correctly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you have a regular schedule you follow with your QuickBooks Online work? It can be a good strategy. Bookkeeping is cyclical. You tend to do the same things over and over, which may get to be a bit of a drag for you. QuickBooks Online can automate some processes, and it certainly helps minimize duplicate data entry, but you\u2019ll undoubtedly find yourself growing weary of repetitive tasks. We can\u2019t… Read More<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":95,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-quickbooks","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simon-cpas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simon-cpas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simon-cpas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simon-cpas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simon-cpas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.simon-cpas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96,"href":"https:\/\/www.simon-cpas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/96"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simon-cpas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simon-cpas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simon-cpas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simon-cpas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}