The programmers at Intuit have designed into the QuickBooks program certain Keyboard Key Combination Shortcuts (sometimes called “Access Keys”) that, once memorized, can make you a lot more efficient.

Technically, keyboard shortcuts are typically a means for invoking commands using the keyboard that would otherwise be accessible only through a menu, a pointing device, different levels of a user interface, or via a command-line interface. Keyboard shortcuts are generally used to speed up common operations by reducing input sequences to a few keystrokes, hence the term "shortcut".

As with most programs, QuickBooks has always used shortcut keys. Pressing the CTRL key and pressing A, for example, will always bring up the chart of accounts, no matter which version you’re using.

If you’re right handed, the best keyboard short cuts for QuickBooks are found on the left hand side of the keyboard. Why the left side? Because that way you don’t have to take your right hand off the mouse of the item you’ve selected in order to engage the shortcut key.

We teach these in our QuickBooks classes. They are usually a big hit.

Making QuickBooks Quicker – Top 5 Tips for Quickerbooks 

The Magic of Shortcuts

PC Version

CTRL+ R Use the Register.  No  matter where you’re at in QuickBooks, this shortcut will bring up your checking, savings and other bank accounts so that you can view and interact with their registers.

Ctrl+Q brings up a Quick Report for any thing you have selected (examples are a customer, an account in the chart of accounts, an item or service, and a vendor). Quick reports are handy ways of easily seeing how the data is coming along in QuickBooks.

   CTRL + I Need to make an invoice?  This keyboard shortcut will immediately pop up a new invoice screen.

Ctrl+E  Edit a selected transaction this can be a customer, item, vendor or any other selected item that you are allowed to edit.
This shortcut is a twofer. You going to get two shortcut keys for one tip. Strongly related to the Ctrl+E edit shortcut is the Ctrl+N:
Ctrl+N  Create a new entry whether it be a new customer, new vendor or new account. You must first open the main window before this becomes available (for example, the customer center).

F3  Pressing the Function 3 key (also known as the F3 key) on the top row of your keyboard pops open a search window to search your entire QuickBooks file.
This one is another twofer. Very closely related to the global search of the F3 key is the Ctrl+F shortcut:
Ctrl+F  Find a transaction in the active window. This differs from the F3 function above in that it Ctrl-F is specific to searching only the active window and its related transactions.

BONUS TIP – If you are used to using the standard Ctrl+A shortcut in Windows to select whole blocks of text or even numbers, it will not work in QuickBooks. QuickBooks reassigns Ctrl+A to activate the Chart of Accounts. Whereas the rest of our shortcut tips are ones you have to learn, this one you have to unlearn. It can be quite annoying when trying to select a description by pressing Ctrl+A and instead having a window with all of your accounts pop up. You have to close the chart of accounts window and then use the mouse to select the text.

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