W-4, Where For Art Thou?

One of our entrepreneurial minded QuickBooks students asked in class yesterday about employee W-4 forms.

She is looking to go into business with her son. She wanted to know about the IRS Schedule for withholding and so it gave us an opportunity to explore the W4 form

The W4 form is an excellent opportunity for employers to keep track of what's been going on with their employees an update their information. New boys always fill out the form, but a solid strong accounting practice is to ask all employees to fill out a new form at the beginning of each year.

Why a new W-4 form each year?

Threw out here a lot of changes can take place and people forget to report it to their employers. For example when somebody moves, somebody got married, and older child moving out and is no longer a dependent?

Another reason can be found directly on the instruction page that accompanies the form: Future developments -  Information about any future developments affecting Form W-4 (such as legislation enacted after we release it).

The way Congress works, they can make rule changes at any time and they don’t have to warn you about them.

All of these things can make a big difference on the W4 form.

You don’t have to wait for an employer to supply you with the form, you can also do it yourself.

I had a friend who would intentionally ask for extra withholdings on his W-4 form. Why? Because he wanted a bigger refund on April 15th. When told he was just giving the government a free loan that's interest free, and that he could just put the money in the savings account, he replied that no it wouldn't work that way. He would just spend the money instead of saving it. This way since it was we hell before he got his check his paycheck each. He would not know he had it until it came at the end of the year.

That is definitely not a good smart way to say, but if you know yourself well, perhaps it's better than nothing.

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.

Want to really master QuickBooks? Become a QuickBooks Certified User by taking the official exam. We offer study guides and classes to help people pass. Click here for more details.

What Did YOU Learn Today?

One of the things we do at Community Business College is ask all of our students, “what did you learn today?”

It’s a good reinforcement tool and sometimes the answers to that question tell us a great deal about where a student is in the learning process and it caps off an end to the class with a quick learning review.

After completing a QuickBooks class module with the learning-challenged students from Modesto’s Mentor Network yesterday, we reviewed their Profit and Loss Statements. This is something new for the college and we did this class as a pilot project. As you'll see, it was a huge success!

In this QuickBooks class, the students got to choose their own stores, come up with the names and stock it with virtual products. They learned how to order stock, pay for it, sell it and make deposits.

For those not in the know, a Profit and Loss (also known as P&L) Statement is a tool for businesses to use to determine whether or not your business is profitable, how much of a profit has been made or if the business has incurred a loss.

Our Sample P&L Statement

Profit and Loss Statements are also commonly referred to as an income statement, statement of financial performance, revenue statement, earnings statement, or statement of operations. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “A report by any other name will still smell the same.” Whatever you decide to call it, the purpose of the report is to present the revenues recognized for a specific period, and the cost and expenses charged against these revenues, including write-offs (e.g., depreciation and amortization of various assets) and taxes.

So yesterday, they got to run their Profit and Loss Statements for the first time. Then they got to make them blue, modify the report and save the report. We did some more sales, went back and checked the Profit and Loss and saw the growth.

The class learned about the literal “bottom line” on the report tells them how well their company is doing and the real meaning behind the term “Black Friday” (the day when traditionally, companies that are “in the red” see their profits move back “in the black.”)

Then we got to run the sales graph which is QuickBooks’ very colorful illustration of the results of the sales of a company.

That got a lot of oohs and aahs.

At the end of the class, we asked, “so, what did you learn today,” and almost unanimously came the replies about making profit. Of all the QuickBooks activities they did that day, seeing the graphic results of the work in their stores is what they remembered most.

And they had fun learning, too.

All of the students and the aides worked really hard to get to this point. QuickBooks makes things easier but it still takes patience to make work correctly. And these students did it. It warms our hearts to see them enjoy learning so much and it reminds all of us how lucky we are to have the gifts we have.

So here’s the question of the day: “What did you learn today?”

Can you help us keep this program going? We set up a GoFundMe campaign to try to offer this program to those who have special needs. Check out the details here at https://www.GoFundMe.com/101lqw

Learn to master QuickBooks in one of the campus-based or online classes Community Business  College offers. Then when you’re done, pass the Intuit Certification Exam and receive an official QuickBooks certificate

CBC Offering Students Free QuickBooks Exams

Free Exam Vouchers

The official QuickBooks certifications exam publisher is offering free QuickBooks certification exam vouchers to Community Business College for a very limited time (Midnight, January 31, 2011 to be exact).

It's part of the company's introduction to their new QuickBooks certification program (and a way to beta test their exam software). This Independent exam publisher chose Community Business College to provide its staff and student the opportunity to get an exam voucher and take the exam at no charge. These exams are not yet officially available on the market yet and so anybody passing the exam will receive one of the very first QuickBooks certificates issued.
Community Business College incorporates QuickBooks into its administrative training programs in order to provide its students with the background employers have said they need. The school has been designated an official testing center and also offers a QuickBooks-focused bookkeeping vocational training program.
This is the same publisher which offers the Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) exams. The QuickBooks exam is not an "environment simulation" like the MOS exam, but a 50-question multiple-choice dealing with both QuickBooks topics and basic bookkeeping topics. One suggestion school staff have offered is to become familiar with QuickBooks reports, how they are used, and what the information on them means. Community Business College has a brief study guide available.

The vouchers are absolutly free and include one free re-test if you don't pass the first time around. Community Business College is also waiving its proctoring fee for tests scheduled between 9 AM - 5 PM, Monday through Friday through February 15th.

The request for a free exam voucher must be received by January 31, 2011. However, once the voucher request has been processed, the voucher is good through February 15, 2011. Supplies of vouchers are limited and the offer may end at any time before January 31. It's on a first-come, first-served basis.

If you can't make it to Community Business College to take an exam, you can schedule the exam with another testing center which can be found at: http://www.certiport.com/portal/pages/locatorview.aspx
Make sure to ask if the other testing center is ready for QuickBooks exams and if they charge a proctoring fee.

How to Get a Free Testing Voucher: Send an e-mail by clicking here or call Dan at Community Business College at (209) 529-3648.

In addition to the QuickBooks vouchers, there are also AutoDesk exam vouchers available under the same program.