If you are a first time QuickBooks user, it is always a good idea to familiarize yourself with all of its menus and functions listed below each menu. Once you are familiar with QuickBooks, create shortcuts on the Icon Bar to speed up day-to-day transactions. Customize the Icon Bar to your industry. For example, I often help clients in the real estate industry. When adding the Create Invoice function on the Icon Bar, why not change it to Rent as my clients create invoices to charge for rent?

Here are some tips and tricks to customizing your Icon Bar:

– Think about what QuickBooks functions you use often — What do you use daily, weekly, or monthly? Perhaps you enter multiple transactions.

– Open the Screen. Let’s say I use my Lead Center every morning to follow up on current leads.

– Click the View menu and add the Lead Center to the Icon Bar.

– Customize how the Icon will look. Choose an Icon to the left to represent the window. The label is the text that appears below the Icon. Label the Icon specific to your function. So if you are adding the Customer Center to the Icon Bar and your customers are tenants, label the Icon “Tenants”. When your mouse is held over the icon, the description appears. Click OK.

QuickBooks will automatically add the Icon to the end of the bar. To reorder the icons, click on the View menu and select Customize Icon Bar… Drag the Icons to your desired order and click OK. You can also customize how the icons will be displayed and whether to include the search box.

Now you can access the Lead Center with one click on the Icon Bar!