In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to set up a brand new QuickBooks Online account.
Quick Instructions:
- Select the type of QBO account you’d like to subscribe to.
- Use my affiliate link to get a free 30-month trial and save 30% off your first 12 months!
- Create an Intuit account
- Enter your billing information
- Follow the step-by-step setup process
- Optional: Take a quick tour of QuickBooks Online
- Go through the setup checklist
Keep reading for a complete walkthrough with screenshots:
Discounted QBO Subscriptions
If you go to the QuickBooks website directly you’ll be offered a free trial for 30 days and 50% off a 3-month subscription.
If you use my affiliate link you can get the free trial plus save 30% off the next 12 months. That would be an extra savings of over $500 with the Plus plan if you use my link. I will get a small cut, it helps pay for the free content: https://bit.ly/3gXpv3b
No matter how you get there, on the QuickBooks Online pricing page you’ll see all the different plan options from Simple Start through Advanced. Pricing may be different than what’s in the image below.
Look through the options for each account type and pick which one fits your business. Then click the Buy now button.
Intuit Account Creation
Before you pay for your new QuickBooks account you’ll first create an Intuit account. Enter your email address, phone number, and create a password.
When you click the One More Step button you’ll be taken to the payment screen.
Get Started With QuickBooks Online
Next QuickBooks will walk you step-by-step through a setup process. A lot of it can be skipped and set up later as needed.
It starts with your business name.
Next, they want to know how you’ve been managing your finances. Whether you’ve been using different software, spreadsheets, etc.
Select whatever methods you’ve been using and click Next.
How long has your business been in business? Select the number of years from the drop-down and click Next.
What kind of business is this? If you’re an LLC select Yes and click Next. If you’re not sure select I’m not sure and you’ll be presented with different options.
Select the option that best fits our business and click Next.
It’s okay if you select “I’m not sure” this isn’t going to make or break anything it just sets things up a little differently in the equity section of QuickBooks. Any of those things can be set up later if needed.
Next, you’ll enter the industry your business is in. You can start typing and you’ll get suggestions, select whatever works best for your business.
Selecting an industry and the next step, your main role, gives the software an idea of what types of income you’ll have and what you’re business might need.
Next, it wants to know who else works at your business. Is it just you? Do you have employees or contractors? Select your situation and click Next.
If you have someone doing your bookkeeping select Yes for Does a bookkeeper help with your books? Select No if you do it yourself. Then click Next.
If you are doing your bookkeeping yourself you can always reach out to us for help or hire us to do your bookkeeping for you.
In the next question, you can select various apps that you use that QuickBooks integrates with and click Next.
You can click “Skip for now” if you don’t use any of these apps or if you want to do those integrations later.
Once we get through this part of the setup and into QuickBooks Online there will be a checklist for us to go through. This question lets QuickBooks know what to include in that checklist. You can select as many things as you’d like and click Next or you can skip this step.
You can now link bank and credit card accounts. You can click Link Accounts or skip and do this later.
For the how do you track your receipts question it will give you different options on the next screen depending on what you select. Once again, you can skip this step if you’d like and set this up later.
I’m going to show you what happens when you select “I save paper receipts”.
When you say you use paper receipts you get links to download the QuickBooks mobile app. The app lets you take pictures of your receipts to easily enter them into QuickBooks. Click Next to continue.
If you get paid with invoices you can set this up now or skip it. I’m going to skip that section.
You’ll see the mobile app download screen again. This is because the app lets you see payments, but only if you invoice through QuickBooks. Click Next to continue.
There are a couple more multiple-choice questions that I won’t bother showing you screenshots of.
“How confident are you that QuickBooks will help you do what you need?” and “How much progress have you made towards what you want to d in QuickBooks” answer these however you like and continue on…
We’re now on our way to actually using QuickBooks Online!
Welcome to QuickBooks!
You’re finally in QuickBooks Online. A pop-up will appear asking if you’d like to “Take a quick tour”. Feel free to take the tour, I’m going to skip that part and move on to the Setup Checklist.
QuickBooks Online Setup Checklist
QuickBooks gives you a checklist to further help you get your QuickBooks setup.
I’m going to give a quick overview of each section but not walk through it.
Basic business info
You’re dropped into the Checklist below Basic business info. That’s because we just finished that section.
If you click on it you’ll see it’s checked off and shows 100% completed. If you click the Take another look button you’ll go back through the setup process we previously went through.
Get ready to invoice
In this section, you’ll set up invoicing through QuickBooks Online. You don’t need to use QuickBooks for your invoicing. If you already use invoicing software you can switch to QuickBooks Online if you’d like or continue using what you’re using.
Get paid online
This section lets you create an invoice or get a payment link.
Payment links are one-time use. It expires once you’ve been paid through the link. You can get paid by credit card, debit card, or ACH with payment links.
To use payment links you will need to create a QuickBooks Payment account. This is a merchant account that’s separate from your QuickBooks Online account.
See what you make and spend
From here you can link your business bank accounts to QuickBooks. This allows QuickBooks to automatically download transactions from your bank.
Once you link your accounts you can organize your transactions in the bank feed. You can learn more about bank feeds in my blog post How to Navigate Bank Feeds in QuickBooks online.
Get the free mobile app
If you haven’t already downloaded the mobile app here’s another link to get it. They really push this app.
It is helpful for scanning receipts and automatically tracking mileage.
Get support
The last and final step, get support. Because QuickBooks knows you’ll probably need some help.
If you click on the button you get a “chat” box that takes you to a page with options for connecting with QuickBooks support.
If you’re not able to get your question answered by QuickBooks support Gentle Frog is always here to help: https://www.gentlefrog.com/meeting/
You now know how to set up the basics of your QuickBooks Online account. Watch for future blog posts where I’ll go over more of the QuickBooks Online setup process.
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Below is a video if you prefer to watch me show you how to do this.
If you have any questions about setting up or working with QuickBooks Online click the green button below to schedule a free consultation.
