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QuickBooks Premier, or QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions for each computer on which you want to run the program.

      In other words, I don’t assume that you’re a computer genius or an MBA, or that you’re super-experienced in the arcane rules of accounting. I assume that QuickBooks and accounting are new subjects to you. But I also assume that you want to understand the subjects because you need to do so for your job or your business.

       Icons Used in This Book

      Like many computer books, this book uses icons, or little pictures, to flag things that don’t quite fit into the flow of things.

      

The Tip icon marks tips (duh!) and shortcuts that you can use to make QuickBooks easier.

      

Remember icons mark the information that’s especially important to know. To siphon off the most important information in each chapter, just skim these icons.

      

The Technical Stuff icon marks information of a highly technical nature that you normally can skip.

      

The Warning icon tells you to watch out! It marks important information that may save you headaches when using QuickBooks 2015.

       Beyond the Book

      QuickBooks 2015 All-in-One For Dummies includes some extra content that you bought with your book but didn’t actually get inside the book. Okay, I know that sounds bad at first blush. But don’t worry. This extra, premium stuff is available online:

      ✔ Online articles covering additional topics at

      www.dummies.com/extras/quickbooks2015aio

      Here, you’ll find easy-to-digest articles that cover a variety of topics related to more smoothly implementing QuickBooks in your small business. Topics covered range from researching business decisions to good accounting controls and clever budgeting tricks.

      ✔ The Cheat Sheet for this book is at

      www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/quickbooks2015aio

      ✔ Updates to this book, if we have any, are at

      www.dummies.com/extras/quickbooks2015aio

       Where to Go from Here

      This reference combines eight short books, including a minibook about accounting, one about setting up the QuickBooks system, one for bookkeepers using QuickBooks, one for accountants and managers using QuickBooks, a minibook about small-business financial management, a minibook about business planning, a minibook about taking care of a QuickBooks accounting system, and a minibook of appendixes of further useful information.

      I’m not going to go into more detail here about what’s available in the book. If you have a specific question about what’s covered or where some topic is covered, refer to the Table of Contents in the front of this reference. Also remember that the book provides an Index to help you find just the page or pages that have the information you need.

      While I’m on the subject of what’s in this book and how to find information, let me make four tangential points:

      ✔ You’ll never read this book from cover to cover unless you’re someone who has an obsessive-compulsive personality (like me) and many hours to devote to reading. But that’s okay. This reference isn’t meant to be read from cover to cover like some Stieg Larsson page-turner. Instead, chapters within the eight minibooks are organized into largely self-contained descriptions of how you do the things that you need to do. You just read the paragraph, page, or chapter that provides the information you want.

      ✔ I haven’t discussed in any detail how to use the QuickBooks Premier and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions features for business planning. The wizard-based approach that QuickBooks Premier and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions provide for business planning is not, in my humble opinion, the right way to do this. Instead, I discuss in detail alternative, superior approaches to business planning and budgeting (using spreadsheets) in Book VI. (Just so you know: The approach I describe and recommend here is the same one that any business school teaches its students.)

      ✔ At a few points in the book, you’ll find me saying things like “Well, I really don’t think you should use this part of the product.” I just want to explain here, up front, where I’m coming from on this. First, know that I think QuickBooks is an outstanding product. But not every feature and every command is good. I’ve already mentioned that the new business planning tools aren’t ones that I can recommend. And payroll, very frankly, is another pain-in-the-butt feature that most businesses should avoid. (I do briefly discuss payroll in Book III, Chapter 5.) So if I think that a particular feature is one that you shouldn’t use, I don’t take up page space (or much page space) describing the feature. I’d rather use that page space to describe other stuff that I believe is going to be valuable to you and other readers.

      ✔ I should also mention one final thing: Accounting software programs require you to do a certain amount of preparation before you can use them to get real work done. If you haven’t started to use QuickBooks yet, I recommend that you skim Book I and then read Book II to find out what you need to do first.

Book I

      An Accounting Primer

      

For more great content online, go to www.dummies.com/extras/quickbooks2015aio.

Chapter 1

      Principles of Accounting

       In This Chapter

      ▶ Figuring out the purpose of accounting

      ▶ Taking a look at the common financial statements

      ▶ Understanding the philosophy of accounting

      ▶ Discovering income tax accounting and reporting

      Any discussion of how to use QuickBooks to better manage your business begins with a discussion of the basics of accounting. For this reason, in this chapter and the next two, I attempt to provide the same information that you would receive in an introductory college accounting course. Of course, I tailor the entire discussion to QuickBooks and the small-business environment. What you’ll read about here and in the next chapters of this book pretty much describes how accounting works in a small-business setting using QuickBooks.

      If you’ve had some experience with accounting, if you know how to read an income statement and balance sheet, or if you know how to construct a journal entry, you don’t need to read this chapter or the next. However, if you’re new to accounting and business bookkeeping, take the time to read this chapter carefully. I start the chapter by giving a high-level overview of the purpose of accounting. Then I review the common financial statements that any accounting system worth its salt produces. I also discuss some of the important principles of accounting and the philosophy of accounting. Finally, I talk a little bit about income tax law and tax accounting.

       The Purpose of Accounting

      In the movie Creator, Peter O’Toole plays an eccentric professor. At one point, O’Toole’s character attempts to talk a young student into working as an unpaid research assistant. When the student protests,

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