The Best QuickBooks View for a Manager

From a single “dashboard”, managers can see a list of pending tasks and reminders, customers who owe money; vendors to pay, selected account balances, and a monthly comparison of income and expenses. You can also receive payments and pay bills directly from the dashboard. It’s called the “Company Snapshot” and here’s how it works.

Let’s start with the big picture and, then, examine each section to see how powerful this tool is.



As you can see, we get a lot of information that is important to know when we start our day. We can quickly identify and prioritize issues to be addressed during the day.

The “Reminders” Pane



This section is a great asset with which to manage cash flow and prevent “fires” before they start.

• Your own “To Do” notes with a due date but not time

• Money to deposit so you know if a trip to the bank is in order

• Bills to pay based on the bill due date, which can be important to take discounts

• Overdue invoices, which includes the due date so you can see at a glance how overdue.

• Checks to print, which is an important element of cash control. Your liabilities are recorded as paid, yet the checks have not been mailed. How long have the checks been waiting to print?

• Inventory to Reorder prevents you from missing sales opportunities because you are out of stock.

• Assemblies to Build prevents you from missing sales opportunities because you are out of stock.

Note: To edit or create your own personal reminder notes, select “Company/To Do List” from the QuickBooks menu.



You can select “Set Preferences” to designate what issues you wanted to be reminded about and when.



Customers Who Owe You Money



One of the great features of this pane is your ability record customer payments. Just select a customer, click on “Receive Payments”



The payment window appears with the customer information prefilled, ready for you to enter check information and apply payments.

Vendors to Pay



You can not only view bill that are due, or overdue, you can select “Pay Bills” to select bills to pay.

Account Balances

You can select the accounts that are important for you to monitor closely such as cash, undeposited funds, and payroll liabilities. Just select “Select Accounts” and check the accounts you want to see in this pane.



Robert Guild is certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor in Austin, TX who conducts CPE courses for CPAs and individual training and group classes to QuickBooks users. His company at www.QBCoach.biz, maintains a sixteen-station QuickBooks lab, providing hands-on training. You can contact him directly at rguild@QBCoach.biz or follow him on twitter at QBPro