Here are some tips for using QuickBooks’ Income Tracker
QuickBooks’ provides numerous ways to learn about your company’s health. Income Tracker is one of the most effective.
You can get an enormous amount of useful information from QuickBooks’ reports – especially if you customize them to isolate the precise data you want. Reports included with the software range from the very simple, like Open Invoices, to output that’s exceptionally complex, like Trial Balance and Profit & Loss.
Warning: Standard financial reports like Trial Balance are easy to run in QuickBooks, but very difficult to understand and analyze. You should, though, be aware of what they’re telling you at least once a quarter – even once a month in some cases. We can help with this.
Sometimes, especially first thing in the morning as you’re planning your day, you just want to cut to the chase and get a quick overview of your company’s finances. That’s where
QuickBooks’ Income Tracker comes in. It not only provides that overview, but it also contains links to related screens where you can do the work that’s needed there.
A simple Layout
Click the Income Tracker link in the toolbar to open the tool’s main screen. If you’ve been using QuickBooks for a while, you’ll see a framework like this with your own company’s data already filled in.
QuickBooks Income Tracker displays both summaries of income types and the specific transactions that contribute to those totals.
Look first at the top of the screen. You’ll see six horizontal bars, each of which represents groups of transactions that either require immediate attention or will at some point in the future. Besides identifying the type of transaction, each block displays the number of transactions involved and their total dollar amount. They are:
- Estimates – estimates that have been created and shared with customers, but haven’t yet turned into sales
- Sales Orders – orders that have been entered but have been neither fulfilled nor converted to invoices
- Time & Expenses – hours that have been recorded for customers but not yet invoiced
- Open Invoices – invoices that have been created and sent to customers, but no payments have been received
- Overdue – open invoices that have passed their due dates
- Paid Last 30 Days – payments that have been received within the last 30 days