Your QuickBooks data is more portable than you may realize.
Are there are times when you’re not at home or work when it would be convenient to have access to your accounting data in QuickBooks Online? Look no further, the QuickBooks Online Mobile App gives you access to your accounting needs on the fly.
Available for both Android and iOS, the QuickBooks Online mobile app can do many of the things that you’re used to doing on your desktop or laptop. And of course, everything you do on the app is synchronized with your browser-based version, and vice versa. Both versions work similarly and make your mobile tasks easy to accomplish.
Let’s take a look at what you can do with the App.
Figure 1: The QuickBooks Online mobile app doesn’t look much like the browser-based version, but it can do many of the same tasks.
Navigation Tools
Once you’ve downloaded the QuickBooks Online mobile app and entered your login credentials from the browser-based version, you’ll see a screen full of shortcuts to the app’s main functions. This is an abbreviated list of what you can do, but it takes you to the screens you’ll want to see most often. Click the All tab, and a full set of links for the app opens that includes functions missing from the shortcuts page, like Reports and Products & services.
Click on the home button in the lower left, and the app opens two more screens. One is a Dashboard that’s like the one you see in your browser. It displays charts for profit and loss, invoices, and expenses, as well as a list of your account balances. Click the Activity tab to see a list of the most recent activity. Like most everything on the app, the list is interactive. When you click on an activity, the transaction opens.
There are two more navigation links at the bottom of the screen. When you want to add a transaction, you can click on the + (plus) sign to open your options there. Click the three horizontal lines to open the Shortcuts page. The gear icon in the upper left takes you to the Settings screen, where you’ll find links to Company Information, Tax Rates, Overdue Invoice Alerts, etc.
Records and Transactions
Although customer and vendor records are not as detailed as they are on the browser-based site, they can still help you with mobile activities. You can toggle between basic contact details and recent activity. There are icons that allow you to quickly call, text, or email a contact. You can see your products names, descriptions, sale prices, tax status, and account and category assignments. You can edit records and create new ones.
Figure 2: You can view the data from your browser-based version of QuickBooks Online on the mobile app.
You can also add and edit transactions on the mobile app, including invoices, estimates, sales receipts, expenses, and invoice payments. These are very thorough and include the fields you need to bill customers and record purchases. You can even request signatures on estimates, add notes or attachments to invoices, and view a status bar for invoice progress.
Other Features
There are other tasks you can complete on the QuickBooks Online mobile app. You can snap photos of receipts with your phone. The app will then upload them to the main site and move some of their data on to the correct fields on forms. You can work with bank deposits, projects, and categories. And you can record mileage for business trips. If you turn on Auto-tracking, the app will record your mileage as you drive.
There’s one more feature on the app that’s fairly new to QuickBooks Online – so new that it may not have been rolled out to you yet: Cash Flow. This is divided into two sections on the main site, Overview and Planner. The second deals with cash flow projections, which can be a complex concept to understand. We recommend you let us walk you through this tool so you know when it may be wise to take actions that will prevent an impending cash crunch.
Contact us if we can help you better understand the QuickBooks Online Mobile App and any of its features.