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QuickBooks Online just rolled out a massive layout update for 2025. So if you're a beginner or you just logged in and feel completely lost, this tutorial is for you.
Today we'll cover the five core features of QuickBooks Online, or what I call QBO, starting with how to send invoices so you get paid fast, how to pay your bills, how to categorize expenses so you save money at tax time, how to handle sales tax, and how to create financial reports.
Now I partnered with Intuit to bring you the most up-to-date, beginner-friendly walkthrough of a new layout in 12 minutes. Let's go.
Start by clicking the link in the description to reach the QuickBooks homepage. And if you're here before the end of July 2025, you'll get access to a killer 90% off deal. From here, click the "Buy Now" button in the header, or if you don't see that, click "See Plans and Pricing." Then scroll down and let's select the plan that's right for you.
If it's just you who needs access, start with Simple Start. You'll get used to QuickBooks and figure out if you need more. The main reason to choose a higher plan right now is either because you need more users, or you need one of those features that's below the Intuit Assist box. I'm going to sign up for Simple Start so you can see what's available for everyone. We won't cover payroll today, so I'll click "Continue Without Payroll." From here, sign up for your account and come meet me on the other side.
QuickBooks is going to ask you a ton of questions to get you started. Answer these questions as best as you can so you save time later. Now you might come across a screen like this. For this tutorial, I'm assuming you clicked "Skip" for now everywhere you could.
Now QuickBooks may have dropped you here on the business feed. If that's true, head over to the dashboard on the left sidebar so we all start in the same place. This new layout is quite different from the last QuickBooks version, so let me give you a quick overview.
At the top, you'll see QuickBooks is divided into several apps. These apps direct you to different parts of QuickBooks. You can access them here from the top or from any page using the "My Apps" button on the sidebar. You can also pin your favorite apps to the sidebar using the "Customize" button. Next, you'll see a set of quick actions to get started. And the rest of the page is dedicated to your business dashboard. In the top right, you can manage your account, your business's settings, and get in touch with an expert in case you get stuck.
Now to take advantage of any of this, you've got to connect your business bank account. Find your bank accounts widget on the home page, then click on the "Find Your Bank" button. Next, select your bank from the list and if you don't see it, you can also search for it. Then click "Continue" to sign into your account. After you sign in, select the checking and savings accounts you'd like to connect. Then select how far back you'd like to pull transactions from. Stick with the beginning of the year unless you have a good reason not to.
Awesome, you are halfway to getting paid, my friend. Click the "Done" button and I'll take you through the other half.
Back on the dashboard, move your mouse over to the "Create" button on the sidebar. Then click on "Invoice." You might get asked to confirm your default payment methods. Choose what works best for you and then click "Confirm and Continue."
This page starts off pretty busy, so I'm going to clean it up by clicking the "X" button on each of these side panes. First, we need to assign this invoice to a customer. To do that, I'll click the "Add Customer" drop down and then click "Add New." So a business called Sugarland likes to resell our donuts, so we're going to add their name to the company name field. Next, I'll fill in their email address so they can get this invoice and then I'll fill in their address. This will be important for sales tax calculation. There are a ton of other fields here, I encourage you to explore them, but that's all we need, so I'll click "Save."
Choosing your customer then fills in all of the billing information up top. And out of these other fields, make sure you set your payment terms and invoice due date properly. For example, net 15 terms means the invoice is due 15 days after it's issued.
Now Sugarland is reselling our glazed donuts, so we need to add that line item to the invoice. Under the "Product slash service" header, I'll click this drop down and then click "Add New" to add a product. First, we start with the name. Glazed donut doesn't. And then the item type is not a service. We don't track inventory on it, so it's a non-inventory item. If you do sell items you want to track inventory for, QuickBooks can help you track that inventory on a higher plan. The next important field is the price or the rate. We sell these for $25 a dozen, so I'll type in 25. Then make sure you set up income account correctly. This helps you track what you're making from each income stream. If you're not familiar with these categories, definitely reach out to an accountant or bookkeeper for help. Two more things on this page. If you resell products, you can use this checkbox. I purchased this from a vendor to track your costs automatically. And even though you can add a product image up here, it won't show up on the invoice. Let's now get back to our invoice by clicking "Save and Close".
Sugarland ordered five dozen, so let's update the quantity field to reflect that. This is a good time to save our invoice, which we can do with the green highlighted "Save" button down below.
In these final steps, we need to finish our payment setup. So let's click the "Let's Go" link. This requires you to verify your business. So fill out this application and then come meet me back on the invoice. By the way, in case QuickBooks opens a new invoice when you're done, here's how to get back to the original one. First, click the X in the top right. Then move your mouse over to the "My Apps" button in the sidebar. Go to "Sales and Get Paid", then "Invoices". Then scroll down until you can see your invoice and click "View and Edit" on the right side.
Okay, now you're back in business. Check out these fields if you want to add more info to the invoice like payment details or a thank you note or even a file attachment. The last thing we'll do before we send this is set up sales tax. Surprise, surprise, I can do that with the setup link next to sales tax. I'll click the giant green button to get started and here I'll confirm my business location. This refreshes the invoice and adds a tax column next to each line item. I'll check the tax box and the sales tax is calculated for me.
Now there's a lot more you can do to customize your invoice. You can find those options when you click "Manage" in the top right sidebar. In the description you can find a video specifically on these settings, but I'll just call your attention to one. It's under the scheduling menu. Then scroll all the way down until you see automatic invoice reminders and click the switch. Here QuickBooks can send out email notifications on your behalf to increase the chance that you get paid.
To send the invoice now, I'll click the review and send button. If you have your customer's permission, you can actually text your invoice to them. I'll turn the switch off for this example. Down below you'll also see the email that's sent out. You can modify the subject and the email body and see a preview of what the customer sees on the right hand side. And then when you're ready, click "Send Invoice."
Now you can get money in, but did you know that QuickBooks can help you pay your bills too? To do that, go back over to "My Apps" then to "Expenses and Bills" then "Bills." Usually you'll get bills in your inbox and the fastest way to get them into QuickBooks is to forward them to the email address you see at the top of the screen. For example, here's an invoice I got from our flower supplier. I can forward it directly to that email address and a few seconds after clicking the send button, it'll appear under the "For Review" tab on the bills page.
To pay the bill, click the review link on the right side. You'll see a preview of the invoice on the left side of the page and then details you need to fill in on the right side. First is choosing a vendor. This is just like choosing a customer. The only required field is the company name slash vendor display name. You can also fill in their bank account information down below. This is all we need right now, so I'll click "Save."
Scrolling down, you'll see the invoice details have been extracted into line items. Your job is to make sure the expense categories are correct. So Intuit guessed this was contributions to charities. This is actually cost of goods sold. And again, if you're unsure, talk to an accountant here. If everything looks good, click "Save" and "Schedule Payment."
Okay, don't hate me because bill pay is a separate subscription, but with the free plan, you at least get five free ACH transfers per month.
Now it's time to categorize your expenses. Go back to My Apps in the sidebar, then go to Accounting, then click Bank Transact. Let's make this full screen by clicking this collapse button. Categorizing your expenses can save you thousands of dollars on your taxes. That's because the category of each expense determines if it's deductible from your taxable income. This also means if you have not connected your credit card accounts yet, you should do so. Use the link account button in the top right to do that.
Let's go through a couple of transactions together, starting with this first one from Hope Mills. Click on any transaction row to open its details. On the right hand side, you'll see Intuit's AI has tried to figure out what kind of expense this is, but it recognizes it's just a guess. This is also from our flower supplier, so I'll change the account here to cost of goods sold. Again, if you're not familiar with these categories, please talk to your accountant. Next, you'll need to select the vendor that you're paying. Fortunately, we already added Hope Mills, so we can just select them here. If you want to add more details about an expense, you can use the memo line. And when you're happy with the category, you can click the post button.
But before I do that, I'm going to create a rule. This allows us to say that all transactions whose description contains Hope Mills should be assigned the cost of goods sold category. First, though, we have to name the rules, and I have a special naming convention for rules. Basically, this means for this description, put it in this category. Let's now make sure it's assigned to the right category and vendor. Everything looks good here. The category is correct, as well as the payee. Finally, pay attention to this setting. If it's turned on, these transactions won't show up in pending for you to review. You'll only see them if you go to the posted tab. Finally, you can see how many other transactions this rule will apply to when you click the test rule button. That's great. There are four total transactions like this. So let's click save to apply the rule. So we just went from 11 transactions to seven, which means all of those transactions got posted successfully.
Now, as a business owner, you should capture receipts for your expenses. And the QuickBooks mobile app makes that easy from the homepage on the app. Tap the snap receipt button to open the camera. Then take a photo of your receipt. Once it's done, tap the icon that shows up in the lower left to see your receipt, then tap use this photo. You'll see the receipt is processed in a couple of seconds. And if we head back to the web app, we'll see that QuickBooks has auto matched this receipt with this transaction based on the date and the description. They're really trying to make this process as simple as possible. Now, if you want to learn more about categorizing transactions, check out our dedicated video in the description.
When we created that invoice earlier, we collected sales tax. Now say those sales taxes are due, let's figure out how much we owe. You can get to your sales tax hub from any page by going to my apps in the left sidebar, then going to sales tax, and then clicking overview. You'll need to select an agency if you haven't already, and then select your filing frequency, then click save. You'll immediately see how much you owe for the current tax period. If you need to see it at a more detailed level, scroll all the way down to the agency that you care about and then click review sales tax on the right hand side. This breaks down your taxes to the state and city level. You can also add a manual adjustment to your tax burden by clicking the add adjustment or prepayment link. And if you need the tax amount for specific cities and states, click the view tax liability report link. This should give you all the detail you need to file your sales taxes. And final note, you do have to file through your state's website. You can't file through QuickBooks.
Finally, as a business owner, it's so important to understand your cash flow. To do that, click the reports button on the left sidebar. There are a ton of reports you can look at here. One of the most important ones though is the profit and loss report. This takes all of your posted transactions and lays them out in a profit and loss format. This way it's easy to see what's coming in and what's going out. You can also click on the total amount for any category. This way you see the specific transactions that make up that category. To get back to the profit and loss report, click the back to summary report link in the top left. This report and many others are highly customizable. You can change the report dates. You can also filter by a number of different properties by clicking on the filter icon. And if you want to compare your business's financials between this year and last year, make sure to click the compare option.
Hey, thank you so much for watching. To get all of this and more at a huge discount, check out the deal that Intuit is running with a link in the description and the pinned comment. I'm David and I'll see you in the next video.