A learning place
People sometime find that
they are new to QuickBooks, but have to jump
in and use it for the records of their
business, and start to feel tense.
There is a way out: a second company
file, set up just for learning
QuickBooks. It could be set up in the
interview, but would need to be filled with
the same information.
A second company can be
set up by a simple process of copying.
It may be better to get some account
information into your company file, and then
make a copy. Before making a copy, you
need to know where the file is, and it is
easy to find out. Assuming that you have
QuickBooks 3 or later, click File|Open
company. (You may have to click
File|Close company,
first.) Do not proceed to open the company. The display will show the file name and path. The file name will be of the form
company.qbw
and the path (file name and directory) is
c:\qbooksw in most cases. Press
Escape to terminate the File|Open
command. The next step will not work if a file is open.
Use the operating system (Chapter 23 or Chapter 24) to make a copy of your company file. The suffix
.qbw
must be kept, so that QuickBooks will recognize the file. Something like
learn.qbw would do well.
Back in QuickBooks, open that company. Within it, open the bank account register. Click
Edit|Change account color.
Select a color that will not let you forget
that this is not your real company. You
may want to do this with Receivables,
also. Transactions entered here cannot be copied to the real company. On the other hand, use of this file is like driving a car with a sign on the top that says “Driving School.” It is a license to blunder. You don’t even have to worry about hitting anything.
|