Quick Trial Balance Overview

Three Trial Balances Per File

QTB allows you to maintain up to three trial balances for each client and they are all maintained in one file. So if you need book and tax trial balances, you can enter adjustments or cash transactions and elect to post them to one or both trial balances.

Importing

QTB can import trial balance from a variety of formats including, comma separated values (CSV), Excel spreadsheet, or fixed length ASCII files (TXT). If you can export the trial balance to any of these formats, you will be able to import it into QTB.

Grouping

Group codes allow you to group similar accounts together for tax or financial reporting. Each account number can have 10 different group codes assigned to it.

Cash Transactions

For those clients that do not maintain their own general ledger, QTB allows you to enter cash transactions and generate a general ledger prior to making adjustments.

Reports

A variety of reports are provided to accommodate almost any requirements.  These include:

• Chart of Accounts

• Cash Journals

• General Ledger

• Working Trial Balance

• Journal Entries

• Adjusted Trial Balance

• Grouped Trial Balance

• Trial Balance Comparison Report

• Account Comparison

• Expense Account Analysis

Data History

QTB allows 10 years of trial balance history.  Each year is saved before the next year’s activity is started.  If you wish, you can enter prior year balances using our Quick Entry option so it can be used when printing comparison reports that are included in the program.

Limitations

• Number of client files – no limit

• Number of accounts within a data file – no limit

• Account number maximum length – 20 characters (user-defined format)

• Number of adjustments – no limit

Support

QTB includes phone and email support.  Updates are provided via download until the next major release.   Major releases are scheduled annually to add new features and options.  A tutorial is provided to get you up and running quickly.

If you have specific questions about a feature or need additional information, we encourage you to call us at 402.861.8800 or email us at info@proware-cpa.com.

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To create a new company data file in Quick trial Balance (or QTB for short), click the “Create New Client” button on the toolbar at the Main Menu or simply select the “Clients” option from the File Menu and then select “New”. The first screen that appears in the New Client Wizard asks you for a name for your new file. You can also change the folder where this file will be located by clicking on the ellipsis next to the “Create File in Folder”, otherwise it will be created in your default directory location. We are creating a company called XYZ, so we enter “XYZ” in the file name field and leave the default folder as it is shown. Once you have the correct location and name of the file click “Next” to proceed.

On this screen, we will enter the pertinent company information. First, we enter the name, XYZ Company, Inc., its year-end which is 12/31/2007, and the Federal ID. Since this is a sample company, we will skip the Federal ID. Next, we select the type of entity (in this case, we select “C” for C-Corporation). The account length represents the total length of the company’s account numbering system. The account numbering system for this company begins with 4 numbers, a dash, and then 3 more numbers, resulting in the selection of 8 as the length of the account numbers and then a format of 9999-999. Finally, we can enter any pertinent notes for this entity. Once we have finished, we click “Next” to proceed.

This screen displays the information for the company’s books. In QTB, you can have up to 3 different sets of books for your clients. For this sample company, we want just 2 sets of books, one for income tax and one for financial statements. The number of books that appears automatically is based upon QTB’s configuration settings. If you need to change these settings, you can run the Configuration Wizard from the File Menu at a later time. Regardless of the way your QTB configuration settings are for new clients, you can always change them on this screen when creating a client. We change the number of books to 2, if necessary and identify the books as “Income Tax” and “Financial Statements”. Once we have made sure that this is correct, we click “Finish” to create our new company file.

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This video will take you through the various settings that can be changed using the Configuration Wizard in Quick Trial Balance, or QTB for short. To access the Configuration Wizard, select it from the File Menu.

On the first screen of the wizard, we are shown an overview of settings that can be made through the Configuration Wizard. There are 3 types of settings that can be changed. The first are update settings that affect the way QTB checks for and applies updates. To change your update settings, click the updates link on the right side of the screen. The first option is QTB’s default setting which is to download and install the update directly from the internet. Normally there is no reason to change this setting,; however, if you are a network administrator and want to download the update and save it to a network drive so that other users can install the update without having to download it themselves, you will select the second option. In addition, you will need to specify a location on your network drive for QTB to save the update. This will make it available to any user choosing the third option. They will also need to specify the same location so that QTB will look in that location for the update file. Under normal circumstances there is no need to select any option but the first.

To change QTB’s default program and backup settings, select that option from the right-hand side of the screen. Here you can change your default data folder or have QTB locate your data files for you. You can also change whether you want QTB to automatically select the last file you worked on, adjust your screen size, change the century rollover, use Windows XP themes, or whether to display your account listing first when selecting the chart of accounts. Additionally you can change whether you want QTB to automatically archive your files and where you want them saved during the auto-archiving process. In addition, you can also change the default backup folder for QTB.

The next screen allows you to change settings for reports and email. If you would like QTB to return you to the report specification screen after printing or emailing, you can select the first option. Normally, the program returns to the main menu after printing and if you need to change this behavior, you can select the first option. You can also have QTB prompt you for your printer every time a report is printed. This can be useful if you print to several different printers during the day which may or may not be your Windows default printer. QTB’s “Email Configuration” allows you to input 2 different email addresses from which to send correspondence from QTB. To enter SMTP information, click the ellipses to the right of the SMTP address and enter the appropriate information here. It is not necessary to enter your SMTP address and you can have your network administrator enter it a later time if you do not know the specifics of your email address at this time. Note, this information is not required for QTB and can be entered at any time.

The last 2 screens are intended for default settings that will be used when you create a new client in QTB. You can change the default number of books to use as well as the name and type of book. You can also change the screen prompts for any group codes to be used. Finally, you can change the screen prompts for the prior year. By default, prior year prompts will read as “Prior Year 1”, “Prior Year 2”, etc. You can change these to read “12/31/2006”, “12/31/2005”, etc. or whatever is meaningful when displaying prior year information for your client.

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This video will take you through the steps necessary to enter beginning balances in Quick Trial Balance (or QTB, for short).

To start, we are first going to add a few beginning balances to our account for our 12/31/2007 year-end. We select “Enter Beginning/Prior Year Balances” under the “Chart of Accounts” option found under the File Menu. The book that we will be entering beginning balances for is the “TX- INCOME TAXES” book and the year-end is the 12/31/2007 year-end. With those options selected from the drop-down lists, we see our first account in the file appear, which is, 101 – Cash – Checking. This account has a debit balance, so we type the amount, $85,698.33 in the debit field and then hit the enter key to move to the next account in the file. If this amount were a credit amount, we would first hit enter which automatically moves our cursor to the credit field where an amount could be entered if this account had a credit balance. This functionality enables us to enter only positive numbers because there is no need to input a negative number to indicate whether the amount is a debit or credit, instead we just enter the amount in the appropriate field for QTB to make this determination.

The next account that appears is 102 – Cash – Money market and we enter a debit amount of $105,358.11. Once done, we hit enter again to move to the next account which is, 111 – Accounts Receivable. Enter the amount of $186,512.36 and hit enter to move to the next account. At this point, we are through entering the beginning balances we need to, so we click “Done” to return to QTB’s main menu.

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This video will take you through the steps necessary to enter work paper references in Quick Trial Balance (or QTB, for short.)

To start, we are first going to add a few work paper references to our accounts for our 12/31/2007 year-end. We select “Enter Workpaper References” under the “Chart of Accounts” option found under the File Menu. The book that we will be entering workpaper references for is the “TX- INCOME TAXES” book, so we select the “TX – INCOME TAXES” book from the drop-down list. We will see our first account in the file appear, which is, 101 – Cash – Checking. This account already has a workpaper reference number, so we click “Next” until we see the Accounts Receivable account (account #111). Our working paper reference for accounts receivable is “210”, so we type this in the workpaper reference field and hit the enter key or click “Next” to advance to the next account. The next account is 112 – Due from Employees, which has a reference number of 211, so we type that numeric code in the workpaper reference field and click “Done” when finished.

To verify our work and to make sure that the correct working paper reference numbers are assigned to the correct accounts, we can print a Lead Schedule which shows this information. To do this, we go to the Reports Menu and select the Lead Schedules report from the drop-down list. Since we entered the working paper references for our tax book, we make sure that this book is selected and click the “Preview” button to view the report on the screen. On the first page of the report we can verify that the reference numbers we entered earlier appear for those accounts which we assigned them to. Next, click the Exit icon and then cancel to return to QTB’s main menu.

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This video will take you through the steps necessary to add a new account to your chart of accounts or edit an existing account in Quick Trial Balance (or QTB, for short).

To start, we are first going to edit an account in an existing file that we have previously set up in QTB. We first select the ABC Custom Wheels, Inc. sample data file. After selecting the company file, we select “Add/Edit” under the “Chart of Accounts” option in the File Menu. The Account Listing screen immediately appears and displays a listing of all of the accounts in our chart of accounts. For this example, we want to edit the very first account in our chart of accounts. Which is the “Cash – Savings” account number 101. This account is really a checking account, so we want the account description to reflect this. Making sure that “Account #101” is highlighted; we click the select button to display the detail for this account.

Next, we click “Edit” and then change the account from “Cash – Savings” to “Cash – Checking”. Once finished, we click “Save” to save this change. We can see on this screen we can change other aspects of the account including, the account number and name, the groups it is assigned to, and any notes and work paper references associated with this account. After making our change and saving it, we click “Cancel” to return to QTB’s main menu.

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This video will take you through the steps necessary to import another company’s chart of accounts that have been previously set up for another company in Quick Trial Balance (or QTB, for short).

To import another company’s chart of accounts in QTB, first select the new company file for which you would like to import a chart of accounts. Next, go to the File Menu and select “Chart of Accounts” and “Import” to bring up the Import Wizard in QTB. On the first screen of the wizard, we are shown several options for importing a chart of accounts. Since we are importing a chart of accounts from QTB, we leave the first option selected and click “Next”. On this screen we see the instructions listed for the import we are preparing to do. In addition to importing a chart of accounts, we could also import groups and sub-groups that have been previously setup as well as beginning balances. Since we do not want that information from our import file, we will only select the chart of accounts to import and after reading the instructions, we click “Next” to proceed.

The next screen requires us to select the file we would like to import, so we use the ellipses button to navigate to the folder where import file resides and select it using the dialog box that appears. If the import was from another program which QTB supports, we would also be able to click the “Define Layout” button to alter the layout of the import file prior to importing. In addition, we can select the book or books that we would like to import the chart of accounts for. In addition, if we were importing from another program we could elect to import only new accounts that have balances or we could delete accounts based on balances in prior years. Once we have selected the file to import and the books for which we are importing, we click “Finish” to proceed and then click “Yes” to proceed with the import process.

The next screen that occurs allows us to remove any accounts and their accompanying transactions before importing. If we omit this option, we will be prompted for any duplicate accounts that already exist in our file prior to the import. In this case, we leave the box checked to remove all accounts before importing. The second option, if checked, will import groups and sub-groups for the company’s chart of accounts. If the grouping will be the same as the other company, we could click this box as well to import groups and sub-groups. Once we have made the selections, we click “OK” to proceed.

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This video will take you through the steps necessary to add a new group and to edit existing groups for various accounts previously entered from your client’s chart of accounts in Quick Trial Balance (or QTB, for short).

To start, we will first select the ABC Custom Wheels, Inc. sample data file if it is not already selected. After selecting the company file, we select “Add/Edit” under the “Groups” option in the File Menu. The Groups Listing screen immediately appears and displays a listing of all of the groups found in our chart of accounts. For this example, we are adding a group to our financial book; however, we could add a group to our tax book as well if needed, simply by changing the book in our drop down list. With the “Financial” book selected, we click “Add” and then enter “PREPAID EXPENSES” as the name of the group we want to add to our financial book. Once finished, we click “Save” to save the new group. At this point we have no sub-groups set up for our file, so we click the “Add” button in the sub-groups section and type “INSURANCE” as the sub-group we will create for the “PREPAID EXPENSES” group. Next, we click “Save” to save the sub-group code and then “Cancel” to return to the main menu.

In addition to creating a new group, we will also create an account that will be assigned to the new group and sub-group codes created earlier. Under the File Menu, we select “Add/Edit” under the “Chart of Accounts” option in order to add a new account to our file. The account we would like to add is account #115 for “PREPAID INSURANCE EXPENSE”. Once we have typed this information, we will select the appropriate account type for this account. Using the drop down list next to the account type, we scroll through the list until we find “CURRENT ASSETS” and select this as the account type for this account. Next, under the “GROUP” field, for our “FINANCIAL” book, we drop the list of groups down and select “PREPAID EXPENSES” from the list that appears. We also want to assign a sub-group for this account, so we use the tab key to move over to the sub-group field and then drop the list of sub-groups down and select the “INSURANCE” sub-group for this account. For our TAX book, we drop the list of groups down and select the group “L06 – OTHER CUR ASSETS” as the appropriate group for this account. There is no sub-group for our TAX group code, so we leave the sub-group field blank for the TAX book. Once we have the correct groups and sub-groups assigned for this account, we click the “Save” button to save this account and its associated groups and then click “Cancel” to return to QTB’s main menu.

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This video will take you through the steps necessary to enter cash receipts and cash disbursements in Quick Trial Balance (or QTB, for short).

Before entering any cash receipts and disbursements, we must first associate our cash account with those journals. To do this, we select the “Journals” option from the File Menu. QTB shows us a list of the journals and if we click on the “Details” tab, we will see which accounts are associated with our cash receipts and cash disbursements journals. To associate our cash account with these two journals, we select the Cash Receipts journal and click the Edit button. Next, we click th3e drop-down list of accounts and choose Account #101 – Cash – Checking as the account to associate with cash receipts. Once selected, we click “Save” to save the association to the file. We do the same for cash disbursements by selecting “Cash Disbursements” in our list and clicking “Edit”. We drop the list of accounts down and select Account #101 – Cash – Checking. Next, click “Save” to save the link, and then “Cancel” to return to QTB’s main menu.

Next, we go to the Transactions menu and select “Cash Receipts”, and then click “Add” to add a new transaction to our file. The Reference number for our transaction is 115, our payer is “Custom Autos” and the amount of the cash receipt is $1,100.00, so we enter this information in the appropriate fields. We can also enter any memo notes, such as date received, invoice number, etc. and we can also select the books for which our transaction will be posted. In this case, we are posting this transaction to both our income tax and financial books, so we leave both books selected. The account which will be credited for this transaction is Account number 111 - Accounts Receivable, so we select that account from the drop-down list. We enter the $1,100.00 as a debit to show cash received and hit the enter key. Now we see the transaction listed below as a debit to cash and a credit to accounts receivable. If this information is correct we click “Save” to save the transaction. Note the other buttons shown on the screen. We could delete this transaction if found it was entered in error, print the transaction, edit the transaction to add a memo or change amounts, or use the “Prior” and “Next” buttons to navigate through all of the cash receipts entered in our file. Once finished, we click “Cancel” to return to the main menu.

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This video will take you through the steps necessary to make journal entries in Quick Trial Balance (or QTB, for short).

To post a journal entry in QTB, we go to the Transactions menu and select “Journal Entries”. On the first screen displayed, we see a grid which shows all of the journal entries we have made for this client for the year. We can view the details of each transaction by highlighting a specific transaction and then clicking on the “Details” tab. To add a new journal entry, we click the “Add” button. Clicking the “Add” button takes us to the details screen where we will enter the data for our journal entry.

The reference number of our journal entry will be “JE04”, so we enter that in the “Reference Number” field. The description of this entry is “Post accrued payroll taxes” and we enter that information in the “Description” field. Next, we make sure that this entry will be posted to all of our books. We could either check each individual box or simply click the “All” button which will post the entry to all of the books setup for this client. We select the date or accept the default date which is today. The first account that we will post to is the “Withholding Taxes Payable” account and we are going to debit it for $1,100.00. To do this, we drop the list of our accounts down and select Account number 606 – Payroll Taxes, enter 1,100.00 in the debit field, and hit the enter key when finished.

We can now see the debit results of our entry and we will need to post the credit side with the following information. The account to be credited will be Account number 202 – Withholding Taxes Payable, so we select that account from the drop-down list. We will tab over to the credit field and enter $1,100.00 as the credit amount for this posting and then hit enter when finished. Now we will see the results of our balancing entry in the grid. QTB also shows the balance of the entry below to indicate whether we are in balance or not. This can be very useful if you have multiple accounts to post for either the debit or the credit side of the entry. We can see that this journal entry is balanced, but if we needed to change either the amount of the debit or the credit entry or if we posted the amount to the wrong account, we can change the information for either entry by clicking the “Edit” button to the right of our entries. If everything is correct, we click the “Save” button to save this journal entry.

We should now be able to click the List View tab to see this and any previous journal entries added to our file. Should we need to edit this entry in the future, we highlight the entry and click the “Edit” button. Once again we are shown the details for our transaction where we can change any information previously entered. In addition, we could delete the entire transaction by highlighting it on the List View tab and clicking the “Delete” button. QTB will ask you to confirm the deletion and then will erase it from the file.

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Summary

The number of features and flexibility of Quick Trial Balance may take some time to discover. Perhaps one of our best features is that you do not need to be familiar with any other trial balance program to take advantage of QTB's power and convenience. The basic features may be all you ever need, but you can take comfort in knowing that when the need arises, chances are you’ll find a feature that will make short work of the task.

We encourage you to provide us with your feedback. There is an option in the Help menu that will allow you to fax or email your comments to our support staff. Many of the new features we add are a direct result of feedback from our users.

Finally, since support is included with the cost of your software (and upgrades), help is never more than an email or phone call away. We look forward to meeting your continuing needs.

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If you wish to ask specific questions or request additional information, e-mail us at info@proware-cpa.com.