TECH TOPIC:
Using Notes
in QuickBooks

Have you ever wanted to keep notes about your customers, vendors, employees or a job you are working on but afraid that if you kept them in a separate place you would lose them?

QuickBooks offers a handy little notepad feature that you can use to record any pertinent information. Use these to record phone conversations, meeting notes, reasons for journal entries or reminders about the job. You can easily create To Do list items from these notes and have QuickBooks remind you when they are due. You can also print your notes for future reference. Best of all, every time you back up your Quickbooks file, you are saving this information along with your data.

Let's get started

There are a couple ways to access the notes feature. We'll discuss the easiest way for existing list entries first since that is how you'll probably access them the most.

For Customers, first you have to display your Customers to create or retrieve your notes. The easiest method to access your existing customers is to display the Customer List. Use the Lists|Customer:Job List menu item or Ctrl+J shortcut keys.

Notice the Notes column. Some entries have a little icon of a notepad . Of course, this means there is a note attached to that Customer/Job. If there is more than one job associated with the customer, you can have a separate set of notes for each job.

This is where QuickBooks 2002 digresses from previous versions. In QuickBooks 2002, the Vendor and Employee lists also have a Notes column to the far right. In previous versions, the only way to access your notes is through the Edit Vendor and Edit Employee functions. The functionality of the notes are the same. Accessing them is the only difference.

Accessing Your Notes

To access your notes, just double-click on the icon.

Here is where you type your notes. If you want to insert today's date, just click on the Date Stamp button to the right. The date will be inserted and you can begin typing.

In versions prior to 2002, you'll notice that there are no scrollbars in the notes window. If your notes are longer than the window, simply use your up and down arrow keys or the Page Up and Page Down keys to scroll to your note. In QuickBooks 2002, scrollbars are finally added.

Creating To Do Reminders From Your Notes

Now suppose you need to make an action item from your notes. You can easily create what QuickBooks calls a To Do List item. If you want to include a specific note or notes, follow these steps:

1. Highlight the note(s) you want to include in your To Do action item as shown above in Figure 2.
2. Press Ctrl+C to copy that specific note to the clipboard.
3. Click the New To Do... button to open a new To Do item.
4. Press Ctrl-V to paste the note into your To Do window. Add any additional text for the To Do.
5. Set the date you want the reminder to appear.
6. Click OK.

If you want to create a new, blank To Do to enter your own reminder, just click the New To Do... button.

You can see these To Do items under the Lists menu in QuickBooks 99. In QuickBooks 2000 and later, you will find the To Do items under the Company menu.

Printing Your Notes

Printing your notes is easy. When you are in the edit Notes window, simply press the Print... button and all your notes will be printed.

Other Methods

As I said at the beginning, there is more than one way to access your notes. When you are creating a new Customer or Job, or while editing them, you'll notice a Notes button in the dialog box. Click that button and you'll be at the same point you were above.

This is also where you can access the notepad for Vendors and Employees in versions prior to 2002. In the create or edit dialogs, you will find a Notes button for these lists also.

As you can see, QuickBooks' Notes feature provides you another way to keep your business organized.

29 December 2001

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