How To Manage Users in QuickBooks Pro 2017
During this QuickBooks Pro 2017 tutorial video, we will demonstrate how to create access for users.
Video Transcript
We’re working in module 3 where we’re talking about customizing the QuickBooks environment. This is section 2, Working with Users.
One of the things that you’ll want to set up in your QuickBooks company file is the ability to work with users. What this means is that if you close the company file and you open it back up you want to be able to type in a username and password to get into the company file. And there’s a couple of reasons for that.
One would be some security issues. This is just one more level of deterrent if you can keep someone out of information they shouldn’t be privy to. Another thing is what if you have multiple people using the same QuickBooks file? If you set up the users then you can actually set preferences per user and you can also set it up so that certain users have access to certain areas of the QuickBooks file and not others. So let’s go on over into QuickBooks and I’ll show you a little bit about how the users work.
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There are no users currently set up in this company file. Here’s how you know this. If you go up and click on File on the menu you’ll notice first of all it says Close Company. If you had users set up it would actually say Close Company/Logoff. I’m going to go ahead and close company and what this is going to do is take you back here so if you wanted to open your company file you could.
And I want you to notice that it’s going to open right up to the Home screen. It’s not going to ask me to type in a username and password because there aren’t any set up right now.
Only the admin can work with users. So only the admin can create a user, delete a user, change the information. Here’s where you go to actually work with users.
I’m going to go up to Company on the menu and you’ll see an option that says Set Up Users and Passwords. And here’s your Set Up User option right here. By the way notice you can change your password here or buy an additional license. The reason you might want to buy additional licenses is if you have more than five users then you need to purchase those.
I’m going to Set Up Users and here’s the User List. Notice the administrator is already logged on. Over on the right you can add a user, edit a user, delete a user, or just view a user. Notice also you can set a closing date right down here at the bottom.
Let’s say that I’ve hired someone to come in once a week just to pay the bills. I want them to work in this section here and limit their access to other areas of QuickBooks. I’m going to add Karen as a new user. You will want to make sure you set up a password. Now often when I see companies set up usernames and passwords they’ll ask the new user what they want the password to be and that’s certainly okay, but make sure as an administrator that you know what that password is so that Karen’s not the only one that has access to it.
Remember a good password is eight to twelve characters, use any combination of special characters, numbers, capital letters, small letters. I’m going to go ahead and set up one that I can remember. Alright I’m going to click Next. Now here it says What do you want this user to have access to? All areas of QuickBooks, selected or just notice also you can give your external accountant his own username and password. Notice that he won’t have access to certain things like if you have some customer data like credit card numbers and things like that in here. He won’t have access to that. We’re going to say selected areas of QuickBooks and click Next.
Now all of these screens will have the same options but it’s going to ask about different areas of the program. This is sales and accounts receivable. We’re not going to give Karen access to this. This is purchases and accounts payable. This is what we hired Karen to do so we’re going to give her full access. Notice I could have said Selected where she could only create transactions, create and print or only create transactions and create reports, but I want her to have full access. I’m going to click Next.
Checking and credit cards. I don’t want her to have access to this. Inventory, no access. Time tracking, no access. Payroll, Sensitive accounting activities. Those are going to be things like if you have online banking setup, if you’d like to make journal entries within your QuickBooks file, those types of things, but we’re not going to give her access to this. Sensitive financial reporting, those are the reports that go with those sensitive financial transactions we just talked about. Changing or deleting transactions.
I would probably leave this where it defaults. This first one asked if you want the user to have the ability to change or delete transactions in the areas they have access to. So if she’s entered a bill twice and she realizes that I do want Karen to be able to delete one of these but I don’t want her to work with anything before the closing date if I’ve closed my books.
Now when I click Next this is just a summary of the areas I did want to give her access to or not. You can see that here. And I’ll go ahead and hit Finish. And now you’ll notice I have two users but notice the administrator is still logged on. I’m going to go ahead and close the User List and show you how this works.
Karen is going to leave and she’s going to logout of the QuickBooks file. She’s going to click on File. Notice now it says Close Company/Logoff. Karen’s going to come back to work. She’s going to double click on her company file and it’s going to pop up and say what’s the username and password. Now the last user that was logged in it’ll still have their username in there so you’ll have to delete that. Let’s see if I get this password right. Alright I’m going to click OK and it should take me into the Home screen.
One thing to know as well, your preferences are set per user. That’s why you’re seeing our icon bar on the left and that’s why you see this new feature tour here which you can just close if that comes up. And remember if you have these yellow boxes, they’re just letting you know what’s new to QuickBooks so I’ll just click on some of those just to kind of get those out of the way for now.
Now just to show you what I was saying about limiting Karen’s access to certain areas. She’s able to enter bills because that’s what I actually hired her to do. So you can see there’s the Bill window. Now I’m going to close that. But remember she does not have access to Accounts Receivable.
So I’m going to click on Create Invoices and show you what happens. See how it gives her a warning? It says You need Sales and Accounts Receivable permission to perform this action. Ask your administrator to give you permission. So that’s what happens when you limit their access to certain areas.
Now I’m going to go ahead and log back out, Close Company/Logoff. I’m not going to backup right now. We’re going to be talking about backing up in a later module. But what’s going to happen is it’s going to go back to this No Company Open window again. I’m going to double click on my company file. It should say Karen in there because she was the last user.
So see how I’m going to type right over it and for the practice exercise we didn’t have a password set up but remember in real life you would want to go in and edit that user and set one up. I’m going to click OK and I want you to notice that I’m back on the Home screen and all my preferences I had set are the way they were before. See how I’ve got my icon bar at the top? So that’s how your users are going to work.
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Let me mention one other thing. We’re going to be looking at reports a little bit later but there is a particular report I just want to point out. When I click on reports up here there’s one that says Accountant and Taxes and you will see this Audit Trail. This is very important because if you have the users set up you can run the Audit Trail.
The Audit Trail will tell you if a transaction is changed which user was logged in, what time the transaction was changed, what it used to be, what it is now. So it’s your best friend when it comes to tracking down errors or seeing who did what when you’re working in QuickBooks. So later we’ll be going through reports and I’ll mention that one again but that’s your Audit Trail.
So that’s really all I wanted to tell you about the users for now. What we’re going to do is we’re going to go ahead and go into section 3 and we’re going to talk about the most important thing in QuickBooks, the Chart of Accounts. I will see you shortly.
Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!
