Working with Users in QuickBooks 2019

During this QuickBooks 2019 training tutorial video, we will demonstrate how to add, edit and delete users. We will go through different preferences or areas where we can grant access to users.

You have the ability in QuickBooks to actually set up users. And what that actually means is when you open the company files it will ask you to put in your username and your password before it will allow you in. And you want to do this for various reasons.

One of the best reasons is that you’re able to track down errors a little more easily if you know which user was logged in and what the user was actually working on when the error happened. There is a report that we’ll see a little bit later you can use called the Audit Trail which will show you those types of transactions.

You are the administrator so you are the user right now and you can actually set up, edit, delete users. Let me go in and show you a little bit about how to work with users.

Another example of why you may want to go ahead and set up users. Let’s say that you’ve hired someone to come in and pay the bills. You can actually limit their access to other areas of your data file.

Let me go ahead and logout so I can show you how you know that you do not have users currently set up and no one’s logged in.

I’m going to go ahead and click on File and you see this option that says Close Company. If you were logged in it would say Close Company/Logoff. You should always at the end of the day go ahead and log out of your company file and in the morning go ahead and log in.

And every user would do the same thing. You just double click on your company file and it’s going to go ahead and open that file for you. And notice it’s not going to ask you for username and password.

Let me go ahead and show you how to work with the users, and remember that only the admin can add, edit or delete users. That option is going to be under Company on the menu. If you come down you’ll see an option that says Setup Users & Passwords.

Then you’ll see Setup Users. This is your user list. Here you would see all the users that have been set up and if they’re logged on or not. Currently, Admin is the only one.

Now if you notice it says they’re logged on but the reason we didn’t see the logoff on the menu earlier is because we didn’t actually set up a password for the admin.

If you remember when we went through the Easy Step Interview that was one of the questions. It went ahead and set up the user but it did not set up a password.

Let’s go ahead and set up a new user and we’re going to say that this user will be coming in once a week to pay the bills. We’re going to click on Add a User, then we’ll put in the usersname and we’ll make up a password for the user.

Now, remember that a good password is always anything that is 8-12 characters. You want a combination of letters, numbers, special characters. Maybe you want a phrase.

Anything that will help you remember your password. I’m just going to use two letters for now and click Next.

The first thing it asks us is, “Do you want Carol (the new user) to have access to all areas of QuickBooks”, selected areas, or notice you can also give your external accountant their own access to QuickBooks.

If you do this they will not have access to sensitive customer data such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, anything like that. We’re going to say Selected areas of QuickBooks and say Next.

Now it’s going to walk through each area of QuickBooks and ask you the same questions. Do you want to give them no access, full or selective? The first one is sales and accounts receivable.

We’re going to say no access to that. Purchases and accounts payable we’ll give Carol full access because this is what we’ve hired Carol to do. We’ll click Next. Now I’m not going to give Carol any more access but notice the different areas that it asks about.

Checking and credit cards, inventory, time tracking, payroll. Sensitive accounting activities. Those are things like if you’re set up to do online banking journal entries in QuickBooks, transfer money back and forth between checking and savings.

Those are things that Carol will not have the ability to do. I’ll click Next. And also she won’t have the ability to look at those reports that go with those sensitive financial activities.

This one asks about changing or deleting transactions. I’d probably leave this where it defaults. The top one is saying in the areas that Carol has access to would you like her to be able to change or delete transactions?

This one is asking if you’ve actually closed the books would you like Carol to be able to change or delete transactions? And the answer would be No to that.

When I click Next this is summary of how we answered each of the questions here in this little interview. I’ll go ahead and click Finish and now you’ll see that Carol is on the list. Now Carol is still logged in, the Admin is. Let me show you how this is going to work.

I’m going to hit Close here and I’m going to go ahead and logoff again. I’m going to File on the menu, Close Company/Logoff. There it is. Carol comes to work the next day.

She’s going to double click on the company file to open it. Now you notice that it asks for a username and password. It’s always going to have the username of the last person that was logged in.

You’re just going to drag across whatever is there and put in Carol and the password there and then click OK. And you’ll see now that Carol is in QuickBooks.

You might notice that you have your icon bar on the left and didn’t we move it to the top? Some other things that are going to be options in QuickBooks may be different as well and that’s because when you set up preferences they’re per user.

Now, this is the New Feature tour. We’re going to close this and now you’re going to see that Carol is actually logged in. Now, remember that we gave Carol access to actually enter bills.

So she’s going to be able to click here and enter a bill if she wants to. But what she won’t be able to do is get into other areas of QuickBooks. Let’s say, for example, she wants to click on Create Invoices.

If you notice it pops up and tells Carol that she needs Sales and Accounts Receivable permission to perform this action. Ask the administrator to give her permission. That’s how that whole process works.

I’m going to go ahead and log back off and log back in as Admin. And that’s really all there is to that.

Remember that if a new employee comes to work you want to make sure you set up their own individual username and password. I’ll just put Admin over the username and we did not have a password for Admin so what we need to do is actually go in and Edit the Admin to add a password.

I’m going to go ahead and click OK here and now you can see that I’m back in and I’m logged in as Admin. That’s all you have to know about working with users.

What I’d like to do now is start on the most important part of QuickBooks as far as the setup and that’s going to be the Chart of Accounts. Let’s go ahead and go over to section three and we’ll look at part one, Working with the Chart of Accounts.

Cindy McGuckin

Cindy McGuckin is an IT trainer with over 20 years of experience. Cindy currently manages the IT Training Department at Trident Technical College, she's a Member of the Association of IT Professionals, Charleston, SC chapter and the Treasurer of the South Carolina Association of Continuing Higher Education.Cindy is a Microsoft Office and QuickBooks expert and her online courses have received hundreds of 5-star reviews. Her no-nonsense approach to teaching complicated topics makes her classes engaging and interesting.