5.3 Close the Books
- 15 steps
Start in the Sample company.
1
To complete this exercise, you must be in the Sample company. From your QBOA account, click on the Gear icon on the top right corner of the screen, then select Sample company.
Note that you will be logged out of your current account. If you are sure, click "Continue" to confirm.
Now let's get started with the exercise.
2
Click "Accountant Tools", then select "Close books".
3
Click the "pencil icon" or anywhere in the Accounting section of the page to make the settings editable.
4
Next to Close the books, click the "toggle" so it turns green.
When the Closing date field appears, type a lowercase "t" for today's date.
*In a real life scenario, because you are closing the books, you would likely use the last day of the month, but for the purposes of the exercise, use today's date.*
5
Click the dropdown, then select "Allow changes after viewing a warning and entering password".
6
When the Password field appears, enter a password you will remember (there are no password requirements; you can use anything you'd like). In the Confirm Password field, type the same password again.
Then, click "Save".
7
Click "Done".
Now that the closing date has been set, let's show Craig what it would look like if he (or anyone else) tried to change a transaction in the closed period.
8
From the left navigation bar, hover over Expenses, then select "Vendors".
9
Click "Bob's Burger Joint".
Last month, Craig took his crew out to lunch and charged it to his credit card. Let's try and edit that transaction.
10
Click "Credit Card Expense" for $18.97.
You could change anything on this transaction and get the same result, but for this example, let's change the memo.
11
In the Memo field, change the crew number to "103", then click "Save and close".
Because this transaction was before the closing date you set in Step 4, you are prompted to enter a password. You would not receive this prompt on any transactions dated after that date.
12
In the Password field, type the password you created in Step 6, then click "Yes".
In a real life scenario, you could choose to select a warning without a password. It would look like the following. Note that **there is no way to prevent changes from being made AT ALL**\--the only options are to have the warning with or without a password.
