QBO Navigation
This persistent menu on the left side of your screen serves as the main hub to access core areas like Sales, Expenses, and Reports.
What is the Left Navigation Bar?
Deposited by a prospective homebuyer to demonstrate good faith, this money must be held in a dedicated escrow or trust account rather than reported as immediate income.
What is Earnest Money (or Earnest Money Deposit)?
This monthly process involves matching the company's internal accounting records against the official bank statement to ensure every transaction is accurate and accounted for.
What is Bank Reconciliation?
Issued monthly by a financial institution, this primary document lists all cleared deposits, withdrawals, and ending balances used to perform a bank reconciliation.
What is a Bank Statement?
If you accidentally duplicate an expense during bank feed matching, this action under the Bank Transactions tab safely removes the feed item without deleting the original manually recorded transaction.
What is Exclude?
Clicking this prominent button near the top left brings up a single overlay menu organized into columns to create invoices, bills, and payments.
What is the + / Create?
In property management, security deposits held on behalf of tenants belong in this primary balance sheet account type until refunded or forfeited.
What is a Current Liability?
In QBO's Bank Feeds, this green action button appears next to a downloaded transaction when the system successfully recognizes an existing transaction already recorded in your books.
What is Match?
Bookkeepers use this monthly lender document to properly split a property payment into interest expense and liability reduction against principal.
What is a Mortgage Statement?
Located under Accounting in the Left Nav, this register list allows you to view every cleared, uncleared, and reconciled transaction for a specific bank or liability account.
What is the Account Register (or Chart of Accounts Register)?
Located at the top of the screen, this feature lets you quickly locate recent transactions, customer names, or specific dollar amounts.
What is the Search Bar (or Magnifying Glass)?
Real estate investors use this non-cash expense to write off the cost of a rental property's physical structure over its useful life
What is Depreciation?
Used for manual adjustments, year-end corrections, or depreciation, this accounting record requires debits and credits to be manually entered and balanced line by line.
What is a Journal Entry?
Typically prepared by a CPA, this document tracks fixed asset purchase dates, useful lives, accumulated write-offs, and annual tax-deductible depreciation expense.
What is a Depreciation Schedule?
Found in the Gear Menu under Tools, this utility lets you undo or bulk-reclassify multiple miscategorized transactions at once (available in QBO Accountant / Advanced).
What is Reclassify Transactions?
Located inside the Search bar, clicking this icon reveals a chronological list of the last 10 to 15 transactions you viewed or edited.
What is the Clock Icon (or Recent Transactions)?
In QuickBooks Online, this structural feature is commonly assigned to each property or rental unit so property managers can run individual Profit & Loss statements.
What is Class Tracking (or Classes / Location Tracking)?
Under the golden rule of double-entry accounting, for every transaction recorded, the total value of debits must always equal the total value of these.
What are Credits?
Bookkeepers review this official government filing—such as Form 1120-S or Schedule C—at year-end to align book equity balances with filed tax numbers.
What is a Tax Return?
Appearing in the Bank Feed, this status indicates that QBO believes a downloaded bank transaction matches an existing invoice or payment recorded in the system.
What is "1 Match Found" (or Matched)?
To enable class tracking to segment income and expenses, click the Gear Icon, select Account and Settings, and toggle it on under this specific tab.
What is the Advanced tab?
This statement, often provided by a title company at closing, details every financial transaction between the buyer and seller and serves as the primary source document for recording a property purchase.
What is a Closing Statement (or Settlement Statement / Closing Disclosure / HUD-1)?
Unlike the Profit & Loss statement which tracks performance over a period of time, this core financial report shows a company's assets, liabilities, and equity at a single, specific point in time.
What is the Balance Sheet?
Issued monthly by a third-party management company, this document details gross tenant rents collected, management fees deducted, and net cash remitted to the owner.
What is a Property Manager Statement (or Owner Statement)?
To lock a completed financial period so non-admin users cannot accidentally post backdated transactions into closed months, turn on this feature in Account & Settings.
What is Close the Books (or Closing Date)?