Technology. You either love it, hate it, or you’re downright terrified of it. No matter which one you identify with, I completely understand (I cycle between all three a few times a week, if we’re being honest). But terrified or not, we can’t argue with the whole point of technology: making our lives easier. And QuickBooks Online is no exception.

It’s come a long way since I started working with it around ten years ago. I wasn’t a fan at first (I loved my QuickBooks Desktop and wasn’t going down without a fight). But these days I’m a huge cheerleader for QBO, because I’ve seen firsthand how much time and effort it can save while keeping your books accurate. And some of the ways it does that are through automations and just plain working smarter. Some of these run quietly in the background without you lifting a finger. Others just save you the time you didn’t realize you were wasting.

Here are five of my favorites.

1. Bank Feed Rules

My favorite playground. Once you understand how they work, you’ll start seeing ways to make them work for you. If expenses to a particular vendor always get coded the same way, set up a rule to do it for you. Rules run in Priority order, so you can rearrange the list and use rule filters to get them working exactly how you want. Then once you see a rule working correctly, set it to Auto-Add and never touch it again. 

2. Invoice Reminders

These will nudge customers to pay, so you don’t have to. You can create up to three auto-reminders with adjustable timing and custom messages for each one. It’s a simple way to keep your Accounts Receivable current without picking up the phone yourself. You’ll still need to review your Open Invoices report regularly for anyone who ignored all three. 

3. Scheduled Reports

Reports, delivered straight to your inbox. Once you build a Custom Report, schedule it to arrive on a day and time that works for you. Every Monday morning I get a report showing the prior week’s accounting activity: invoices sent, payments received, expenses paid, credit card payments, all of it. It’s helped me catch expenses I could cut and confirm that a customer payment actually went through. For me, keeping up with it weekly is much easier and allows me to react to things quicker.

4. Bookmarks

Hover over any of the pop-out menus and you’ll notice a small bookmark icon next to each option. Add your frequently-visited pages to the Bookmarks list and you can quickly hop around QBO while avoiding the menus. You can bookmark almost any page in QBO (customer records, the credit card register, custom reports, payroll taxes, you name it). If you visit a page often, bookmark it. 

5. QBO Receipts

Painlessly organize your receipts and attach them to the right transactions. Snap a photo on the mobile app, forward one from your email (I have several set up to auto-forward), or just drag and drop from your desktop. QBO reads the details, fills in the fields, and flags a potential match if one exists, so you can confirm it and move on. If there’s no match, you can enter the remaining details and create the transaction right from the receipt screen. With a feature like that built into your subscription, there’s really no excuse for any naked expenses. 

I could keep going, but five is a solid start. As business owners, we work hard enough keeping customers happy and our businesses profitable, so why not make the bookkeeping side easier? QuickBooks Online is built to help you stop dreading this part of the job, you just have to use the features you’re already paying for. If you’re not sure which of these would make the biggest difference for your business or you’d like to hear about some of my other favorite automations, that’s exactly the kind of thing we can dig into during an Ask Dena Anything session.