If you are interested in using QuickBooks and Turbo Tax, there are some important steps you need to do before filing. Take care of these steps to ensure that your income tax returns are as accurate as possible.

1. Reconcile Accounts. All Balance Sheet accounts in the Chart of Accounts (COA) that can be reconciled should be. Here is a list of some of them:

* Checking Accounts
* Savings Accounts
* Credit Card Accounts
* Lines of Credit
* Other Loan Accounts, such as Auto Loans

In order to reconcile them, you will need all statements going back to the last time they were reconciled, or the inception of the account.

2. Examine Customer and Vendor Balances. Run aging reports for each of these and see if there are any unapplied credits or payments. Apply them if needed. Follow this path for customers:

Reports > Customers & Receivables > A/R Aging Detail

For Vendors:

Reports > Vendors & Payables > A/P Aging Detail

3. Tax-Line Mapping. QuickBooks and Turbo Tax are a natural combination. This step is what enables you to use the two programs together. Here’s how:

* From the Company menu, select Company Information. Select the appropriate Fiscal Year, Tax Year, and Income Tax Form Used.
* Go to the COA and enable it so you can view the tax-line mapping for each account. At the bottom of the screen, click the button that says Account. Scroll up and select Customize Columns. There are two sides to this window. You should see Tax Line on the left. Highlight it and click Add. It should now change to the right side. Click Ok.
* Back at the COA, you can see which accounts have been assigned, and which accounts have not. To assign them, highlight each account, right click, and select Edit Account. Locate the drop-down box labeled Tax-Line Mapping. Choose the correct tax line for this account.

4. Suspense Account Clean-Up. Sometimes QB users use an account called, “Suspense.” Using an account like this helps people keep their register balances accurate without needing to assign what the transaction was for. This is fine, as long as the transactions get assigned as some point. They need to be assigned before financial data can be imported to Turbo Tax.

This is because there is no corresponding tax line for “Suspense.” If transactions remain in a Suspense account, they will get assigned to a tax line during the tax line mapping process. The transactions will be incorrectly reported if this happens. Make sure it doesn’t and go through the Suspense account, assigning transactions correctly until it has a zero balance.

5. Create and Review Income Tax reports. These reports give you a good picture of your tax situation. Follow this path to run them:

* Reports > Accountant & Taxes > Income Tax Preparation
* Reports > Accountant & Taxes > Income Tax Summary
* Reports > Accountant & Taxes > Income Tax or Detail

6. 1099 Preparation. This isn’t a QuickBooks and Turbo Tax issue, but still applies since it’s for a similar time of year. Get it set up the right way:

* From the Edit menu, select Preferences.
* Select the Tax:1099 preference.
* Click the Company Preferences tab.
* Where it says, “Do you file 1099-MISC forms,” select Yes.
* In the Account column, select the account where the payments were posted for each type of 1099 category. If there is more than one, then select “Multiple Accounts,” and place a checkmark next to each.

Since most QuickBooks users will only use Box 7:Nonemployee Compensation, this is probably the only 1099 Category you need to make an entry for.

Run 1099 reports to make sure the data is correct:

Reports > Vendors > 1099 Summary

If you see a column called “Uncategorized,” this means that the vendor was marked as a 1099 vendor in the vendor setup screen, but the account his payment posted to is not selected in the Preferences instructions above. Go to the vendor bill, determine which account his payment posted to, and go back to the 1099 preferences and add that account as shown above.

Print your 1099s and give them to your vendors by January 31. Print the 1096 and mail it by February 28.

7. Close the Books. If you don’t close the books on a regular basis, close them once the tax return has been prepared. You will need Admin access to do this. Here’s how:

* From the Edit menu, select Preferences.
* Select the Accounting preference.
* Click the Company Preferences tab.
* The bottom area says Set Closing Date. Click the Set Date/Password button.
* In the Date area, select the last day of the tax year for the return you just completed. For most people this will be 12/31 of the prior year.
* Set a closing date password.

Closing the books ensures that prior data is not altered. This is important, since the tax return is based on that data. If you get audited, you want to make sure that your QuickBooks data matches the tax return. Do this by closing the books.

8. Purchase a Turbo Tax desktop version. Be sure to purchase the right version of Turbo Tax.

* Sole Proprietors and single member LLCs should buy Turbo Tax Home & Business.
* S Corps, Partnerships, multi-owner LLCs, or C Corps should buy Turbo Tax Business.
* QuickBooks cannot be imported into Turbo Tax for Mac or Turbo Tax Online.
* Older versions of QB cannot be imported.

9. Consider the potential disadvantages of doing your own taxes. It’s true that many people can do their own taxes just fine. But many others cannot. I’ve seen too many incorrect returns in my practice to say, “Everybody can do it!” Be sure you are one of the ones who really can. An honest self-assessment is important!

* Are you good with numbers? “Numbers” people are naturally better at this type of task.
* Do you mind research? Sometimes preparing a tax return requires tax research. Some people don’t mind this, but others do.
* Did you have your return professionally prepared in the last two years or so? You can use it as a guide if your tax situation has not changed.

10. Get another set of eyes. If you decide to prepare your own return, consider having a tax professional look it over before you file. The small fee may help you sleep better at night.

As people make more and more extensive use of computers, it has become important to have some way of organizing the inevitable clutter of information. A typical user would process documents, browse the Internet, play games, and download ebooks and music and videos. All this can add up pretty quickly to a lot of information and files stored on a given computer.

Of course, most operating systems already have built-in organization features that allow users to neatly and sensibly arrange their files. These features typically allow users to create directory (or folder) structures to organize their files and make them easier to access. However, this may sometimes not be enough, as not all users make use of these features.

Built-in search features are also usually not as in-depth as would be required. Because of these considerations, so called file finder software have been developed. These file finders are of varying degrees of sophistication, but all aim to make it easier for users find specific files on their computers.

Some programs are full-fledged desktop search applications, which offer many different options for looking for a specific file, or a file with some specific content, and so on. This makes it easier to track down files whose file names and locations have been forgotten.

For instance, this would be especially helpful for a writer working on a piece that requires a lot of research. With the research material saved onto the computer, a desktop search application would make it easy to extract the required information. In this way, desktop search makes saved content much more accessible.

Desktop search is useful for not only for making sense of uncategorized content, but also for easily accessing organized content. By bringing up a desktop search box, it becomes easy and natural to look for a particular file, instead of going through folders or a directory tree.

Web search services are more familiar to most users. Desktop search offers the same functionality for searching through the content already saved to the computer.

Another useful application of file finders is for finding and deleting duplicate files. These search applications can compare not only file names, but their actual content, and determine whether there are any duplicates on the computer. In most cases, these duplicate files are actually just taking up valuable space without performing any new purpose. These duplicate file finders are then usually used to free up disk space.

Duplicate files can arise due to many reasons, and often cause unnecessary clutter. These duplicate file finders can really help to reduce this clutter greatly. Many of these offer options to ensure that you only remove those duplicate files that are indeed useless, meaning that you should never delete useful files by accident.

Desktop search applications and duplicate file finders are but two of the ways that file finders can be helpful for computer users. As desktop search technology continues to grow ever better, it is almost certain that more and more uses are going to be found for file finders.

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