Quickbooks Tips & Tricks #6 – Quickbooks Online Shortcuts

Many of you may know that historically, the keyboard shortcuts in QBO have been limited to simple things like opening new windows (CTRL + N), using ↑↓ or tab/tab+shift key to navigate around a page. Clicking the space bar should check a box for you as well.

What you may not know is that there are quite a few shortcuts that are available for those hard-core power users.

Dates

Date shortcuts (you use these when you’re in a date field):

• Today: T
• Advance by 1 day: + (plus key)
• Go back by 1 day: – (minus key)

The following refer to whatever date is showing in the date field:

• First day of the week W
• Last day of the week K
• First day of the month M
• Last day of the month H
• First day of the year Y
• Last day of the year R

You can also open the calendar icon by pressing ALT + ↓.

Calculations

You can also let QBO do math for you. When you’re entering transactions into any rate and/or amount field, you simply treat it as if it were a simple calculator, using your keyboard to add (+), subtract (-), multiply (*) or divide (/):

Drop-Down Lists

I’ve heard many long-time desktop users that begin using QBO mention that it takes too long for them to scroll down a list when choosing a client, account, item or vendor. One thing I recommend is to just start typing the name in the field:

Or you can use ALT + ↓ to open the list, then ↑ or ↓ to move through the list items. If you don’t feel like opening the entire list, you can just scroll through the items in the text box, you can use CTRL + ↑ or CTRL + ↑.

If the list has sub items, again, you can just start typing the name of the list if you know it, and then use ALT + ↓ to open the list of sub items and use ↑ or ↓ to scroll through the lists.

Registers/Journal Entries

To save any form, use ATL + S instead of clicking the save button. Chrome and Firefox may require ALT+SHIFT+S, and Mac users may need to use OPTION + CONTROL + S.

If you’re in a register, you can press ALT + E to edit. One note: I found that on my Mac, this is hit or miss. Sometimes OPTION + CONTROL + E would bring up a transaction to edit, and other times it would bring up the new Estimate form. It would open up the transaction to edit the first time, but if I saved/closed it and tried again with the same transaction, it would open the Estimate screen.

Probably the quickest way to move back and forth from one transaction to another in a register would be to use the ↑ or ↓ or arrows. The same goes for moving between lines in a journal entry.

Miscellaneous

There are times when QBO will give you a pop-up message (I’ve found this is more prevalent in Classic QBO), if there are any underlined letters in the button text, you can press ALT + that underlined letter to quickly respond to these.

If you have Custom Transaction Numbers turned on in your preferences/settings, then you can use + to increase the number by 1 and use – to decrease the number by 1. You can also type T in the reference number field to mark a check, paycheck or bill payment To Print.

 

To bring up a little pop-up with a list of your shortcuts, hit CTRL + ALT + ? (Command + Alt + ? for Mac).

To break it down, you’ll use CTRL + ALT/OPTION plus the following to get this stuff DONE!