QuickBooks’ Income Tracker – The Allday Consulting Group, LLC

5 Ways You Can Use QuickBooks’ Income Tracker

One of the reasons that QuickBooks appeals to millions of small businesses is because it offers multiple ways to complete the same tasks, which accommodates different work styles. Say, for example, you wanted to look up a specific invoice. You could:

Go to the Customer Center and select the customer, and then scan through the list of transactions,
Use the Find feature (Edit | Find), or
Create a report.

👁️ Gain a Visual Overview of Your Company’s Income

There’s also another way you can get there if you have a recent version of QuickBooks: the Income Tracker.

(Note: Only the Administrator or a staff member with the correct permissions can access this feature. Talk to us about whether to allow other employees to use it, and how to set that up.)

Figure 1: QuickBooks’ Income Tracker provides a visual overview of your company’s income.

The Income Tracker provides an at-a-glance view of your financial status:

Access it by clicking the link in the vertical navigation bar or go to Customers | Income Tracker.
Four colored bars across the top of the screen represent:
- Unbilled estimates
- Open invoices
- Overdue invoices
- Invoices paid within the last 30 days
Each bar contains two numerical values: the number of transactions of that type and the dollar amount involved.

QuickBooks defaults to displaying all types of transactions, but when you click on a bar, the screen changes to show only that type of transaction.

🔍 Filter and View Specific Transaction Types

Customize your view to focus on the information you need:

Click on a colored bar to display only that type of transaction.
Use drop-down lists to filter by:
- Customer: Job, Type, Status (Open, Paid, etc.) and Date (range). Click the arrow to the right of each filter’s label to display your options.

The column labels below these lists will change depending on the transaction type that’s active.

✍️ Take Quick Actions on Transactions

Streamline your workflow by acting on transactions directly from the Income Tracker:

Double-click a transaction to open the original form. You can also open them by selecting an action to take.
Select an action from the Action column:
- For estimates list: Click on a transaction to highlight it. Then click the arrow next to Select in the Action column at the far right end of the row

Figure 2: You can modify transactions like estimates from within the Income Tracker.

If you choose the first option here, QuickBooks opens a small window that asks you whether you’d like to create an invoice for 100 percent of the estimate, a percentage of it, specific items, or percentages of each item. When you make your selection and click OK, a completed invoice form opens, which you can then check over and save.

As you can see above, you can also mark the estimate as inactive, print it, or email it.

- For open invoices: Receive payments quickly with pre-filled information.

Each transaction type supports a different set of actions. In the open invoice action column, as you’d expect, you can click the option to Receive Payment, which opens the Customer Payment window with the customer and the amount due already filled in. This can be edited to reflect a different amount, or you can just accept it as is, and then save it.

➕ Create New Transactions Efficiently

Initiate new financial activities without leaving the Income Tracker:

Click on the arrow next to Manage Transactions in the lower left corner of the screen
Select the form you want.

Figure 3: You can open new transaction screens from within QuickBooks’ Income Tracker.

🖨️Process Multiple Transactions in Batch

The Income Tracker also provides one of the fastest ways to print multiple forms.

Select the transactions you want to print by clicking in the box in front of them
Click the arrow next to Batch Actions in the lower left corner o print or email them in bulk.
You can also edit transactions from here, too. Either double-click on one or select it and click Edit Highlighted Row in the Manage Transactions menu.

QuickBooks’ Income Tracker doesn’t do anything that can’t be done another way in the program. But it provides an excellent one-glance view of the current state of your receivables movement.

Are you seeing patterns in your receivables that concern you? Our team of QuickBooks experts can evaluate your process and suggest strategies to accelerate your cash flow. Even if sales aren’t increasing, timely invoice payments can boost your financial health and managerial confidence.