QBO SMART troubleshooting
Give yourself a competitive advantage!
Develop your QuickBooks Troubleshooting (QT) skills!
New for You TO Build QBO Troubleshooting Skills!
Your QBO Text has new QBO Troubleshooting features:
Chapter 1: Help and Troubleshooting Section
Appendix D: QBO Troubleshooting
If the issue is a QBO issue, not a text issue: QBO provides QBO Care as follows:
QuickBooks Support at 1-800-488-7330 to speak with a support person directly or
Use the Help link found on the top right of any screen in your QuickBooks Online company
QuickBooks TROUBLESHOOTing (QT) Best Practices
Develop your QuickBooks Troubleshooting (QT) skills by trying this smart, best practices approach, focusing on 3 aspects:
Resilient Mindset
Troubleshooting Process
Troubleshooting Incentivize
Troubleshooting Mindset. Try to shift your mindset from a Fixed Mindset to a Resilient Troubleshooting Mindset.
Fixed Mindset. This is a typical mindset, a mindset of being dependent on someone else (like your instructor) to solve problems for you.
✨ Resilient Mindset. Tap into a mindset that if you put in the effort you can resolve this issue. Be willing to be resilient. If the first thing you try doesn’t work, what else can you try? This troubleshooting mindset is valuable to entrepreneurs and employers because often we encounter new issues that no one else has encountered before. Sometimes there is no one else to turn to for solving an issue. Start believing in yourself and your ability to troubleshoot. With practice your confidence and troubleshooting skills will improve.
Troubleshooting Process. Standardize your troubleshooting process. This reduces frustration and gives you a starting point for troubleshooting. For example, for Computer Accounting with QuickBooks Online troubleshooting, consider the following troubleshooting process.
Identify whether the issue is accounting related (such as the wrong amount for income) versus QBO application related (such as an error message when using the QBO sales tax feature). If an accounting related issue:
Try displaying the journal report and reviewing the journal entries for the period when the accounting error occurred. Sometimes it is easier to track down the error in the journal.
Try revising your Audit Log to review transactions to track down the accounting error.
See Chapter 9, Accounting Essentials, Accounting Adjustments and Corrections, to learn more about how to correct accounting errors.
Check QBO Updates for your Computer Accounting with QuickBooks Online text. Review the updates to see if that resolves the issue.
Try QBO Help (see Chapter 1, Help and Troubleshooting Section) and QuickBooks Support to see if others have encountered the same issue and suggestions on how to fix it.
Call Intuit’s QBO Student Support Number 1-800-488-7330.
Take a break, then come back and review your work with fresh eyes. Try restarting and reworking the steps to see if the issue replicates.
As a last resort, reach out to your professor for assistance. (Note: some instructors ask that you spend at least 30 minutes troubleshooting before reaching out.) See below for a troubleshooting communication template that you can copy and paste to use when reaching out to your instructor.
Troubleshooting Incentivize. Incentivize yourself when troubleshooting. What does this mean? Sometimes we count on others to provide us with incentives to motivate us to take action and succeed at a task. But that may be an unrealistic expectation. Sometimes no one notices when we undertake a challenging task and succeed. So we need to incentivize ourselves. Reward ourselves. For example, when you encounter a QBO issue, such as a QBO update you were not expecting, you might incentive yourself by telling yourself that instead of becoming frustrated (although that would be normal) or expecting someone else to solve the problem for you (sometimes that would be nice… but unrealistic), you dive in to resolve the issue and after you resolve the issue, reward your efforts. Maybe watch a movie that you’ve been wanting to see or reward yourself with a snack that you adore. Reward yourself to incentivize yourself to troubleshoot successfully.
SMART Troubleshooting template: HOW TO reach out to your professor for assistance
If your efforts have not resolved the issue, consider reaching out to your professor for assistance with the following troubleshooting communication template that uses a structured step-by-step approach to streamline the process. Simply copy and paste to a message or email. Then insert your information in the template brackets [ ] .
Dear Professor,
1. I am experiencing the following issue with my QuickBooks assignment:
[Insert: What is the issue? Summarize the issue, concisely and precisely. What problem did you encounter? Be specific.
State the specific issue
Include page numbers and Chapter, Exercise, or Project number
Include screen captures of error messages etc.]
2. The steps to replicate the issue include:
[Insert: What are the steps to reproduce the issue? Step by step, list the steps to replicate the issue.
Example: Select Banking menu > Bank Feeds > Bank Feeds Center]
3. The issue that resulted is:
[Insert: What went wrong? Describe exactly what problem resulted. Include screen captures.]
4. The action steps I have taken to troubleshoot are:
[Insert: What troubleshooting actions have you tried? List at least 3 actions that you took to try to troubleshoot and resolve the issue. Be specific.
Example:
Checked QBO text updates
Searched QBO Help
Reworked the exercise
Your assistance is appreciated.
Regards,
[Insert your name]
QBO Troubleshooting LEADERBOARD
✨ Bravo to Micki Nickla and her student Andrea H. from Ivy Tech for reporting a QBO video issue and providing concise troubleshooting actions taken for fast resolution!
✨ Kudos to Susan Miller and her student Samantha S. from DCCC for their stellar troubleshooting and issue resolution skills in Chapter 8.
✨ Special thanks to Stephanie Swaim and her student Vassil D. from Dallas College for assistance in troubleshooting these challenging changes to the test company for Exercises 8.5 through 8.10.
Note: Interestingly, students sometimes indicate that in the process of writing the email to their professor and summarizing the action steps they have tried, they suddenly think of how to resolve the issue. So in the process of writing the email, they solve the problem. It’s nice to know that you have an instructor to reach out to if you can’t resolve it, but it’s even nicer when you are able to resolve the issue on your own, building your confidence and troubleshooting skills.