What is Class Tracking in QuickBooks? (Full Details)

August 25, 2022

What is Class Tracking in QuickBooks? (Full Details)

Interested in expanding on QuickBooks' default account-based tracking?

Then perhaps class tracking is right for you. You may rapidly get up and running with QuickBooks' user-friendly class tracking setup procedure. You can use classes in QuickBooks to track your income and expenses by department, location, balance sheet, property, project, or event. Some may inquire, what is class tracking In QuickBooks? 

This article focuses solely on the best methods for configuring and utilizing class tracking in QuickBooks.

What Does QuickBooks Class Tracking Mean?

The class tracking feature in QuickBooks enables users to classify expenses or invoices by department, location, or any other significant division of your company.

The class monitoring tool allows you to set the company segments you want to keep an eye on and monitor their corresponding account balances on invoices, bills, and other documents. Many business owners have specific business segments they want to closely monitor.

Every operation in QuickBooks can have a class assigned to it in addition to a product or client when using classes.

What is the Purpose of Class in QuickBooks?

The ability to assign classes to transactions allows you to track account balances by department, business office or location, distinct properties you own, or any other significant breakdown of your business.

If your salon had three locations, for instance, you might make an East side, City center, and Town center class to keep track of account balances by location.

The salon may also establish classes based on specific businesses, such as Haircuts, Manicures and Pedicures, and Hairdressing. After an accounting period, the Salon could produce unique reports for every location or unique reports for every enterprise.

Almost all of the most typical transactions can be classified. And that's beneficial since it makes it simpler to build reports by filtering by numerous classes, departments, or places.

Then you may filter reports like accounts payable and receivable reports by class, as well as run a profit and loss report by class.

Let's use another example to provide further context. Take a moment to picture a farmer in Texas, USA, who has a lot of farming expenses. Such as a crop farm near Dallas, a poultry farm in Houston, and a different piece of land for raising cattle in San Antonio.

Then, to accurately compare the financials of each site in the future, you would need to be careful to classify each transaction by location.

However, provided he does not use a monocropping system, he might also divide the farmland into classes according to enterprises for various crops, such as maize, corn, and cowpea.

Here is an additional tip for you, use the Projects function to keep track of your employment expenses and earnings if, like an architect, you work on a variety of projects. From a single dashboard, you can organize your work and track your progress.

What is Class Tracking in QuickBooks Online?

QuickBooks is a cloud-based accounting software whose solutions offer desktop, online, and accounting apps as well as those that can process invoices and business payments.

Cloud-based financial management software is called QuickBooks Online. With its assistance, you may manage your business finances more quickly by doing things like Developing quotes and invoices monitoring the cash flow and sales

Classes on QuickBooks online similarly reflect significant components of your business, such as product lines or store sections. They can be used to gain a more in-depth understanding of your revenue, costs, or profitability for each division of your company. You can assign classes to transactions once the capability is enabled.

What Advantages Does QuickBooks' Class Tracking Offer?

Setting up class tracking takes some work, but it is worthwhile in the long run. You can examine how your money is being spent and get a great picture of your business expenses. With this knowledge, managing your finances and choosing wisely for your company is a lot simpler.

It displays the state of the business as a whole and facilitates wiser spending and the accomplishment of financial objectives.

Class tracking doesn't have a set of fixed categories that force you to use options like accounts payable, accounts receivable, and similar alternatives. Each class is defined in a way that best fits your organization and the particular expenses you're seeking to describe.

How to use QuickBooks' class tracking;

Class tracking is an optional feature inside QuickBooks, as was already explained. Therefore, if you want to begin adding and assigning classes inside your QuickBooks account, you must switch it on.

  • Open the QuickBooks application's home page. To access the "Preferences" menu, click the "Edit" menu. To access choices for class tracking, choose the "Accounting" preferences sub-category in this menu.
  • Use Class Tracking by clicking the "Company Preferences" tab and selecting it. To enable class tracking for your QuickBooks desktop program or online account, click "OK." You may now access the class tracking feature on your company profile.
  • From the navigation bar at the top of the screen, choose your lists. To create class categories for your costs and accounts, click "Class List."
  • At the bottom of the page, select "Class" by clicking the arrow next to it. To create a new class, click "New." The class types you develop can take into consideration a range of charges, including those related to technology solutions, travel, and other typical fees.
  • Enter the class name that goes with it. Put a check in the box next to "Sub-class" and fill out the text boxes there if this class can be further subdivided.
  • When you enter the information, select the class to be associated with a particular expense on the expense input form.

Bit of advice: you don't need to enter a class for each product you sell to a consumer, choose One for the entire transaction. Instead, you can save time by giving the entire invoice or sales receipt a single class.

Your forms will now have a class field or column that you may use to categorize transactions.

Classes can be linked to any QuickBooks entry, but they are especially helpful for invoices and payroll expenses.

Another wonderful QuickBooks tip is that you may instruct the software to notify you whenever a transaction is created without a class.

I suggest activating this setting. This can assist you in avoiding having several unclassified transactions that might cause your P&L or Balance Sheet reporting to be inaccurate.

Finally, you can enable class tracking for Online Payroll if you need to assign classes to your employees.

The instructions below should be followed if you want to do this:

  • Select Payroll Settings under Settings.
  • Select Edit under the Accounting section.
  • To enable it, click Edit under the Class Tracking section. Next, decide how you want to keep track of classes.
  • Select Done, then Continue.
  • Make sure class tracking is enabled if the Accounting Preferences section for class tracking doesn't appear. If courses aren't in session, turn them on and proceed as before. If the classes are already running, turn them off, log out, then log back in, and restart the classes.
  • Add a class for every employee, or give them all the same one.
  • Choose Continue, then click done to save your settings.

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LiveFlow "provides a critical service, allowing enterprises the visibility and real-time information they need to efficiently manage their business" by automating and streamlining the reporting process.

LiveFlow only gets better as it adds thousands more Templates. Decide the report you wish to automate:

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