Volume I of The QuickBooks Farm Accounting Cookbook™ series was the first volume we produced and was written using screenshots and menu commands from an older version of QuickBooks—the version which was current at that time. Here's what you need to know about using Volume I with more recent QuickBooks versions...

First, while it's true that the annual QuickBooks releases have added many "bells and whistles" over the years, the core accounting features of QuickBooks have remained mostly the same. So this book remains just as pertinent and useful as it was when it was written.

Second, the differences you will notice between the screens in your version of QuickBooks and screenshots in this book are mostly cosmetic; that is, they result more from changes in the "look" of QuickBooks than from significant changes in the program's accounting features.

Third, the menus in your version of QuickBooks will be arranged differently from those shown in this book. Most importantly, the Activites menu is gone. All of the menu selections which used to be found there (in Activities) are now part of other menus:  Company, Customers, Vendors, Employees, and Banking. So whenever you encounter a reference to the Activities menu in this book, you may have to search a bit in other menus to find the desired menu item.

Fourth, the Preferences menu item is now found in the Edit menu (it used to be in the File menu). Wherever you see a reference to File|Preferences in this book, use Edit|Preferences instead.

Fifth, the Reports menu has been rearranged for more direct access (with fewer mouse clicks) to both "standard" and "detail" versions of reports. Most of the Report selections shown in this book are now found one level higher within the Reports menu, in current QuickBooks editions.

Finally, these menu rearrangements are mostly minor aggravations. The ideas, techniques, and basic approaches to farm accounting provided in Volume I continue to work mostly as is, in current QuickBooks versions.

The author,
Mark Wilsdorf