During the initial creation of your QuickBooks company data file, you are required to enter the company name. If desired, you can also enter the address, telephone numbers, email address and website information.
During this setup process, you also define your Fiscal and Tax year -- an important detail that ultimately affects the presentation of your financial statements.
To access your company's contact and legal information, or to change your Fiscal or Tax Year after the QuickBooks file has been created, simply choose Company Information from the Company menu and make the changes.
QuickBooks uses the Contact Information on all of your printed business forms, such as Invoices, Statements, Estimates and Purchase Orders. Unless specified otherwise, the Legal Information will default to the same name and address as was entered in the company Contact Information.
If you use QuickBooks for payroll, your Legal Information and Company Identification entries are used to print all of your federal and state tax forms, including 1099s, the 940 and 941 payroll returns, and the W-2, W-3 and 1096 forms.
The IRS accepts only the first 35 characters of the legal name. Do not abbreviate the name or omit spaces. If the business is a sole proprietorship, the legal name is the name of the owner. In this case, formal suffixes such as MD, CPA, Jr., Sr., etc., are acceptable. However, general or other titles such as, owner, Mr., Mrs. or Dr. are not.
For QuickBooks Assisted Payroll service customers, the payroll service complies with government requirements for valid characters in a company's legal name and address. Invalid characters (` ~ ! @ # $ % ^ * ( ) = + | \ { [ ] " \ ; :. , / ? < >) will automatically be removed during the sign-up process.
You must have an employer identification number (EIN) if your business:
Otherwise, if your company is a sole proprietorship, enter your social security number in the Company Identification section.
The selections you make in the Report Information section of the Company Information window affect the default settings for certain QuickBooks reports and graphs. The fiscal year is used to define the twelve-month period that matches the seasonality for your customers or vendors. Most businesses simply enter a fiscal year that matches the tax year.
Your tax year is the twelve-month taxation period that you choose for reporting income taxes for your business. Some corporations choose a tax year that allows them to report taxes after the results of their busiest season are available. Sole Proprietors, Partnerships and S Corps are required to choose January as the beginning of their tax year, which matches the calendar year. QuickBooks uses your tax year to create income tax reports. You can always change the date range for any individual report or graph to cover other fiscal or tax years.
Be sure to also select the appropriate Income Tax Form Used from the drop-down list. The type of tax form chosen in the EasyStep Interview or in the Company Information window, affects how each account in your chart of accounts can be linked to tax lines on the tax forms required for your business.
For example, if you chose Form 1040, you'll see tax lines for Form 1040 and the schedules and forms typically filed with Form 1040. Associating a tax line to each account in your chart of accounts list allows you to export data directly to TurboTax or create tax reports in QuickBooks to help you fill out your income tax forms.
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