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About this lesson
We explain what the magnifying glass can be used for and how to use it to locate the other search box. We'll also demonstrate various types of searches.
Exercise files
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1.03 magnifying-glass-global-search - Exercise.docx60.9 KB 1.03 magnifying-glass-global-search - Exercise solution.docx
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Quick reference
Magnifying glass (global search)
The magnifying glass is a search tool.
When to use
Use the magnifying glass to search for recent transactions, search reference numbers, amounts and others.
Instructions
There are two searches. The quick search which appears when you click on the magnifying glass and the advanced search which is an option available to you after you conduct a quick search.
Quick Search
- Transaction number
- Amount
- Date
Advanced Search
- Amount
- Display name
- Line description
- Memo
- Reference
Hints & tips
- If you receive a payment check from a corporate office for various subsidiaries, use the search box to look up the invoices being paid. This will help you identify which customer you used when entering the invoice.
- If you think you've entered a transfer twice (or more!) use the search box to look for other transactions of the same dollar amount and then review the list to see if there are multiple transactions on/near the same date.
- Add a decimal when searching for a dollar amount.
- Look at the type column.
- The last modified date isn't very useful.
- 00:04 In this video,
- 00:05 I'd like to talk to you about the search feature within QuickBooks Online.
- 00:09 The search feature is hidden by in this magnifying glass in the upper right hand
- 00:13 corner of your screen.
- 00:14 So first, I'm going to click on that and
- 00:16 just let you know what you can see when you click on it.
- 00:19 The first thing that you might notice is that there's this
- 00:22 blank line with a blinking cursor and it says Search.
- 00:25 This is a place where you can type in a customer name,
- 00:28 a vendor name, transactions, a report you're looking for.
- 00:33 Oftentimes, I'll use it to search a dollar amount.
- 00:36 Down below that, you have recent transactions.
- 00:39 For the purpose of this video, we have one recent transaction.
- 00:43 But as you start to work within your QuickBooks file,
- 00:45 this will display the ten most recent transactions.
- 00:49 And then if you want to see more,
- 00:51 there'll be a little link down here that says see more.
- 00:54 In addition to this kind of basic search menu, you also have this advanced
- 00:59 search in the lower right hand corner, it's a blue hyperlink.
- 01:03 I want to show you something just so you can see it.
- 01:05 We know that there's a recent transaction for $26,000.
- 01:09 So I'm going to enter 26825.63.
- 01:15 I clicked Enter, and this is a weird glitch that will sometimes happen.
- 01:18 It happens more now than it did.
- 01:21 But it's common enough I think you should know what to do.
- 01:24 Now, a second ago, I'm searching and I know that this number is in here.
- 01:29 I know it's in here because I can see it as a recent transaction.
- 01:32 But in your example, when you're working within your QuickBooks,
- 01:36 you might know it's in there because you know you paid it.
- 01:38 Maybe it's your rent, maybe it's an office expense.
- 01:41 So what happened here was that instead of searching for
- 01:44 that dollar amount like we hoped it would do,
- 01:46 the QuickBooks said, I didn't find anything with that reference number.
- 01:50 And you're like, well, that's fantastic,
- 01:52 I was actually searching for a dollar amount.
- 01:54 What I'll have you do when this happens is click the drop down where it says
- 01:58 Reference Number and just change it to say Amount.
- 02:02 If you're looking at this and you see Amount and you also see Amount(Line or
- 02:06 Total), the difference between the two is sometimes when you make an entry,
- 02:11 you might say, I'm spending total of $10.
- 02:13 But I'm spending $5 for this expense account and $5 for that expense account.
- 02:19 You can search for those individual lines by clicking the second search option.
- 02:23 So I'm going to search for the amount.
- 02:25 I've copied it earlier and I'm just going to paste it in.
- 02:28 When you have the amount you'd like to search, go ahead and click on the green
- 02:31 Search, and this is going to bring up the transaction of that amount.
- 02:36 I can see that on 01/01, I have a credit card credit, different than a charge.
- 02:41 So essentially, a payment of 26,000 and some change.
- 02:45 Over to the right, it says it's last modified on 07/30/2020.
- 02:49 The last modified date doesn't really make a difference for
- 02:52 what we're doing, I just want you to know that you can search.
- 02:56 So I'm going to go ahead and
- 02:57 click this to open it up and kind of see what's going on.
- 03:00 Now, I can see this is a credit card credit.
- 03:03 The payee is blank, the account that it links to is the Alaska Airlines account.
- 03:08 Here's the date and here's the dollar amount.
- 03:11 Here's the category.
- 03:13 Fun fact, where it says category here, what it really means is chart of account.
- 03:17 Earlier when I said that $10 example, you might say $5 for one expense and $5 for
- 03:22 another, that's these two lines right here.
- 03:26 So I could say opening balance equity and I could put $5 here,
- 03:30 and then I could change this one to be $5 less, save and close.
- 03:36 It's been reconciled, that's fine.
- 03:38 We're going to go up to the global search and I'm going to search for $5.
- 03:43 And it says there's no $5 found and it says no reference for $5.
- 03:48 We know that $5 exists.
- 03:51 So I'm going to search again and
- 03:52 I'm not going to change this amount because I want to show you what happens.
- 03:55 When I click Search, I don't see it.
- 03:58 If I change it so that it says Amount(Line or Total) Equals,
- 04:02 and then I type in $5 and click Search, it shows up.
- 04:07 I'm going to click on this credit card credit so you can see it again and
- 04:10 see why it showed up.
- 04:13 QuickBooks was searching these individual lines and
- 04:16 it was searching the grand total.
- 04:18 When you say search by amount, it's only searching the grand total
- 04:22 unless you say QuickBooks, would you please also search the individual lines?
- 04:26 So there's different reasons you might have something in an individual line.
- 04:30 I just really wanted you to see the difference and
- 04:32 see how it might be helpful for you.
- 04:34 In later videos, we'll explore more of QuickBooks.
- 04:38 In these early videos, I want to give you a sense of the navigation and
- 04:41 the various ways that you can find things within your QuickBooks Online.
- 04:45 Thank you and we'll chat soon.
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